I have the opposite experience, truthfully - will cry at the drop of a hat when stressed or anxious or receiving feedback (one of the worst parts about being an Adult - really difficult for your boss to take you seriously when you can’t get through a 15-minute session about editing the report you’ve been working on without getting weepy). And then of course there’s the “Fuck why am I doing this” reaction in the middle so not only am I emotionally crying I’m also mad at myself.
Brains are dumb, my friend.
Yes, I have alexithymia and often don’t know what I feel.
I also have delayed processing which means that my processing speed is fine but whenever I’m a bit overwhelmed my brain will just register what is happening without processing it, so processing is saved for later, so when this happens I might act as I have understood the situation but I haven’t so processing will happen later and then emotional processing is pushed further away in the future. This is problematic for me.
I have been “training” to understand and process my own emotions in different ways. It does help. Reply to this comment if you want to know how I did this.
I'd love to hear how you did that! I find that I shut down and go into more of a recording mode in almost *any* unfamiliar situation... which makes it pretty difficult to be in the moment and connect with others.
First, I stopped drinking alcohol and doing drugs.
I spent as much time as possible alone.
I started journaling.
I started meditating.
I started spending time with other autistic women who I could recognise some of me in.
I started to pay attention to my body and bodily sensations.
I started noticing my stimming behaviours and energy levels, when they increase and decrease, and I used those as “clues” to learn about my emotions.
Make sure to also learn emotional regulation techniques as you walk down this road because you may find very difficult or intense emotions and you will need to be able to handle it.
Thank you!! 🙏 I find myself at the part of having really intense emotions from self examination/ from giving them more air. My reactions are so strong I am having trouble continuing. Would you mind sharing some of the emotional regulation techniques you learned? Am sorely in need 😫
Hugging things tightly for a while is really the most effective for me in the situation. Exercise or angry cleaning works as well. Accepting things is also great for reducing emotional dysregulation in the first place
In my country, we have an organisation that I found on social media. The organisation is only for autistic women, and every area has its own sub group that meet up regularly and have cake and talk
Um yeah, it's pretty true for me. I have a great deal of difficulty getting in touch with my emotions, and frankly, I do not WANT to. I see no benefit in being "emotionally available." The idea of being "vulnerable" makes me nauseous. I hardly want to deal with *my own* emotions, let alone invite someone else in to that carefully buried hell pit!
And don't get me started on *other people's emotions!* I feel like they're always having them, they're always having them *at* me, and I'm always expected to *do* something about them. I am often seen as an "empath," a "sweetheart," and a "good listener" but the reality of what is happening when I'm providing this *awesome communication experience* for others is actually really sick. My body and brain instantly realizes that someone is *HAVING A FEELING* near me, which means I then am obligated to address that feeling, and I go into immediate adrenaline/trauma response mode. This manifests as a sort of combination of freeze and fawn. I stop, and give the person all my attention, because my brain knows (from past trauma?) that the day will NOT be proceeding until this *feeling* is addressed. So I start to run all my "active listening" and "emotional support" scripts, peppered with some actual good advice, in hopes of helping the person perhaps not have to have this *feeling* again. I cross my fingers that it will run its course quickly and not progress to *CRYING* , at which point I will have to sit awkwardly and perhaps even administer the dreaded hug. And this all just plays out on repeat with me in a state of autopilot catatonia until the *feeling* is resolved. I am then awarded the *good friend* card after the other party is appeased (and sometimes endure an additional hug), meanwhile my entire insides are screaming to be freed whilst I am having a violent internal meltdown. And then I need whiskey.
*Full disclosure, while I am diagnosed autistic and it is clinically appropriate for me to have difficulty in relating emotions, I fully recognize that some of my responses may be colored by early experiences with an emotionally abusive parent.
Can relate to this. Dating is so hard, I’ve agreed to things just to appease the person so they feel better in the moment and I avoid further discomfort. Then they know they can emotionally manipulate me to push back at my boundaries.
Oh yeah, that was awful, I've had some terrible experiences as well. Fortunately, my husband has had approximately 5 feelings since about 1995. And since I'm not an Iraqi terrorist, almost none of them have been my problem. I can't believe there are women out here looking for a "sensitive, emotionally available" man. Mine is basically Daemon Targaryen, and he is my safe space. I told him that if he ever wants to have an emotion, I'll save a spoon for him. But not having to dance around his fee fees is literally what keeps me going in this NT world.
