Alexithymia

[Blinkyrocket]

Alexithymia is the inability to describe your emotions (not the same as when men can't describe their emotion) because you aren't really sure what you're feeling. I sort of don't know what emotion feels like some times. The only emotions I'm absolutely sure I know the feeling of are sadness and anger. Anybody else get this sometimes? Idk if I've ever felt happy before.

I think its related to some anxiety disorders and PTSD.

[the_anxious_mind]

I'm so sorry to hear that you are going through this. I cannot relate as I suffer from the opposite--sometimes I can't get ahold of my emotions such as crying and such. You don't have to describe, but can you locate a time in your life that may have created this for you?

---------- Post added at 03:44 ---------- Previous post was at 03:38 ----------

Also, from what I have read Alexithymia is the inability to connect to emotions whatsoever. For example, on your wedding day not feeling happiness or joy just feeling like a puppet in a play. Or an inability to connect to people because you can't feel love or connection whatsoever. Do you find yourself having difficulty in loving relationships as well?

[Blinkyrocket]

I have no idea because from age 6 and up my friends were made for me by my brother, in other words my brother's friends became my friends. I've always been too shy to make a connection so if I even could idk if I'd feel anything. I think this comes and goes with my anxiety and panic disorder, I'm probably misinterpreting the condition or it only happens during times of high stress. But during those times of high stress, the thoughts that go through my mind are something like "if I allow myself to feel emotion, it will only be sadness and it will be overwhelming" and when I do allow myself to fully remember and feel those emotions, I feel them until they engulf me and overwhelm me and then I nearly panic and the feelings go away, leaving me wondering what I just felt, because it all the sudden completely went away and lost its impact. It makes me angry that the emotions just go away because when I allow myself to feel sadness I can also feel other emotions or clues to how I could end my problem, as if by being sad I could somehow find out the answer to the questions that plague my mind. But as soon as it goes away I'm once again left feeling nothing and not being able to explain anything I do feel. The memories have to do with I think the only time while I've been alive that I felt a connection towards another person, but was too shy to EVER talk to her.

I know I've felt happiness in the distant past, but a part of me thinks that if I was so shy and antisocial even at that age, that there was no way that I've ever felt happiness. If at such a young age I had such an inability to socialize, than even when I believe I've been happy, I wasn't actually happy.
I didn't have any self made friends, and eventually I started to resent and hate my only true friend, my brother. Good lord, it's strange how overwhelmingly sad that is.

Sigh, I could fill the page with stuff that I should just tell a therapist next time I go I just wish they gave more time to talk.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It's a major element of ASD and I seem to recall you mentioned having that on another thread recently, blinky. Is that right?

I just had a quick read on Wiki and saw how it is unknown but supposed that this may be connected to anxiety or depression disorders in people with ASD. Anxiety seems to be the one they think is most likely.

There are a few parents with children on the spectrum so I hope they see this thread as they may be able to give you a better response.

I can certainly see some of these issues in myself since my anxiety started. The longer the disorder, the more you retrain yourself to be anxious, so you spend so much time with the negatives that when the positives come you don't know what to make of them. I know when I started recovering and saw better days appearing, especially a good day, I would feel like they were alien to me. I didn't know what they were or how to respond to them. This became more of a trend towards the positive and I accepted them and managed to change again.

This has been discussed plenty of times on here and at the walk-ins groups I used to go too. To me it's part of recovery but to you, if I got the ASD right, it must be a very different challenge,. I know very little about ASD so I don't know how much this affects you so please excuse my ignorance.

[Blinkyrocket]

Yeah, I've only gotten a formal diagnosis of a mild form of aspergers if anything. But I've sort of taught myself the ins and outs of socializing by watching movies. I don't really have any odd behaviors other than I used to have extreme inability to socialize and now I'll bet I could do it but it would be hard as crap. I probably was growing out of it too until a very stressful event happened and sent me back to the days where I got sensory overload whenever I was in a theater.