r/Alexithymia

Hi everyone. I just learned the word alexithymia to explain my feelings, or lack thereof, and want to learn more about myself.

Anyway, I’ve always had a weird relationship with music and get uncomfortable when people ask me what music I like. It’s so hard to answer. In practice, I might sometimes listen to the radio because I don’t like to choose the music I listen to. Choosing feels like asking myself ‘what do I want to feel through this music and what music will make me feel that way?’ which are obviously not questions I can easily answer.

Some songs vibe with me more than others, but I can’t say why. I also can’t seem to remember artists, song titles and lyrics without a lot of effort. I’m wondering if I should make the effort to connect more with my feelings.

Thoughts?

Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I drink alcohol and get even thrice as bad. But that's when I can actually feel and cry. It feels horrible and miserable and I want it to stop and I'm partly suffering but when I get sober for whatever the reason I start missing that feeling.

I never drank before just started it. Anyone experiences anything similar?

so I didn’t start dating till 21, and even then it wasn’t serious. I told them I just wanted to be friends and have fun, non sexual, outdoor recreation. I didn’t start thinking about seriously dating till I was 26 and that’s when my boyfriend showed up. If he hadn't stuck around I wouldn’t have given him a second thought. I don’t know if I even like him because I don’t feel anything but I do things. I behave different, I smile, laugh, call him all the time, cuddle, kiss and touch him. None of these things are like me at all.

there are things I love about him, his humor, his interest in dogs, reptile, and insect, lot of small things. but we practically compromise on everything our dreams and hobbie. I want to stay in the US, live in a trailer and work for the NPS. He wants to have his own company and travel the world. We both like the outdoors and survival though. He likes collecting, I think its just too much stuff. He likes gaming, I would prefer anything outside better. we don’t like the same movies or music, but we talk about sharing the same childhood things. Sometimes it feels like the only thing we do together is sex stuff. I’m a morning person and like to get up and move, he‘s a night owl and likes to move slow. I can’t seem to get him out on the trail before noon.

I keep thinking that I really should break up with him, but when ever I’m around him or talking to him I can’t. Even though I can’t feel I must really like him I think. We are long distance and I think about him all the time and miss him. I’ve never been this way about anyone. I don’t get home sick or miss people. I spent one day with my dad, my favorite person, best bud, and was missing my boyfriend the whole time. I know needing to compromise is a given in a relationship and I believe a relationship is a choice, there is no one person. He is my first boyfriend and we tried to date others because of the conflicts of lifestyle but we both don’t find anyone else worthwhile. I don’t know what makes a good relationship or a bad one?

I was diagnosed with autism and alexithymia just over a year ago. It was always suspected, but now we know.

My partner and I are currently going through a rough patch, mainly stemming from my inability to offer the emotional support she needs and my poor skills in noticing when she needs emotional support.

Since learning I have alexithymia, I’ve been seeing a new therapist, reading lots and doing a lot of work to develop better emotional awareness and language. I even stopped taking my SSRIs, with the support of my healthcare practitioners, so I could feel things better without being dulled. It’s full on, I’m quite overwhelmed. I feel I’m making progress but right now I’m worried it won’t be enough or that it’ll take too long.

I’m in need of some reassurance that things can work out. I’d love to hear your success stories of managing relationships with alexithymia, or as the partner of someone with it.

A friend of mine lost a relative recently and I don’t know how to help them. I don’t really grieve people when they die, I just kind of move on when someone dies, as awful as that sounds. I just feel numb all the time, and I can never name how I feel beyond “numb”, so I just shrug off and feel numb whenever someone around me dies and move on with my life. After all, death is a part of life and there is nothing you can do to reverse the process. No amount of crying or pleading will ever bring a dead person back to life. But, in turn, that means I don’t know how to help people (like my friend) with their grief. Because I don’t understand finding losing a relative upsetting beyond a conceptual level, and beyond understanding that it is how you’re “supposed” to feel.

All I feel I can give is generic condolences and hoping that the things I am saying are the “right” things to say, despite me believing none of it and not truly understanding why they are so upset. I feel like I am lying to them, and that my inability to understand grief makes me some kind of monster. Please tell me I am not the only one here who struggles with this kind of situation, I feel so abnormal for all of this.

I'm in therapy and making progress and beginning to feel things.

I saw a musical the other day and cried at least 5 times during it!? A completely new experience for me.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there's anyone here who has overcome Alexithymia and has any advice to someone who is afraid of all these feelings I'm suddenly having and the inability to turn them off.

Logically I know this is obviously for the better and I will probably get used to it in time but I kind of want it to stop.

Any thoughts or advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated. I will prob cry at all replies

Hi, was wondering how many of you have this and are autistic? Anybody not autistic?

Do any of your children have it or still too young for you to know?

Or be able to describe what you are feeling? Because I don't. I've noticed a lot of talk around alexithymia tend to be how to better get in touch and describe emotions. I wouldn't say this is the easiest things to deal with but I've seen emotional people and no thank you. I'm also entering menopause and the emotions coming with it are not great

I was highly alexithymic for most of my life. Like many people who struggle to identify their emotions, I assumed I was on the autism spectrum. Because I could generally get by in the world, I never bothered trying to get an official diagnosis.

That all changed after I underwent surgery to remove my giant tonsils and a damaged uvula (the dangly thing in the back of the throat). They were causing extremely severe sleep apnea, completely wrecking my sleep quality.

Once I recovered from the surgery, everything began to shift. Specifically, I began to shift.

I discovered that I actually possess emotional empathy, not just cognitive empathy. Previously, I could only intellectually put myself in someone else's shoes to approximate what they must be feeling. Now, I can look at a person and—without any external context—literally feel a reflection of their emotions inside myself.

