About not missing anyone

Post Reply New Topic

Red, I appreciate your answer! I, too, having found people with relatable experiences feel much more normal and comfortable with myself.

I actually googled this for almost a decade and asked everyone around me over and over as a child and adolescent before I could find the answer.

Mike, I know people with similar behaviours and some simply don't express their feelings. I'm not saying this is the case, I'm saying it's good to consider.

I have family members who believe they should be elegant 24/7 and that means hiding every expression of "vulnerability" (emotion). They do feel them, but they believe being affectionate is somehow shameful. This isn't at all alexithymia (as I read it to be), it's just pretending to feel nothing and acting intentionally cold.

I'm just widening the range of possibilities. I like to have them all.

Peacefully,
Dante.

The reason I believe that most of my family members are alexithymic to some extent is because they all have trouble identifying emotion despite their best efforts.

My 13 year old brother is a textbook example of someone with alexithymia, he fits basicly every criteria. He doesn't show much emotion and he has trouble figuring out when he's hungry or thirsty.

My 17 year brother sometimes gets angry at someone and then an hour or so later he occasionally may comes back to them and says something like "I have figured it out, I was jealous".

My 11 year old sister gets upset to the point of crying very easily, but when asked about it she usually has no idea why.

That is why I suspect that they are all alexithymic to some extent. Alexithymia is largely genetic, so that's not really too surprising.

Indeed they sound like it.

As I didn't have anyone's help with social skills and emotional intelligence, I started using various therapeutic methods by myself (I didn't know they were therapeutic when I started).

Here are things that help me and may help your family too:

- Group therapy to talk about types of love, how love works, how to be loving to someone and how to identify when someone needs love.

- Reading books os Neurology, Psychology and Psychoanalysis, plus watching lectures on these topics (this one has helped me the most).

- I keep a journal to write confusing experiences and figure it out later.

- Poetry writing and reading (Literature helps me identify which emotion I feel when reading certain things).

- By watching youtube videos, series and movies I started to figure out names to what I wanted to express and still learn a lot nowadays (in English only. My mother tongue isn't as thoroughly descriptive).

The last one is to have a very patient someone to talk to. Hard to find, but not impossible!

Peacefully,
Dante.