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Other anyone know or have experience with alexathymia

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Simplifying that it's basically an inability to recognise and describe emotions, it's not a diagnosis really. So it's IME massively common.

I can read other people decently, but for myself I only have awareness of some feelz and only when they hit extremes. T says that there's a million different things playing into this. Like no idea what my body is doing ever, deny feeling anything even if I do etc etc.

Got specific questions or?
 
Simplifying that it's basically an inability to recognise and describe emotions, it's not a diagnosis really. So it's IME massively common.

I can read other people decently, but for myself I only have awareness of some feelz and only when they hit extremes. T says that there's a million different things playing into this. Like no idea what my body is doing ever, deny feeling anything even if I do etc etc.

Got specific questions or?
thanks for replying, i know its not considered a dx, instead a personality trait. what surprises me is other personality orders like borderline personality disorder are give as diagnoses. i wish there was specific treatment for it.
 
This article from 2000 (published in The Psychiatric Times), is interesting reading. It provides a few case studies that clarify how a clinician might utilize the concept of alexithymia, when considering the broader diagnosis.
thanks @joeylittle

I'm curious, did they call it a personality trait? Cos I consider it more a symptom. Like for whatever reason you've had to learn to ignore your feelings so now you're unaware you even have them.
i believe it happened to be during my trauma time, they used our emotions against us. crying got us more abuse, a frown or other expressions got us more abuse. i believe in my case my brain in order to protect me and itself, cut my emotions off.
 
At sheppard pratt I was told I have alexathymia as a result of my trauma. I could only find little on the internet.
Alexithymia is a common issue, especially with trauma and dissociation. When one spends much of their time dissociated, it makes sense that they wouldn’t be able to recognize/name emotions.

How are you doing now? I see you posted this a while back.
 
a frown or other expressions got us more abuse
thats parallel to my experience. I am not unable to recognize my emotions, but it is a big deal to me when they betray me and cause more grief and controlling emotions is a high goal in my brain. But, I sometimes water down joy to control disappointment and that just plain sucks. Being calm in a situation where the uninitiated are choking back overwhelming fear or anger has been a good thing, but maybe not as good as being empathetic to people who are just reacting normally to a bad situation. Being calm and decisive in those times has saved me a few times, and probably some of the people that saw it and followed my lead too. It aint horrible to be a bit hardened over. Numb is another matter.
 
I was unable to read the article, but I wasn't able to recognize emotions. When my T asked me what my story was I had no idea what he meant. I don't really remember a lot of the first year of therapy, but I worked hard on identifying emotions and used the thread here What are you feeling, not thinking to record my feelings for a long time.
 
I don't know if this would help, but there are charts that show where heat and coldness goes in the body because of emotions and those have been beneficial in me recognizing emotions. I used to not know at all what I was feeling.
 
Yea, I’m trying to identity my feelings now, because I’ve always had trouble with it! I just get general senses of anxiety in my chest and stomach when there are extremes that pop up but I can’t tell very well what they actually mean.
 
crying got us more abuse,

controlling emotions is a high goal in my brain.
These statements resonate with me. In my narrative timeline I made up the story that I blocked crying during the abuse because he *wanted* me to cry, so not crying was a way of taking back my power and punishing him, *even if it got us more abuse*. Which led me to believe that I provoked others to abuse me as a way to calm them down, so they could get it out of them—*because I was special enough to be able to take the abuse*—“because it didn’t affect me.”

I never thought that by stopping my crying that it would reduce the abuse. Yet I still had the same outcome of blocking my emotions. And believing that it was a special power that I had to “take it” led to blocking my emotions.

My maladaptive coping skills involve self-punishment and self-abandonment when I am triggered or symptomatic. I never heard about the term for inability to recognize emotions but I do believe I had that symptom and it has reduced significantly through recovery.
 
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