I just realized that I have alexithymia!

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Hi Snowy Owl,

I get it, it can be very troublesome when people do not understand why my son may not show any emotions. Sometimes his emotions don't match with the situation either. For example, he may hear some bad news or something bad that someone is going through, and he will smile. It used to deeply trouble me, but I am now starting to understand that maybe he just can't help it. I like your system. Maybe I will try something like that with my son.

I don't know whether I've got it or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

I seem to recognise myself in some features, e.g.

According to Henry Krystal, individuals exhibiting alexithymia think in an operative way and may appear to be super-adjusted to reality.

But not in others, e.g.
....inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings.

I think it would take more than the typical online questionnaire to determine how alexithymic I may be. It seems to be a spectrum-type thing, and unlike ASD it doesn't fit me like a glove so much.

I doubt that it's unusual for a "normal" person to be somewhat out of touch with their emotions, particularly men, though it's not entirely a gender thing. I've often read stuff that pours scorn on therapists for asking "how does that make you feel?" but I don't see how a therapist could make much progress with a client until the client described their feelings. Why do these authors get annoyed when invited to talk about their feelings? I have no such reticence, though I appreciate the danger of divulging too much about your feelings to the wrong person.

I never know how I feel unless I'm physically bawling. I'm grateful that I'm emotional but t hate when it catches me out of the blue

I have been increasingly becoming emotionally flattened in the past few months. For example, several people that my mom knew or were related to died; including her 23 year old cousin who died of cancer, but hearing about all this death I noticed my internal response to it was, "Yeah! So what? People die all the time! Get over it."
I fear I maybe becoming dull to emotion.

It wasn't until I went through the autism diagnosis/assessment process that I realised that I don't understand my emotions as well as I'd assumed.

I'm not sure that was such an abnormal response, if her cousin wasn't close to you. Maybe just a bit of mind-blindness that made it difficult for you to imagine how your mother felt about it. I think many people feel little or nothing when those they aren't close to die, though most would make the appropriate noises about it. But I could be wrong.

There's the objective reality of people die everyday...


And then there's the subjective experience of loss; one that involves permanent parting from any particular parties attachments towards a particular person.

Itself is a huge transition of a reality shift where one imagines a world without a person, one that is more than just accustomed being with.

Many forms of grief is just another form of internal and external transition.
Just another yet albeit a really huge gear to shift, one that can be very laborious and sometimes extremely painful to try and shift from.


Just remember enough of the latter.
One don't have to retain emotionality or keep being sympathetic. One doesn't even have to be close.



Or -- your internal monologue can be a cope in itself to defend your consciousness from a further inner layer of grief, manifests on the surface as a form of annoyance towards the reality that it didn't matter.

Just as something traumatic is a form reaction towards a major disruption. That trauma itself is an adaptive mechanism.

Who knows? If you can dive deeper than just that. But those with alexithymia would struggle with that, though...

Sorry I didn't report with an infodump. My attention has been getting slowly worse and worse. It was getting so bad, I didn't even have the focus to notice that is was leaving. I thought my issues with attention were related to emotions, processing the past, or laziness and personal failing. I'm now realizing that this trend started right about the same time I received a refill of my last prescription. I didn't realize that it was happening because very previous script was supposedly poorly manufactured and caused me to hallucinate, so this one seemed better by comparison at the time of pickup. I guess I needed time to see my life become a disaster. Anyway, I'm at least happy I recognized it so I don't have to continue feeling like it's my fault. I was trying the best I could with the capacity I had, and that's all anyone can do.

However, I'm even more confused about the alexithymia since I have no idea what the hell is happening. This experiment does not allow for stability.

Oof! Small wonder I don't trust strong psych meds if that's the standard the health professionals are working to these days. There ought to be mandatory cash payments for poisoning innocent patients even if the effects are temporary.

Yes it's hard for the individual to figure out what's happening to them. I don't think even the shrinks really know. On a more physical level I've tried to draw conclusions from empirical evidence about the effect of this or that intervention on me, and the trouble is that it's impossible to know what would have happened if I hadn't done the intervention. Recently I stopped taking one of my two blood pressure medications, and it hasn't changed a thing. Does the stuff just not work on me, or would my blood pressure have dropped on the day I discontinued the drug, or was there something wrong with the measurements? Don't know. Have I got alexithymia? Don't know. Have I got ADD? Don't know. On a good day I'm not even sure I'd be diagnosed as having ASD. It's hard to hit a moving target.

Thank you. I really value what you said.