
ALEXITHYMIA – WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU FEEL
WHAT ALEXITHYMIA IS
“How does that make you feel?”
If you don’t have alexithymia you would likely answer with an adjective describing your current emotion. Guilty. Sentimental. Anxious. Helpless. Eager. Caring. Perplexed. There are so many. But somehow you would know exactly which one is the right one. Because you would know which emotion you are feeling.
If you do have alexithymia you would likely answer by describing your physical state instead. Tired. My muscles are tense. Nauseated. My heart is beating so fast. I’m sweating. Or you would struggle to answer at all because you would know an emotional adjective is expected but you wouldn’t know which one to give. Because you wouldn’t know which emotion you are feeling.
That’s alexithymia.
The term comes from the Greek words “a” meaning “not”, “lexis” meaning “words”, and “thymos” meaning “heart” or “emotions” so it means “No words for emotions”.
People with alexithymia have difficulty identifying and describing their emotions. They often also have similar difficulties identifying the emotions of other people which can lead to problems with empathy.
It’s important to note that while I am both autistic and alexithymic and alexithymia is common amongst autistic people both conditions don’t necessarily have to co-occur. Not all autistic people have alexithymia. Not all alexithymics are autistic.
It’s also important to note that alexithymia can be a temporary (for example through PTSD) as well as a permanent condition.
I hope you noticed that nowhere in this description is there any mention of people with alexithymia not having emotions. That’s because they do. They just often don’t know which emotions they experience.
WHAT ALEXITHYMIA FEELS LIKE
Most of the time I’m in what I call my “neutral state”. This means I currently don’t experience any huge, clear emotions like anger or fear and the little emotions are too small, too diffuse for me to identify so it just feels neutral.
Even for emotions, I can identify and describe this usually only comes after the fact. After careful analysis of the situation and of how my body felt I sometimes can understand “Oh that’s what I felt then!”.
Feeling words mean little to me. Some I learned and try to incorporate into my vocabulary. However, I was told that certain things indicate certain emotions from other people. I don’t know most of it myself.
I mostly describe how I feel with non-emotion adjectives. Like tired, hungry, nauseated, in pain, dizzy, exhausted – anything related to how my body feels physically. Physical sensation is my way to know how I feel. I simply can‘t grasp much else let alone explain it to others.
WHY ALEXITHYMIA CAN BE A PROBLEM
I feel everything more intensely because of my autism. So I get a lot of overloads from emotions I don’t understand, as well as from physical reactions of my body.
Often emotions get stuck in my system and bother me for a very long time without me knowing what’s going on or what to do about it. Sometimes I feel physically horrible for weeks, thinking I got some kind of physical issue until I eventually realize that it‘s actually an emotional thing bothering me.
Alexithymia limits my ability to work through negative emotions and letting them go. It also limits my ability to experience positive emotions and holding on to them. I am fairly certain this makes all things involving emotions like having healthy self-esteem, building relationships, or recovering from trauma very difficult.
Emotions for me are often overloading chaos. When I get exposed to emotionally negatively charged things I suffer. The consequences can be severe and very harmful to me. Depending on how I am doing I can or cannot engage with certain things.
Being able to explain what we feel to other people is also a huge part of building relationships. Not being able to identify and describe my own emotions is one thing – not being able to do the same with other people’s emotions causes difficulty with empathy which in turn makes relationships difficult.
And finally, alexithymia puts me at a huge risk of coercion, abuse, and gaslighting. If I don’t know what I am feeling I am at great risk of being convinced by other people that I am feeling things I’m not actually feeling. So I always have to be mindful of this.
HOW TO ACCOMMODATE ALEXITHYMIA
To avoid overloads and meltdowns triggered by too many emotions that I can’t identify and work through I might do things like…
…not watching the news.
…not watching harmful videos on youtube.
…not watching certain movies.
…not engaging with harmful views I come across.
…not reading articles with emotionally charged topics.
…not checking social media.
Sometimes I use emotion words even though I don’t actually know if I am feeling that emotion because it’s not always possible or safe for me to explain that I have alexithymia and what it is.
Over the years I have learned that certain physical sensations of my body indicate that I am feeling certain emotions. And I have learned that certain situations would logically cause certain emotional reactions. So sometimes I use the emotion words I believe to be the most correct.
The biggest accommodation by other people would be to simply not ask me to explain how I feel. Especially after I explained that I can’t.
If I say “Stop.” – stop. Period.
I say “Stop” when I am on the verge of a meltdown. Due to alexithymia I often can’t sense this early enough. I can only sense it when the emotions have already become so big and overwhelming that even I can identify the urgency because I am getting a physical reaction.
Alexithymia is nobody’s fault. It also doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It makes life a lot harder, so make it a little easier by being kind and accepting.
Thank you for explaining this in a way I can identify with. I have suffered from this since childhood and only now that I’m retired have I really started to deal with this.
I am glad it is helpful for you now. I also wish I had known sooner.
Excellent! Believe my mother, Unrecovered ACOA, was on the spectrum and Alexythymic….she was not going to be able to help us develop our EQ – Emotional Quotient beyond a very peurile and primitive state….and the consequences were disastrous for family life, for the most part. Academia and the intellect were her domain. She seemed to be so surprised when she could verbalize only a very few feelings – anger, disgust….almost as if she was so pleased with herself and wanted to savor the moment. Rest assured, she acted out her feelings most of the time with violence toward her husband and children. She was a Vanderbilt-educated RN, on an academic scholarship, no less, valedictorian of her high school, but with very little emotional regulation.
I found The Emotion Code/The Body Code in my mid 40s after having experienced one too many profound losses, and not being able to process it very well. I am still a work in progress, and feel like I can now recognize some emotional states, and verbalize them, before they get lodged in a body part or organ.
I believe these unprocessed emotions can be “inherited”, even from the womb. I believe they can fuel physical illnesses. I have cleared many through the years, and still need to clear some periodically.
One thing I noticed on an all female autism board was that a good 90+% were INTJ on Myers Briggs. I have also noticed strong T preference in my associates who are “Unrecovered” ACOAs, or alcoholics themselves. A great need to incorporate and develop that less preferred feeling function. There does seem to be a lot of angry folks on some of the all female autism boards as well….not a safe place for me.
Again, excellent article!!! I
Thank you so much for this! It came across at the perfect time in my life right now. My son is 6 and for the past couple years he has been showing signs of not your topical little cries or emotions that kids have.
For at least the past year i have been trying to get him some kid of help and no one seems to take me serious …i get told he’s just trying to get his way way, I’m a push over, he is to “emotional” he will grow out of it. I cry a lot of nights. Finally my husband is believing me.
My son does a lot of the signs. He will say his body aches or a certain part and it never made sense till NOW!! He also says he cant tell me how he feels. He just knows he is feeling off and everything. He will have meltdowns that are scary. But i want help to understand what he is going through or what is has. But i keep getting pushed off. So thank you for this!!!
I am glad you find it helpful! Just one bit of caution: please do keep investigating your sons physical symptoms. It can be very difficult for alexithymics to distinguish between emotional physical reactions and physical reactions to having something wrong with our bodies. We also tend to be brushed off with “You are just (insert emotion here).” when really we DO have something physically wrong with us. Doctors often don’t take our physical problems seriously.
Not saying YOU do this, just mentioning it because you mentioned your son describing things feeling off/in pain with his body. I wish you all the best and I’m here if you have any questions!
Good explanation. I do not believe my alexi is mixed with autism but parts of this really fit well.
Thank you so much, glad it’s helpful! From what I know so far alexithymia is a co-occurring condition not part of autism itself so one can be just one of them, both, or none.