What Is Alexithymia? | The Neurocuriosity Club

Alexithymia is when you have trouble identifying, understanding, and/or expressing your emotions, and it's incredibly common amongst autistic folks and other people with neurodivergent brains.

It might not sound like a huge deal, not always knowing what you're feeling, but it can actually be really, really hard. So let's talk about it.

Want to check out Lindsay Braman's Feeling-Sensation Wheel? Here ya go:

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😊 Hi, I'm Megan Griffith, I'm an auDHD life coach for the neurocurious, meaning I love helping people who know they're neurodivergent, but aren't quite sure specifically where they fit yet.

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[Silent.St.j]

Finding out about Alexithymia has so eye opening for me. I too have always been told I’m over dramatic and I feel things so intensely but I never could put those feelings into words. So, I’d been in a state of intense feeling and overwhelm but couldn’t pinpoint why. I’m a songwriter, so It wasn’t until I would write a song would I understand what I was feeling and could begin to dissect what I was going through. I ended up writing a whole album. And funny enough I titled it Alexithymia. But it wasn’t until I finished the whole album did I realized the whole album is about autistic burnout. If you wan to have a listen you can find it on any streaming platforms Silent St. j - Alexithymia

[roxanes]

Brilliant explanation! It makes so much sense now. Thank you!

[shannonkatereadsstuff]

I have alexithymia and interoception issues. My wife gets so frustrated at me - I would love a video on interoception stuff!
I have so many issues trying to look at my feelings at a distance without becoming overwhelmed. I got a feelings wheel and even with that it's hard! I'll try this emotion sensation one and see how I go!

[elvwood]

When my wife and I were first going out, she was confused to discover I didn't know what I was feeling - for a while she assumed I just didn't want to talk about it, then we both put it down to being a "man thing". I've also described accessing my feelings as trying to squeeze them out through a pinhole. So this is very relatable! I will check out the wheel for sure. Thanks again!

[crazigrl]

I am 57 and was diagnosed with AuADHD a couple of years ago. I too have trouble explaining my emotions and how I feel. I usually go with the "eh, ok" myself.

[bhutjolokia]

I have gone weeks with this feeling or lack there of mostly days, but it's so weird to experience. Nothing seems to help but because I'm an empath when engaging with people i will pick up on their mood and feel that mood at that moment and go back to being feeling nothing. I'm also a bit more monotone during this time as well. Thanks for the information!!👻🤪🌶🤘😎♾️

[kearstinnekenerson]

I tend to answer with how I’m doing physically and my husband tends to notice I’m off emotionally before I do or even know what’s up. I spent allot of time figuring out how to describe my feelings better than how they physically make me feel.

[jenbunnyaqua]

I’m genuinely shocked there are people walking around associating and knowing an emotion to every physiological reaction they
For me, I get the exact physical reactions for everything, except anger. I do physically shut down and begin to feel sleepy if I feel angry, but that’s only because to get me that emotionally disturbed would require more effort out of me than I would be willing to provide so I’ve automated a ‘shut it down’ procedure- it wasn’t ‘organic’. Frankly, I thought this was common given how white men generally have one default: tantrums, so I thought the emotional association to our Peripheral Nervous System ‘triggers’ is something we all learn from socializing and existing!!! I truly don’t know what ‘feeling’ even is anymore. 😭

[magictoast]

I don’t know if this is alexithymia or what, but when I was a kid I had very strict ideas about what emotions were supposed to look/feel like, and if what I was dealing with didn’t fit those ideas (and they rarely did) then I thought I was fine. Like I never thought I could be stressed basically because I wasn’t a parent with multiple kids and tons of stuff on my plate, or I thought I couldn’t have had a bad day because nothing catastrophic happened (no one died and my house didn’t burn down). I realized how wrong this was in my teens and I’ve gotten way better about it, but I wonder if this was the result of not being able to identify my emotions as a child? Like maybe I was relying on outside definitions because I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling on my own?