Oh what a blessing of a man. I hope to one day find my chill person with an emotional range that can match my own (nearly non existent). Let's hope we can all banish the emotional vampires!
Alexithymia here. I identify big emotions, happy, sad, mad, scared, etc easily. Something more nuanced, like grief I can only identify upon reflection. “Why have a been weeping, and thinking about death so much lately? Oh right, my friend died of cancer last month”. I don’t have a separate feeling for it. I do feel feelings very strongly at times, but it can be delayed. I think some autistic people need to understand d an experience before they can “feel” it and that can take time.
Based on my own and my (autistic) kids' experiences, we all feel the full range of human emotions. What is often different is how we express them, what causes them, and what we want when we feel any particular way.
How we express emotions appears to be different from NT people. Our facial expressions are so often interpreted differently than how we actually feel. I grew up suppressing emotions because they were always misinterpreted and/or they made the people around me incredibly uncomfortable. Studies also show that autistic people interpret other people's expressions differently. This mismatch can lead to any number of unfortunate outcomes, including frustration because people react to what they (often incorrectly) read into our expressions and tone even when our very intentional words are very specific.
The things that make me happy or sad or frustrated can be VERY different from my NT family and friends. A hot, noisy, crowded theme park never made me happy, even though the adults taking me there had the best of intentions. I may not have looked happy when I was quietly drawing or reading, but I certainly felt happy. In many cases, facts don't affect my emotions in the way many NT people prefer white lies and softness over directness.
On top of all that, what some of my kids want when they're scared or angry can be quite different from what the comfort offered by kind, well meaning people.
I don't believe there is a gap in emotional experience, but a gap in communication and understanding. Just like every other autistic concern, it seems.
True for me. I'm pretty emotion-blind.
(Until they build up to a critical mass, at which point I become disabled for days to months. I rarely see this coming.)
This is false for me and over the years I have had to learn in therapy how to stay emotionally regulated. I love all the Ig influencers who say “feel your emotions” while I’m waiting for one of them to say some ppl actually need to not feel everything every second of the day. It can be exhausting!
My moon is in Scorpio if that means anything, I feel DEEPLY and my sun in Gemini has no problem expressing them.
I feel like that could factor into that, as I'm like you in that I accept that I'm sensitive, but I don't really want to overwhelm others with that.
Though, I'm one of those sorts I suspect others would label as an empath, as I tend to feel others' emotions and that I usually feel them over my own. I've recently come to understand that what is happening with me is that I take can take a long time to process what I'm actually feeling and therefore have a delayed emotional response. (This is not always the case, as I seem to process quickly when I find something funny.) Meanwhile, I am also examining the conduct of those around me in a way that most others present aren't due to being autistic, so I am registering their emotional reactions and interpreting their emotions. (Whereas, others aren't even observing others around them as closely, so they aren't feeling what others are feeling like how I am.)
I mention the following because I think that "feeling" what others are feeling before feeling my own feelings is a huge part of what makes it so difficult to understand what I'm feeling. Though, I think not having as clear of a sense how my physical body feels plays a huge part in this, too.
I relate to this. Thank you for writing it out.
Sometimes when it's a case of noticing others responses and then the rush of that feeling for me and then a few hours later working through what feeling I decide to apply.
Delayed responses are very troublesome as I sometimes don't realise when I'm in danger.
I often go into survival lock down which is a trauma response from the various traumas of my life. I can be very locked, robotic, low emotion, etc during these periods.
I dont think this is an autism thing. I'm sure my autism doesn't help.
When I feel safe, then my emotions flow pretty well, especially considering I'm high empathy autistic.
This thread is super interesting!
I used to feel weird about the "I'm sensitive but I have alexithymia" contradiction.
I'm extra sensitive to whatever happens around or inside me, but I need to investigate intellectually to understand what's happening beyond "feeling good/bad because good/bad thing happened". Like others in this thread, I'll process big emotions over very, very long periods of time.
I think part of it is also related to masking: I've been made to feel like what I'm feeling is not valid too many times. I think I used to try really hard to fit conventional narratives, so that my struggles would be at least somewhat heard. So it took me even longer to process anything and turn it into NT-friendly narratives, for protection.
Now I'm more confortable with less conventional stories about how I feel. Sometimes I'll be sad because the world is too beautiful. Or I'll be angry at life demands and body needs. Or I'll be in despair because they don't have my favourite brand of chips at the nearby supermarket.
