r/Alexithymia

hi, i‘m m44. late diagnosed with autism (last year) and recently with adhd.

i think i have alexithymia, i did the tas-20 with my therapist and scored high ig. i still struggle to understand and to explain it to others too. the best description i came up with is that there is som feeling there but the connection from body to mind is missing. i can’t put it into thoughts and what can not think of i can’t describe or communicate to others. also i don’t know to differentiate between alexithymia and bad interoception

so i thought i ask this community: is this alexithymia or interoception?

- anxiety: i didn’t notice i had it until i got panic attacks. still until today i don’t notice it until it is above a certain threshold (like 80% or above if i put it into numbers)

- feeling/identifying and/or communicating my feelings when i am around people: i am a high masking autist, people pleaser. i often say things i don’t really want or accept things or don’t voice my opinion. sometimes i realize it afterwards but it also can pile up throughout days until i snap and then feel guilty

- i am able to name feelings: anger, anxiety, love, hate, sadness. but not really more detailed tbh. often not in the moment itself. i am slow processing emotions. i hate it when people push or force me to get over it when i still don’t even know what i feel. extreme feelings are easier for me to identify

- body signals: my body can turn off (chronic) pain, feelings like hunger, thirst or the need to pee. that’s probably more interoception but not sure

- if someone asks me how i am i say i‘m okay, good or not well. i can‘t list more details just what i did that day

- i have a hard time memorize or emotions. yesterday i might know or if it was a big thing like a fight from last week. but other than that i cant. i can’t remember how my last year was or how i felt on that vacation. i have only little memory of my childhood.

i would be really interested in feedback.

p.s. if there are some good resources on alexithymia like books, website or podcasts i would highly appreciate some recommendations

Wondering : How do you currently deal with not being able to identify your emotions ?

Would being able to just describe (text or voice) what’s unclear and get an instant, accurate emotional read help you ? Building something for this…

Want to provide as much value as I can.

I took a look at the link to affective alexithymia in the sidebar, and saw this section:

> "Affect" is the experience of feeling or emotion. Low affect reduces conscious response to emotional stimuli.

> This should not be confused with a lack of emotion. It's all going on as normal under the surface! For evidence look to unconscious physical responses such as laughing, crying, sexual arousal, or goosebumps. All other things being equal they will be present and correct.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alexithymia/wiki/index#wiki_affective

It goes on, and I relate to the portions that follow, but I have trouble relating to the idea that I have a full range of emotions that I'm simply unaware of. Yet I see this concept thrown around frequently on this subreddit and elsewhere, that despite all the range of human experience and personality traits in other areas, somehow emotional signal/strength is uniform across everyone and it's just a difference in being able to correctly label or interpret it?

I wouldn't say I have any detectable emotional content day to day. I have preferences and dislikes, things that interest or frustrate me, but it's all what I would consider cognitive, there's no emotional weight. I don't have any confusing sensations in my body as I go through my life. I can feel hunger and tiredness perfectly fine, but never tingling or warmth or tightness in concentrated areas of my body. I laugh when I find something funny, and can be sexually aroused, but I don't think those things are actually emotional content, I think they're different systems that get mushed together when others always feel emotions at the same time, so it gets blurred.

It makes me wonder if alexithymia isn't the right label for what I experience. One body response I have noted is my pulse going up before a presentation or something, but that's not confusing or a mystery to me, it's like "ah, I must be feeling nervous about presenting" and then I try to calm myself down by thinking that it's not super high stakes. This is rare though, maybe once or twice a year at most. So I'm not saying I never get any bodily sensations, just that they're very rare and easily made sense of and pass quickly.

I guess my point bringing this up is wondering if there's perhaps a better fitting concept for what I experience than Alexithymia. Maybe it was never the right concept, as I score quite low on the TAS-20 when I tried it. Is it "hard to find the right words for my feelings?" - strongly disagree, I don't feel anything most of the time, so it's easy to describe. "I am often puzzled by sensations in my body" - strongly disagree, I don't seem to have bodily sensations to be puzzled by. It's almost like if a blind person took a test for myopia that asked "the images I see have blurry edges" and they say "strong disagree, there are no images in the first place", and the test result is that they therefore have average vision.

Anyway, this got a bit long and rambly, but I'm hoping to get some feedback on how what I describe relates to alexithymia, or if it's relatable to others here. Perhaps there's a different term/concept I could be exploring that would be more applicable to me, as otherwise grouping people like me with people that have strong bodily sensations that they have trouble interpreting just seems like a recipe for talking past each other and confusing the discourse.

Anyone else process everything like normal data? Everything has the emotional load of a coffee order. It's like I had tacos for lunch, oh your mother died, it's going to be warm tomorrow. I wouldn't say that out load but that's how everything hits me.

I've read about alexithymia, and I can relate a good amount to it. A lot of the time, I have no idea what I'm feeling, or why I'm feeling that way. I have many times tried to hyper-analyze my internal states, trying to feel and notice the difference in these states what these states are, but I never really confidently figure out what they are, what I can say with confidence is that they feel and are different, and changes my behaviour.

I just feel that my experience doesn't map cleanly onto alexithymia, which is making me conflicted

Thanks to reddit and youtube I have been learning about feelings or lack of or awareness of them hence why now I've ended up here , I like to say I'm just neurodivergent because I've not experienced major trauma or whatever so anyway I've learned that I have ADD co with SDAM and Aphantasia

And now I know I have Alexithymia this is all self diagnosed and done deeply self research and just general experience of life. Tried going doctor route but they push back to go private blah blah blah. I'm here to ask what's people's way of regulating emotions if it's hard to ever describe what your feeling in the first place.

From my experience I'm just either stimulated or non stimulated but I can never actually tell I'm happy motivated , good mood bad mood or anything else.

I recently discovered that I might have alexithymia - since it's self-diagnosed, there is still a shadow of doubt. I've learnt over the years that I had trouble being vulnerable which is the very basis of deep friendships. I did a lot of inner work to show myself that I'm allowed to feel all feelings - however I find it hard to access what I'm feeling in the moment especially in the presence of someone so I can't be vulnerable and authentic in the moment - and small talk drains me. I need A LOT of time to understand what I'm feeling and this is not conducive to making authentic friends. And this is all the more difficult in groups, so joining social groups hasn't brought me much success either. So it seems like I either fake it which I don't want to do anymore or continue being alone which I can't do anymore. I was wondering if anyone has insights on this or similar struggles?

Do you have any recommendations of articles, resources, books that would give more information to help clients that have alexithymia? I often discover traits after a few sessions which then guide the way I ask questions, but I want to be more informed.

Thanks for the shares !!!