Alexithymia - a brief introduction #autism #alexithymia #neurodiversity #autistic

[unclepoot]

My therapist just told me that I have the emotional maturity of a middle school student. I get confused about what I am feeling constantly. Unfortunately, that always seems to manifest in anger. I do not do emotions well. They absolutely have their way with me.

[dollydagger]

As a kid I always said I missed my mom, but I'd feel the feeling sitting right next to her..This is what that's called..I feel this quite often throughout the day tbh.

[CS-zbff]

Oh, I definitely have Delayed Emotional Response, which I recently learned isn't just related to PTSD (in my case, chronic, C-PTSD), but also to Autism, which I've learned I am on the spectrum, too (my son is the only one of our family of 4 who got diagnosed).

Your videos have been immensely helpful since I first found you many years ago. Thank you for your openness and sharing, because it is so helpful to many of us who are feeling our way around, mostly alone.

About 2 weeks ago, I got slammed with emotions from the previous 16 YEARS! That's way too many emotions, and they were varied, but mostly expressed as anger. I'm still working through them, but at least they've become more "even flow" instead of "surge from the dam breaking."

[prismeater]

i'm so genuinely happy to see your content again. i've been watching you for two or three years already, you marked the start of discovering my autism. your videos were the first ones i watched on the topic, and you inspired me so much!
i'm in therapy now, processing my trauma and growing into my proud, unapologetically autistic self. thank you so much for giving me the first push, without you i would never start this journey.
Oh, and by the way! Me and my partner now have a volunteer organization that helps neurodivergent people network, share stories and form a community in our country. And all of our members are neurodivergent as well!

[richardward]

I have narrowed myself down to the point that if I feel anything I suppress it, doesn’t matter what so called neurotypical “emotion” it’s supposed to be.
🎏

[Bigrips]

I need to talk to someone. I thought I was crazy for feeling this way

[rainbowconnected]

I've had very similar experiences of having delayed emotional responses. Usually it's in situations where I don't feel safe and then hours or days later, when my nervous system returns to baseline, I can actually feel the feeling and it can be confusing and unsettling. For me, as a child, expressing emotions other than "positive" ones was heavily punished. My parents even used drugs on me to try to shut down my "negative" emotions. I can't help but think that made it much harder for me to believe it is safe to feel or even notice a "negative" emotion, especially anger, disgust or hurt. Our society certainly doesn't encourage these types of feelings either, particularly women expressing anger or that they don't feel safe. I see so many people who have shut their feelings down, but no one would call that "alexithymia". It's just kind of our culture, sadly.

I wonder if there is something about the way neurodiverse folks experience, process and express emotions that causes them to be even more deeply harmed and repressed by the way our society approaches experiencing and expressing emotions? And/or maybe the type of trauma they're likely to experience because of those differences leads to a particular trauma response that presents along the lines of alexithymia?

Given how frequently neurodiverse folk experience trauma, I wish I could find more people talking about which experiences are more the result of trauma vs. the neurodivergence itself. Because the trauma does need to be attended to and healed. The neurodivergence doesn't need "fixed", just appreciated, understood and supported.

[garthliebhaber]

Agony, thank you for making your posts - do you know where I can get the emotions graphic from? Thx!