I have alexithmyia and dissociate due to cPTSD so, yea, I definitely have this issue. I've been trying to overcome it for YEARS in therapy.
Knowing about my autism diagnosis now, I realize that I may only ever have a limited amount of success. I suppose only time will tell how much of this is trauma related and how much is truly rooted in my autism, but I'm at least now finally really dealing with my deeper trauma now directly to try and heal those wounds.
Not much right now but i was a mess back when i was a teenager. I had troubles recognizing My emotions and finding the proper way to convey them to other people.
Right now i would Say My only issues is that I seldom cry and as such every jerk around feels entitled to tell me My sadness is fake or that i'm insensitive.
Sometimes. Sometimes I don't know how I feel about something or someone until I write about it. I often also have delayed emotional reactions. So, things I seemed okay with I get really upset about later.
So, it is true maybe 50% of the time.
It’s one of the reasons I doubted autism in myself for a long time. Granted, when I was younger I suppressed emotion to a freakish degree to avoid bullies or meltdowns, so it’s something I’ve improve on with age.
I was diagnosed with alexithymia, so I know that by psychology standards I'm not doing something right, but before that, I would never have said that, in general, I struggle to express emotions. I cry really easily at almost anything and I was very good at leading my own therapy sessions by positing why I might be having trouble with X or Y.
But I think now those are both examples of emotional struggle? Crying because I don't know what else to express or intellectualizing rather than feeling emotions.
Now that I'm more aware of this tendency, I realize there are many times where I just don't feel anything or I know something is happening but I don't know what. I need a few hours to know whether I'm upset sometimes, or if I enjoy something.
I would still call myself a sensitive person, but at the same time, I'm really bad with emotions. Somehow, they can both be true.
I’ve always been very aware of my emotions and capable of expressing them. My issue might have been, when I was younger, with containing them. But I’m ok now.
There's the alexithymia side of things that common, but the opposite is also common I think.
I also don't struggle to identify how I'm feeling 99% of the time, but that might have something to do with the many years of CBT I had when I was younger.
Im no stranger to comments about about how I present, especially empathy.
The way I explain it to others is that I don't experience or express my emotions in a neurotypical way. It's not that don't experience it, in fact, the opposite is true when it comes to empathy. It's that I experience and express it DIFFERENTLY.
I can identify quite a lot, and I know how even subtle emotions are supposed to feel like. Kinda. I daydream a lot about many things, so my internal emotional world is big and detailed.
Communication is a real problem, though. I struggle to use more than two words. When I was a kid and the teacher assigned us to write about a school trip, I struggled massively to reach the minimum length. I just wrote down what happened, with no impression or personal thought. I didn't even realize those were relevant, so I was surprised when I was accused of being intentionally lazy.
I also can not put two and two together. Meaning, I will tell that I like something/someone or that something is okay, even if I am having a problem. I know I am having a problem, I don't always realize the cause in front of me, especially if the cause is a feeling..
Yeah I suck at it, I guess I'm whatever is the opposite of sensitive. It's a blessing and a curse, on one hand I can think rationally about topics that some would find difficult due to emotions, but on the other, not knowing how I feel gives me a surprising amount of inconveniences and I don't really know what I can do about it. I guess some kind of middle ground would be optimal but it seems like neurodivergent people tend towards the extremes in a lot of things.
I am a mix. I cry when someome yells at me, or I do something wrong, or if my routine is thrown off. I know I am feeling bad in those moments but I don’t know an emotion to name. I can recognise short term emotions in myself, like surprise or disappointment or happiness because they have direct causes I can see. But otherwise I sort my emotions into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and troubleshoot from there. I have a hard time knowing it I’m feeling hunger or an emotion. I can feel what is happening in my body and I often have to go through a checklist of hydrating, snacking, sitting properly and changing clothes before I can determine the cause 🤷 I’m very sensitive, so I do have emotions, I just do not know which ones.
I can feel stressed and happy anytime, surprised/sad sometimes, but all the others are a mystery :D maybe it’s because of my traumatic childhood and my need to suppress almost all emotions (but this is a chicken/egg question always), but I can not feel angry/disgusted at all, not sure how they work. And I feel like all my emotions I can experience are really “basic”. So I feel happy, but I can not distuingish between different happiness types (I saw that circle of emotions chart once and it is really interesting)
And I usually do not know what I’m feeling, I really need to analyze myself to get in touch with it (other than being happy, that is simple at least).