The emotional recovery process was an absolute roller coaster. It felt like my old identity was dying. The self I used to describe as functional and logical completely fell away. I didn’t understand why I was morphing into a completely different person, and neither did the people around me (though my partner at the time was thrilled that I was finally capable of deep emotional connection).

For about 18 months, I started drinking, and I would sit alone and cry every single night. I was processing a lifetime of suppressed loss that I previously never had access to. Strangely, I had a big, stupid grin on my face through the tears because I was just so profoundly grateful to finally feel sad for the things I had missed and lost.

As my awareness grew, I started weeding out the bad actors in my life. I realized I had accumulated a disproportionately large number of them. I suspect many people here with alexithymia might recognize this pattern. We are unusually easy prey for manipulative people. When you can't feel your own emotions, it is incredibly easy for others to gaslight you. There is already so much day-to-day confusion in your emotional space that when a "friend" claims you just don't understand, you simply believe them.

I won't write a novel here, but I wanted to share this because I realize I’m in a unique position. Having lived on both sides of the river, I now understand what it's like to be completely cut off from emotions, and what it's like to suddenly feel everything.

If you are curious about the transition, the surgery, or anything else, please ask away!

My wife and I have been talking to a therapist about working on our connection. We've been together for a long time and we really love each other, but somewhere in the hustle and bustle of busy careers and kids we lost that person to person connection.

The therapist very early on picked up that I don't process "feelings" in a way that most people do. My own therapist had already identified my alexithymia - I can describe my emotions and feelings in great detail with vibrant metaphors, but I cannot feel them in my body. I get that "pit in stomach" feeling with stress, but that's it.

When I shared this with her, she immediately locked on to, "Well you're clearly depressed." I told her no - I'm not - I dealt with depression a long time ago and what I experience today is very different. I shared that my son is on the ASD spectrum, that I very likely am as well, and that this is a very common condition with ASD. She also said she was not aware of Alexithymia, which was a major red flag for me - but hey, who we use is not really my call. She (kind of) apologized for jumping to a conclusion, but it seemed very ... insincere.

Now, whenever my "lack of feeling" comes up (which is somehow every single time), she attributes it to some locked-away traumas and/or depression. She has tried to talk me into SSRIs, I keep telling her I am not depressed but she doesn't seem to accept it.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? How did you handle it? Personally, I don't see why it's a problem that I can describe my thoughts and emotions in great detail rather than "feel" them.

Hello, Reddit!

So, let's start with this. I need to learn as much as possible about how to behave with people with this disorder (?) (in my case, with my boyfriend). I need advice from the same people as me.

It's not that it's difficult for me to communicate with him, I just feel... that he doesn't care about me, even though I read about it, but I need to know in detail how to communicate with such people.

I need advice, reminders. But not at the level of "don't ask him for his feelings" because I already know that. How can I make him feel comfortable?

I don’t know what to do in this situation, because I didn’t know this, he always laughed with me, consoled me, but at some point he... became a robot?

He didn't realize that he had alexithymia ; it was supported by specialists. Just give me some advice on how I can make his life better.

Thank you all in advance! Upd 1: At 7 pm he will return home, I will add news. Last update : Guys, thank you for your help and advice. I am sincerely grateful to all of you . but I have to tell you some sad news, at least for me. He left me. Without swearing, without anything. He just left and said that he didn’t want to hurt me and lie to me.

I've found this subreddit randomly (just done the OAQ-G2 and I got 142) but it seems like the right place to ask this.

I've never realy known if most people realy feel things all the time or it's just something that it's said. Even when I was a kid I remember in class when we'd had to put a marker on the emotion we were feeling that day but there wasn't a "nothing" option or when the teacher asked us to draw our siluette and inside of it how we were feeling, if it were for me I'd do nothing did my classmates feel something or did they put what they were supposed to draw, like me.

I feel nothing all day unless there is some kind of outside stimuli and it's just momentary (appart from some momments of sadness but that's the depression) and I really can't imagine to feel all of the time

A little backstory my husband went to play the game last night and I instantly got overstimulated, I had a meltdown, it's like something in me snapped. The thing is I didn't know that was the reason I was overstimulated until my husband said I was "ok before he sat down to play the game", I thought it was because of a stupid joke my husband made. Then something in me was like yeah I think that's it. As soon as I realized all of the built up tension went away and I took a long nap. Is this an example of my alexithymia? I have level 1 autism

Hello everyone. First time posting here long time emotionless robot

It's my birthday, and every year , I practice my smiles and make sure that everyone knows I am having a good time and that I enjoy their company and that I enjoy the gifts and cake. And I do genuinely, i just have trouble expressing it unless I try

Not all the time, sometimes a genuine smile or whatever comes out of me but most of the time im just 😐

I practiced this because I don't want to React Wrong™️

Whenever I react wrong , people get the wrong idea. I don't wanna make people upset because I don't react the right way. Like "no im not upset, i just forgot to smile but i do enjoy xyz"

It does get exhausting though....

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.

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.

Looking for some support and different perspectives.
My partner has difficulties recognizing emotions. We are both in individual therapy.

Some time ago he started to explicitly ask me what I feel. This is awkward for me to explain, but I do my best when I can. E.g. I can walk him through what I feel when I’m calm, but I can’t do that when I’m for example crying. I need some space first, and then I can talk. I explained this to him.

The problem is that he pushes me to explain what I feel even when I don’t have resource for that. Then, after I share my feelings the reaction I get is “uh-huh”. No support, no validation, no action taken. Feels like I’m an object to be examined. And the worst part, few times when I was angry at him and explained that, he told me to stop being angry.

It just hurts too much, and feels like he’s not making any effort. Am I missing something? How does this feel for him?