Can't feel intense emotions for more than about 5 minutes.

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For the past 7 years or so, I've never felt really strong emotions for more than a few minutes before what I would call my 'f**k it' response kicks in and I stop caring...Break ups, dead friends, someone doing something to make me angry, excitement, whatever. After a few minutes of the stimuli being gone it all just cuts off. Further it's pretty hard to get me to actually feel those emotions in the first place - What would greatly upset or sadden another person rarely effects me.


Now this is completely counter to before that time (About 7 years ago), where I would explode or breakdown at the drop of a hat and become unapproachable for fairly significant periods of time. It seems to have coincided pretty strongly with finishing the majority of puberty.

Any similar experiences?

Yup, after my intense hospital period I developed this feature also. I call it selfpreservation, the mind works in interesting ways.

It is amazing. My adrenal glands got stuck on for about two years with the end result of thirty five days of an hour a night of sleep to the last five of absolutely no sleep. I ended up in the hospital close to death from lack of sleep.

I understand that this is a psychological form of alexithymia. The emotional becomes to severe to the integrity of self and is blocked for self preservation. Seen in eighty-five percent of people with Autism. Forty percent of people with PTSD. It also is suggested that it may be biological in nature for people with Autism or a combination of psychological and biological.

At the beginning of the period of time my Adrenal glands got stuck on, I started to experience my emotions as strange nerve like pains in the bottom of my feet, unlike anything I had experienced in my life. And roller coaster feelings of nerve like pain in my legs from stress. The experience of fear becomes pain rather than the adrenaline that might exhaust a heart that has experienced too much.