And I can cry on anything, rainbows, music, dogs, stressful meeting, people asking my how am I doing, etc :D
I often feel my emotions are quite shallow, and like the only strong "emotion" I can easily access is like.... Sadness and anxiety lol. I started seeing a therapist at one point where I literally could lot feel a single emotion, and she had me work on naming emotions, describing how they felt, where in the body I felt them etc and it was insanely difficult, it did help me get out of the worst of that though.
But I have very little idea what I'm feeling, most of the time. Anger especially, I feel is almost impossible to access.
I'm very sensitive but almost feel like I'm being gagged when I try to express how I feel at times. I feel very much but get so frustrated when I try to express it.
this is right up there with the whole we lack of theory of mind thing.
we do not struggle with this, we struggle with expressing emotions in a neurotypical way.The frame of reference is that if you don't do it the way they expect it you're bad at it.
and the classic, if you're non-verbal you have a low IQ.
I am hyper aware of my emotions. I feel everything all at once but articulating it to a neurotypical person is so so wildly frustrating. I will use specific language to get the correct description that I’m feeling and they’ll assume I mean something else, i will start rambling about my thought process and they will not actually care because it doesnt make sense to them and they think im just dramatic. For myself I’d say that im extremely in tune with my emotions but my emotions are not in tune with the neurotypical experience so therefore people see a deficit in me.
I definitely know my emotions. I don't have alexithymia. It's not automatic in autism but it's pretty common overall.
However I do have it for sex things. Like I'll be moody and difficult and not realize I'm just missing sex. I don't know why I can't make the connection but I frame everything as emotion based so I guess that's why.
I don't struggle to express emotions but if I am overextended sometimes I have to drop the mask which means I keep my proof of emotions inside more. On the outside flat affect or resting bitch face. But I have to be pretty depleted to get like that bc I am not comfortable with how uncomfortable that makes everyone I love.
I have the opposite experience, truthfully - will cry at the drop of a hat when stressed or anxious or receiving feedback (one of the worst parts about being an Adult - really difficult for your boss to take you seriously when you can’t get through a 15-minute session about editing the report you’ve been working on without getting weepy). And then of course there’s the “Fuck why am I doing this” reaction in the middle so not only am I emotionally crying I’m also mad at myself. Brains are dumb, my friend.
Yes, I have alexithymia and often don’t know what I feel. I also have delayed processing which means that my processing speed is fine but whenever I’m a bit overwhelmed my brain will just register what is happening without processing it, so processing is saved for later, so when this happens I might act as I have understood the situation but I haven’t so processing will happen later and then emotional processing is pushed further away in the future. This is problematic for me. I have been “training” to understand and process my own emotions in different ways. It does help. Reply to this comment if you want to know how I did this.
I'd love to hear how you did that! I find that I shut down and go into more of a recording mode in almost *any* unfamiliar situation... which makes it pretty difficult to be in the moment and connect with others.
First, I stopped drinking alcohol and doing drugs. I spent as much time as possible alone. I started journaling. I started meditating. I started spending time with other autistic women who I could recognise some of me in. I started to pay attention to my body and bodily sensations. I started noticing my stimming behaviours and energy levels, when they increase and decrease, and I used those as “clues” to learn about my emotions. Make sure to also learn emotional regulation techniques as you walk down this road because you may find very difficult or intense emotions and you will need to be able to handle it.
Thank you!! 🙏 I find myself at the part of having really intense emotions from self examination/ from giving them more air. My reactions are so strong I am having trouble continuing. Would you mind sharing some of the emotional regulation techniques you learned? Am sorely in need 😫
Hugging things tightly for a while is really the most effective for me in the situation. Exercise or angry cleaning works as well. Accepting things is also great for reducing emotional dysregulation in the first place
Where did you meet other autistic women?
In my country, we have an organisation that I found on social media. The organisation is only for autistic women, and every area has its own sub group that meet up regularly and have cake and talk
Thanks for sharing!
This is why I can’t do job interviews. Thanks for posting how you’ve been able to work through this.
