severe alexithymia

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does anyone else have this problem. when ever i go to a p-doc and they ask how im feeling i have no idea, and i cant regulate the differance of what i should be mad and shouldnt be mad about, like someone will steal stuff from me and i cant feel anything, yet i have completely random outbursts where i start cursing and breaking things for no reason out of nowhere. i dont understand why. its very frusterating and makes people not like me it seems.

Well, I don't have any advice, but I do know that it really is difficult when people ask me how I'm feeling. That's one reason I've avoided psychologists and the like for most of my life, because of that question: "How does that make you feel?"

I think the problem for me is that I simply do not think in words about that type of thing. I cannot analyze my feelings in that way. It's like trying to catch wisps of smoke and give them names. When people start asking me about my feelings, I find myself babbling about goodness-knows-what, and not really saying anything that I wanted to say. I'm not avoiding anything; I simply am not able to think that way. It seems like a good conversation at the time, and the other person seems to think I'm opening up and we're really getting somewhere. Then all of a sudden, I realize that what I've been talking about is stuff that doesn't really matter anyway, and shouldn't really be focused on all that much.

If I were seeing a psychologist, for say, $200/hr, I would feel a lot of pressure to talk, and label those feelings when asked to. I think I'd just end up spouting off a bunch of irrelevant fluff, and then later realizing I actually said nothing of any importance.

I don't know if what I have could be called Alexythmia. Maybe.

As far as your random outbursts, has anyone considered that it could be a brain-chemistry thing, like a mood disorder? Being able to label your feelings won't really help with something like that, at least not much. My son has juvenile bipolar, and before he was on medication, the tiniest thing would set him off. He was always such a sweet, good little kid, but then something kind of went haywire. All the talking and reasoning in the world didn't solve the problem. In fact, it just made him feel more frustrated, and hate himself, because it was a brain chemistry problem. He couldn't control the outbursts, even though he wanted to.

I hope something here is useful.

the random outbursts probablly are a chemical imbalence. im also dx'ed with bipolar type-schizoaffective. however i wasnt sure if they were due to the aspergers or schizoaffective. it doesnt make sence because i get mad at the most rediculous things including nothing at all, yet i dont get mad when i should be mad.

Yes...but I didn't know it was called Alexithymia

i have that to some degree i guess. sometimes i just can't seem to feel anything. makes me feel like a robot. which depresses me despite everything else.

and sometimes the littlest things can make me mad, like i hate to be bothered or asked incessant ignorant or otherwise busy-body questions when I'm in the middle of something.

though if someone were to steal from me it prolly wouldn't bother me much at all.
funerals also have never really stirred much emotion in me. though i try my hardest to feel bad to the point where i feel bad about not feeling bad. especially if it was someone close to me like my grandpa and grandma who passed not too long ago. i miss them deeply, but just couldn't seem to shed a tear at their funerals and i felt like an uncaring monster. i felt disgusted by myself.

i reason that maybe it's because i'm already constantly depressed and that subconsciously my mind holds the feelings back to preserve my sanity. or not, idk.

Probably. I freeze when asked how I feel, even sometimes when asked of preferences or if I want coffee, or even if I'm hungry. I end up thinking "What did I just eat, and how long ago? What does this question mean and what are the secondary meanings the other person might read into my answer?" I really hate it when someone asks "what are you thinking?" because if I think about that, I can't answer the question because I'm not thinking about what I was thinking about anymore. I have trouble with describing my feelings about situations and people when I am with them. I have to be by myself to evaluate this stuff.

I also prefer to use instrumentation when sailing a boat, or in general whenever applicable to whatever I'm doing. I don't go by "feel" because on an intellectual level I understand why this should be unreliable, and for me it is. For others, too, but they don't know it or they won't admit it.

Same dilhelma, the outbursts are over minor or trivial things and I rant, rave, lots of swearing, at times smash items. Only lasts a short time and I'm back to normal, only problem everyone else stays 'Pissed Off' with me.

I can never express hate for another person when I should or hold a grudge not matter how offensive or bad they have been towards me. Always forgive people for their transgressions against me. This behaviour is a negative because you need to protect yourself from some people.

Never could understand what love truly means or feels like, but I have been told I show plenty at times.

Does anyone here engage in premeditated acts of revenge rather than break into outbursts? I mean, rather than blurt out angry words and such, does anyone here with this disorder plan an attack rather than an outburst? I'm asking this because I was involved with someone who couldn't communicate his emotions at all yet he would blow up later after I did something to piss him off. It was like if I did something to hurt him there would be no reaction until weeks later and then he'd get me back 10 times worse. It's sad because he really wanted to be able to control his mind but it was like the invasion of the body snatchers took the real him and put some android in his place.

I can relate to not really knowing what i'm feeling, too. Well... it's not so much not knowing as not being able to describe or identify it really well. I think my emotions kind of all run together in a really hazy way anyway. I don't think i'm ever just simply "sad" about something... When i get upset about something, it's almost always a huge mix of "sad," "angry," "confused," and a bunch of other things. I think if words for emotions had never been come up with before, and i was given the task of giving emotions all names, i don't think there would be as many different names for emotions.. Because i don't think i really experience them in such a way that i'd be able to sort out those specific things. It's all in a fog. I don't have big outbursts/meltdowns too often these days, but when they happen i'll sometimes hit things(but more often hit myself, hit my head on things, stuff like that). And then, i just know that i'm feeling BAD, not necessarily anything real specific. It can be over things most people wouldn't get that upset about, though... Even though some things that most people WOULD get upset about don't seem worth getting upset over to me at the time. I think it depends on the whole situation, including unrelated uncomfortable things that just add up to make me explode. Hard to explain. But, yeah, i sort of get it.

I don't think I'm alexithymic, but I do have the situation when I'm experiencing a strong emotion, that I cannot tell which it is. I have been overloaded to the poitn of meltdown when I had just been smiling with a big grin on my face, looking totally excited. People said I must like to have a meltdown, but I reported I wasn't feeling funny/happy but was stressed out (by that strong emotion, that might've been excitement, I can't tell).

Definitely. It's part of what led to my diagnosis. My therapist said that current thinking implicates a disconnect between the amygdala and the frontal lobes, meaning that we experience the emotions, but not at a conscious level. Things (especially stress) build up until some small random event triggers an overload. Since we've been just motoring along all the while oblivious and showing no outwards signs of stress, it seems random to both us and anyone else. If we were more aware, we might have been able to avoid it by diffusing the situation or removing some of the stress levels before things built up to that level.

I really hate that question though, "how do you feel?" It takes a lot of effort to dig in there and figure it out. Normally I am only vaguely aware of an emotional state, and I only seem to have about 5 basic emotional labels (happy, sad, confused, upset, and angry). "Phlegmatic" was how my mother described me. When the therapist offered some exercises to expand my emotional repertoire I declined. Honestly, if I'm going to put that kind of effort into learning a foreign language, I'd rather learn Mandarin. But knowing to check in and try to figure out if I'm stressed seems to have helped reduce the frequency and severity of my meltdowns.

Normally my answer to "how do you feel" is either something like "good, "fine," or "normal" if i don't really feel like talking and just want to answer so that they move on and i don't appear rude. If i am actually feeling something easy to express, the answer might be "tired" or "hungry," though.