r/Alexithymia

For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with a strong need for validation, attention, and reassurance from other people. When I was younger, I didn’t really know how to meet those needs in healthy ways, and I think I developed some unhealthy coping patterns, like lying about small or unnecessary things or trying to control how others perceived me.
I was previously diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder, but recently my care team and I have started questioning whether that fully explains what I’m experiencing. There’s been some discussion about possible personality-related traits, but nothing is confirmed, and I’m still trying to understand myself.
One thing I’ve noticed is that my empathy feels very “selective.” I have a small group of people I feel deeply connected to and protective over. I care about them a lot, and they mean everything to me. Outside of that circle, I can sometimes feel emotionally detached or indifferent in a way that even confuses me. It doesn’t feel like a choice it feels automatic.
When I feel hurt, rejected, or disrespected by someone outside that inner circle, I can experience very intense emotional reactions. In those moments, I struggle a lot with anger, rumination, and a strong need to feel like the situation is “resolved” or that the other person understands the impact of what happened. I don’t like that I react this way, and I’m trying to understand it better and learn healthier ways to cope.
Recently, I was also told I may be experiencing anhedonia, which is basically when your brain doesn’t respond to pleasure or reward the same way. I’ve been feeling more emotionally numb or flat than I used to, and I think that may be making everything else harder to manage. It sometimes feels like I’m searching for *any* emotional reaction or intensity just to feel something.
I want to be very clear that I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m not okay with causing harm, and that’s not something I want in my life. What I *am* trying to understand is why I have these patterns of emotional intensity, attachment, and detachment, especially when I feel hurt or misunderstood, and how I can deal with it in a healthier way.
If anyone has experienced something similar like intense attachment to a small group, emotional numbness, difficulty with empathy outside certain relationships, or overwhelming reactions to conflict I’d really appreciate hearing what helped you manage it or understand it better.

Am I the only one that I can't think about anything and I mean no thought at ALL whenever someone asks me to describe my emotions? Cause like someone asks me to describe it using a picture or a word or something but I just can't, nothing comes to mind, my mind becomes completely blank and then whenever I can't answer they get upset with me because they think that I'm just refusing to participate but its just that I can't describe it at all. And no matter how hard I try to tell them that, they refuse to listen to me and it's been like this for as long as I can remember. They then say that my body is saying something else but I don't know what they mean because I just can't think at all, no thoughts come to mind about my emotions or my body language, because I know that I'm feeling an emotion but I can't describe it. My mom says that I used to be able to express myself but something must've happened whenever she and my dad had to move away and me and my brother were basically sent to live with my relatives who were kind of like strangers to us.

I started reading books to better describe my emotions.

And I wondered if anyone else was doing this. I met one person who, like me, used books to express his emotions.

If so, what books do you read? I would be grateful if you would share them with me.

There's research (Lieberman, 2007) showing that when you put feelings into words — not fix them, not talk about them endlessly, just name them — your brain's alarm system actually calms down. So instead of "stressed," something like "overwhelmed by uncertainty" or "stuck in a loop" produces a measurable dip in panic.

The specificity is what does it. Vague labels don't help. Precise ones do.

I started naming what I felt out loud, recording it somewhere safe, and telling myself I'd deal with it later. That alone stops it from hijacking the rest of the day, because your brain stops treating it like unfinished business.

Over time you start seeing your own patterns — what triggers what, how long spirals usually last. That's when it stops feeling random and starts feeling manageable.

"Individuals on the autism spectrum or with elevated autistic traits have shown difficulty in recognizing people’s facial emotions. They also tend to gravitate toward anime, a highly visual medium featuring animated characters whose facial emotions may be easier to distinguish. Because autistic traits overlap with alexithymia, or difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, alexithymia might explain the association between elevated autistic traits and difficulty with facial emotion recognition. The present study used a computerized task to first examine whether elevated autistic traits in a community sample of 247 adults were associated with less accurate emotion recognition of human but not anime faces. Results showed that individuals higher in autistic traits performed significantly worse on the human facial emotion recognition task, but no better or worse on the anime version. After controlling for alexithymia and other potentially confounding variables, autistic traits were no longer associated with performance on the facial emotion recognition tasks. However, alexithymia remained a significant predictor and fully mediated the relationship between autistic traits and emotion recognition of both human and anime faces. Findings suggest that interventions designed to help individuals on the autism spectrum with facial emotion recognition might benefit from targeting alexithymia and employing anime characters."

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathology/article/autistic-traits-alexithymia-and-emotion-recognition-of-human-and-anime-faces/1177F5EC58FF0C00CC3C6F28BE5E4183

Has anyone done workbooks or books on the topic which can help or recognize some of the feelings and emotions ? I dont have time for therapy due to load. So far AI platforms have been helpful and financially reasonable in terms of helping me with some of the Autism related things but that was awareness part only.

In terms of actually making things better has anyone tried any self study approaches ?

Hello, I’ve never posted on this sub before, but I’ve seen plenty of great discussions here. If this isn’t the right place for this, please let me know. I’m just wondering if any other alexithymic people out there find it near impossible to make decisions/choices. In my own experience, I find that making decisions require some sort of emotional component in a way, since ideally, you’d have to make a decision that’s best for you. However, if you aren’t able/ have a hard time knowing what you feel, then how would you choose what feels best? Am I just being indecisive? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Are there any people here with congenital—rather than acquired—alexithymia?