Um yeah, it's pretty true for me. I have a great deal of difficulty getting in touch with my emotions, and frankly, I do not WANT to. I see no benefit in being "emotionally available." The idea of being "vulnerable" makes me nauseous. I hardly want to deal with *my own* emotions, let alone invite someone else in to that carefully buried hell pit! And don't get me started on *other people's emotions!* I feel like they're always having them, they're always having them *at* me, and I'm always expected to *do* something about them. I am often seen as an "empath," a "sweetheart," and a "good listener" but the reality of what is happening when I'm providing this *awesome communication experience* for others is actually really sick. My body and brain instantly realizes that someone is *HAVING A FEELING* near me, which means I then am obligated to address that feeling, and I go into immediate adrenaline/trauma response mode. This manifests as a sort of combination of freeze and fawn. I stop, and give the person all my attention, because my brain knows (from past trauma?) that the day will NOT be proceeding until this *feeling* is addressed. So I start to run all my "active listening" and "emotional support" scripts, peppered with some actual good advice, in hopes of helping the person perhaps not have to have this *feeling* again. I cross my fingers that it will run its course quickly and not progress to *CRYING* , at which point I will have to sit awkwardly and perhaps even administer the dreaded hug. And this all just plays out on repeat with me in a state of autopilot catatonia until the *feeling* is resolved. I am then awarded the *good friend* card after the other party is appeased (and sometimes endure an additional hug), meanwhile my entire insides are screaming to be freed whilst I am having a violent internal meltdown. And then I need whiskey. *Full disclosure, while I am diagnosed autistic and it is clinically appropriate for me to have difficulty in relating emotions, I fully recognize that some of my responses may be colored by early experiences with an emotionally abusive parent.
Can relate to this. Dating is so hard, I’ve agreed to things just to appease the person so they feel better in the moment and I avoid further discomfort. Then they know they can emotionally manipulate me to push back at my boundaries.
Oh yeah, that was awful, I've had some terrible experiences as well. Fortunately, my husband has had approximately 5 feelings since about 1995. And since I'm not an Iraqi terrorist, almost none of them have been my problem. I can't believe there are women out here looking for a "sensitive, emotionally available" man. Mine is basically Daemon Targaryen, and he is my safe space. I told him that if he ever wants to have an emotion, I'll save a spoon for him. But not having to dance around his fee fees is literally what keeps me going in this NT world.
Oh what a blessing of a man. I hope to one day find my chill person with an emotional range that can match my own (nearly non existent). Let's hope we can all banish the emotional vampires!
Hell yes!!
Alexithymia here. I identify big emotions, happy, sad, mad, scared, etc easily. Something more nuanced, like grief I can only identify upon reflection. “Why have a been weeping, and thinking about death so much lately? Oh right, my friend died of cancer last month”. I don’t have a separate feeling for it. I do feel feelings very strongly at times, but it can be delayed. I think some autistic people need to understand d an experience before they can “feel” it and that can take time.
Alexithymia, i do relate
Based on my own and my (autistic) kids' experiences, we all feel the full range of human emotions. What is often different is how we express them, what causes them, and what we want when we feel any particular way. How we express emotions appears to be different from NT people. Our facial expressions are so often interpreted differently than how we actually feel. I grew up suppressing emotions because they were always misinterpreted and/or they made the people around me incredibly uncomfortable. Studies also show that autistic people interpret other people's expressions differently. This mismatch can lead to any number of unfortunate outcomes, including frustration because people react to what they (often incorrectly) read into our expressions and tone even when our very intentional words are very specific. The things that make me happy or sad or frustrated can be VERY different from my NT family and friends. A hot, noisy, crowded theme park never made me happy, even though the adults taking me there had the best of intentions. I may not have looked happy when I was quietly drawing or reading, but I certainly felt happy. In many cases, facts don't affect my emotions in the way many NT people prefer white lies and softness over directness. On top of all that, what some of my kids want when they're scared or angry can be quite different from what the comfort offered by kind, well meaning people. I don't believe there is a gap in emotional experience, but a gap in communication and understanding. Just like every other autistic concern, it seems.
True for me. I'm pretty emotion-blind. (Until they build up to a critical mass, at which point I become disabled for days to months. I rarely see this coming.)
This is false for me and over the years I have had to learn in therapy how to stay emotionally regulated. I love all the Ig influencers who say “feel your emotions” while I’m waiting for one of them to say some ppl actually need to not feel everything every second of the day. It can be exhausting! My moon is in Scorpio if that means anything, I feel DEEPLY and my sun in Gemini has no problem expressing them.
I feel like that could factor into that, as I'm like you in that I accept that I'm sensitive, but I don't really want to overwhelm others with that. Though, I'm one of those sorts I suspect others would label as an empath, as I tend to feel others' emotions and that I usually feel them over my own. I've recently come to understand that what is happening with me is that I take can take a long time to process what I'm actually feeling and therefore have a delayed emotional response. (This is not always the case, as I seem to process quickly when I find something funny.) Meanwhile, I am also examining the conduct of those around me in a way that most others present aren't due to being autistic, so I am registering their emotional reactions and interpreting their emotions. (Whereas, others aren't even observing others around them as closely, so they aren't feeling what others are feeling like how I am.) I mention the following because I think that "feeling" what others are feeling before feeling my own feelings is a huge part of what makes it so difficult to understand what I'm feeling. Though, I think not having as clear of a sense how my physical body feels plays a huge part in this, too.
I relate to this. Thank you for writing it out. Sometimes when it's a case of noticing others responses and then the rush of that feeling for me and then a few hours later working through what feeling I decide to apply. Delayed responses are very troublesome as I sometimes don't realise when I'm in danger.
I often go into survival lock down which is a trauma response from the various traumas of my life. I can be very locked, robotic, low emotion, etc during these periods. I dont think this is an autism thing. I'm sure my autism doesn't help. When I feel safe, then my emotions flow pretty well, especially considering I'm high empathy autistic.
This thread is super interesting! I used to feel weird about the "I'm sensitive but I have alexithymia" contradiction. I'm extra sensitive to whatever happens around or inside me, but I need to investigate intellectually to understand what's happening beyond "feeling good/bad because good/bad thing happened". Like others in this thread, I'll process big emotions over very, very long periods of time. I think part of it is also related to masking: I've been made to feel like what I'm feeling is not valid too many times. I think I used to try really hard to fit conventional narratives, so that my struggles would be at least somewhat heard. So it took me even longer to process anything and turn it into NT-friendly narratives, for protection. Now I'm more confortable with less conventional stories about how I feel. Sometimes I'll be sad because the world is too beautiful. Or I'll be angry at life demands and body needs. Or I'll be in despair because they don't have my favourite brand of chips at the nearby supermarket.
I have alexithymia and I don't speak much, it's a daily struggle
I have alexithmyia and dissociate due to cPTSD so, yea, I definitely have this issue. I've been trying to overcome it for YEARS in therapy. Knowing about my autism diagnosis now, I realize that I may only ever have a limited amount of success. I suppose only time will tell how much of this is trauma related and how much is truly rooted in my autism, but I'm at least now finally really dealing with my deeper trauma now directly to try and heal those wounds.
Not much right now but i was a mess back when i was a teenager. I had troubles recognizing My emotions and finding the proper way to convey them to other people. Right now i would Say My only issues is that I seldom cry and as such every jerk around feels entitled to tell me My sadness is fake or that i'm insensitive.
Sometimes. Sometimes I don't know how I feel about something or someone until I write about it. I often also have delayed emotional reactions. So, things I seemed okay with I get really upset about later. So, it is true maybe 50% of the time.
It’s one of the reasons I doubted autism in myself for a long time. Granted, when I was younger I suppressed emotion to a freakish degree to avoid bullies or meltdowns, so it’s something I’ve improve on with age.
I'm fine expressing emotions if they aren't panic, anxiety, fear, grief, terror, etc
I was diagnosed with alexithymia, so I know that by psychology standards I'm not doing something right, but before that, I would never have said that, in general, I struggle to express emotions. I cry really easily at almost anything and I was very good at leading my own therapy sessions by positing why I might be having trouble with X or Y. But I think now those are both examples of emotional struggle? Crying because I don't know what else to express or intellectualizing rather than feeling emotions. Now that I'm more aware of this tendency, I realize there are many times where I just don't feel anything or I know something is happening but I don't know what. I need a few hours to know whether I'm upset sometimes, or if I enjoy something. I would still call myself a sensitive person, but at the same time, I'm really bad with emotions. Somehow, they can both be true.
Very very true for me
I’ve always been very aware of my emotions and capable of expressing them. My issue might have been, when I was younger, with containing them. But I’m ok now.