Could you tell me a bit about yourselves?

How do people treat you? What are your relationships like? Has logic replaced emotion for you? How do you perceive other people? Do you see meaning in the things where others do (anything from traditions to greetings), and so on?

I’d like to compare this with my own experience.

Everytime I try to cry, I end up just getting nothing out, and looking completely normal. Despite an immense sadness, it’s just not coming out. I’ve just got nothing showing. Inside it’s eating my out but it literally cannot come out. I posted this to r/mental health and Reddit recommended this sub.

I have realized this recently. I just don't hate or love anyone. I was only ever close with my mother but when i think about it now i don't even feel love or hate towards her.

I enjoy watching shows that i "like" but i don't feel like i actually love doing it. I have never known what job i wanted as a kid and now as a teenager. I never had dreams that i wanted to achieve someday. Do these things sound familiar to people who have alexithymia?

Mine is people think I am too timid to speak up. Perhaps that is true sometimes, but most of the time, I believe I am much slower at processing than most neurotypicals. By the time I can articulate what I need or a boundary I have, much time has passed. I am learning to accept this so I can communicate this better.

Hi, I’m wondering if anyone else has alexithymia and would be very interested to hear from you. I’ve just discovered after decades of no understanding that this is why i don’t recognise my emotions.. cos I’ve lived it i didn’t know it was a thing but now i do its great to begin to understand it and have validation.

Hello. I have HIE (died at birth) aquired type 3 alexithymia.

Firstly there are three types of alexithymia.

​Type 1 Alexithymia: A neurological, complete emotional disconnect featuring a profound absence of empathy. Non treatable

​Type 2 Alexithymia: Characterised by experiencing all physical responses, but with a detached point of logical knowing why those sensations are occurring. Treatable.

​Type 3 Alexithymia: Operates parallel to Type 1 as a broken emotional equation, but maintains an active empathy connection. Non treatable

No feeling for anyone, no emotions.

I’m not 100% sure yet. So I wanted to come on here and ask

I certainly do struggle to speak my emotions often. I can identify some of the emotions I’m feeling, like sad, or happiness. But a lot of the other times I have no clue why it is or why I’m acting a certain way

The best example I think I could provide after thinking for a bit is. I’m commonly laid on my bed, I think frustrated, sad, or anxious. I think I’m swapping between them or I can’t get an exact feel on which one. But I just lay there for hours on end thinking of different scenarios and actions to take within my life.

I’ve never tried really including my feeling whenever I’m in that thinking state, as I usually just ignore how I’m feeling since I don’t really understand what I’m specifically feeling nor does it feel like I have any time to do anything about it.

This has kind of turned into a super rant, but I just want some opinions.

This is half venting and half genuinely wanting to hear from others…. I am a late diagnosed autistic female who has always struggled with emotional processing, interoception, emotional recognition/understanding.
I am smart, emotionally intelligent, and hyper empathetic. I also have CPTSD from being undiagnosed but raised a diagnosed younger brother that was severely affected by autism (so of course no one noticed the high functioning female struggling obviously). My CPTSD consists highly of parentification, emotional neglect, and being hyperempathetic; plus the pre-diagnosis confusion of why I never fit in the right way.
I have been with my partner for over 4 years and the whole time I’ve had this “feeling” like I needed to run away from my perfect life. It got so bad that I ended up gaining 40lbs, needing TMS, and eventually fleeing to another state without being able to explain any of my internal turmoil and confusion to him.

Anyway… I was wondering if anyone with autism, alexithymia, and delayed processing is able to maintain a functional traditional relationship? I love my partner but after regulating my nervous system and processing the last 4+ years, I realized that without a place that’s completely mine, I never really shut off or decompressed or understood any of my emotions. It felt like being lost and needing a compass that only shows you north a week after you need it.
I don’t want to lose my relationship but I’m so sensitive to outside variables and the inability to identify things in real time that I’m unsure if I can ever healthily cohabitate again. What I WANT is to have my own little place and live apart together but that doesn’t seem to be an option with my partner who’s already been to hell and back with and for me.

It all started when my girlfriend of three years broke up with me. I came to realisation that I’ve always felt like I didn’t feel my emotions to the full extent. I’ve always felt like I ways looking at them through a wall or from above like my consciousness was above them. Like my emotions didn’t actually affect me. I think that brake up might have changed something in me. I’ve never felt this kind of emotion and I didn’t even think I could even feel something like that. I feel like I understand emotions more and I’m more capable of actually sitting with them. Another thing is I randomly feel sad, empty or frustrated and I can’t explain why. No matter how I look at them I can’t explain how I feel this way.

I don't really feel emotions in general, I feel "neutral" most of the time. This includes feeling no empathy, no remorse etc. Could this be simply alexithymia (I recently got an Asperger (ASD) diagnosis) or is feeling no empathy, remorse... "something more" than that? I'm a bit worried e.g. a therapist could think I have antisocial personality disorder (because it's more stigmatized than autism spectrum disorder). During the diagnostic interview, they reported I have an "empathy deficit", which is even larger in reality. I didn't answer the questions about empathy completely honestly, because I didn't want to look like a "monster" 😅

Do you think this is part of alexithymia or could it be ASPD?