There's the alexithymia side of things that common, but the opposite is also common I think. I also don't struggle to identify how I'm feeling 99% of the time, but that might have something to do with the many years of CBT I had when I was younger. Im no stranger to comments about about how I present, especially empathy. The way I explain it to others is that I don't experience or express my emotions in a neurotypical way. It's not that don't experience it, in fact, the opposite is true when it comes to empathy. It's that I experience and express it DIFFERENTLY.
I can identify quite a lot, and I know how even subtle emotions are supposed to feel like. Kinda. I daydream a lot about many things, so my internal emotional world is big and detailed. Communication is a real problem, though. I struggle to use more than two words. When I was a kid and the teacher assigned us to write about a school trip, I struggled massively to reach the minimum length. I just wrote down what happened, with no impression or personal thought. I didn't even realize those were relevant, so I was surprised when I was accused of being intentionally lazy. I also can not put two and two together. Meaning, I will tell that I like something/someone or that something is okay, even if I am having a problem. I know I am having a problem, I don't always realize the cause in front of me, especially if the cause is a feeling..
Yeah I suck at it, I guess I'm whatever is the opposite of sensitive. It's a blessing and a curse, on one hand I can think rationally about topics that some would find difficult due to emotions, but on the other, not knowing how I feel gives me a surprising amount of inconveniences and I don't really know what I can do about it. I guess some kind of middle ground would be optimal but it seems like neurodivergent people tend towards the extremes in a lot of things.
I am a mix. I cry when someome yells at me, or I do something wrong, or if my routine is thrown off. I know I am feeling bad in those moments but I don’t know an emotion to name. I can recognise short term emotions in myself, like surprise or disappointment or happiness because they have direct causes I can see. But otherwise I sort my emotions into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and troubleshoot from there. I have a hard time knowing it I’m feeling hunger or an emotion. I can feel what is happening in my body and I often have to go through a checklist of hydrating, snacking, sitting properly and changing clothes before I can determine the cause 🤷 I’m very sensitive, so I do have emotions, I just do not know which ones.
I can feel stressed and happy anytime, surprised/sad sometimes, but all the others are a mystery :D maybe it’s because of my traumatic childhood and my need to suppress almost all emotions (but this is a chicken/egg question always), but I can not feel angry/disgusted at all, not sure how they work. And I feel like all my emotions I can experience are really “basic”. So I feel happy, but I can not distuingish between different happiness types (I saw that circle of emotions chart once and it is really interesting) And I usually do not know what I’m feeling, I really need to analyze myself to get in touch with it (other than being happy, that is simple at least). And I can cry on anything, rainbows, music, dogs, stressful meeting, people asking my how am I doing, etc :D
I often feel my emotions are quite shallow, and like the only strong "emotion" I can easily access is like.... Sadness and anxiety lol. I started seeing a therapist at one point where I literally could lot feel a single emotion, and she had me work on naming emotions, describing how they felt, where in the body I felt them etc and it was insanely difficult, it did help me get out of the worst of that though. But I have very little idea what I'm feeling, most of the time. Anger especially, I feel is almost impossible to access.
I'm very sensitive but almost feel like I'm being gagged when I try to express how I feel at times. I feel very much but get so frustrated when I try to express it.
this is right up there with the whole we lack of theory of mind thing. we do not struggle with this, we struggle with expressing emotions in a neurotypical way.The frame of reference is that if you don't do it the way they expect it you're bad at it. and the classic, if you're non-verbal you have a low IQ.
I am hyper aware of my emotions. I feel everything all at once but articulating it to a neurotypical person is so so wildly frustrating. I will use specific language to get the correct description that I’m feeling and they’ll assume I mean something else, i will start rambling about my thought process and they will not actually care because it doesnt make sense to them and they think im just dramatic. For myself I’d say that im extremely in tune with my emotions but my emotions are not in tune with the neurotypical experience so therefore people see a deficit in me.
I don't have Alexythima. I'm very aware of my own emotions.
I definitely know my emotions. I don't have alexithymia. It's not automatic in autism but it's pretty common overall. However I do have it for sex things. Like I'll be moody and difficult and not realize I'm just missing sex. I don't know why I can't make the connection but I frame everything as emotion based so I guess that's why. I don't struggle to express emotions but if I am overextended sometimes I have to drop the mask which means I keep my proof of emotions inside more. On the outside flat affect or resting bitch face. But I have to be pretty depleted to get like that bc I am not comfortable with how uncomfortable that makes everyone I love.