Alexithymia

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What's your alexithymia score?

Mine is 150

In the 130s or 140s, I think. It's been awhile since I took anything with a score.

My score is 141.

Mine is in my signature. I think it is in the 160s, but see below for the exact.

See below. Funny thing is that I didn't think I had this until I really thought about it. Turns out what I have always thought of as emotions are only the hormonal responses. I am still trying to get my head around this - it explains so much throughout my life but just sounds unfathomable to discover at 30.

The alexithymia quiz is too not alexithymic enough to cover my level of alexithymia. It is too emo. Also, too many questions about sex. And why would I ever ask anyone else what their feelings are? That is not going to help me understand my feelings. I am not going to understand their descriptions of their feelings and use it to figure out my feelings. I dont' feel physical sensations or general upset in place of eggspressible feelings. I don't feel that many feelings at all. I don't know what is upset? It sounds too nuanced for me. I know mad and a few other basics.

I just took the test and got a 90.

i got a score of 144. i still don't understand what that means or relates to. can somebody elaborate?

Alexithymia is an inability to relate to or identify your emotions. It may also reflect an inability to feel emotions.

Apparently, if an NT suddenly felt as alexithymic as you or I apparently are normally, they would feel "emotionally numb" and might find it distressing.

thank you for explaining. i'm somewhat surprised by my results. i've always considered myself rather aware of my feelings. i know that i'm more logically inclined, but have thought that i can understand and express feelings quite well.

to be honest, i'm quite taken aback by what the results imply.

I felt the same way until I started looking into it. All sorts of little things started to add up: I've never been very emotional. The only emotional descriptions that ever made sense to me came from other autistic people. I usually describe my emotions as "frustrated," "happy," and "amused." There's probably another one in there. I have had anxiety issues for a long time but I did not know that there was an emotion involved, just the runaway physical symptoms that were very hard to deal with. When I am depressed, my cue that I am depressed comes from observing my behavior, not from observing my emotions.

This sums up what I have been realising about myself exactly. I had always considered myself able to feel the full gamut of different emotions most of the time. However, now that I take a step back and examine what happens, I realise that what I thought of as my emotion is actually a decision arrived upon by analysing any apparent changes in my own behaviour and the context of what might have just happened. In extremes I will also feel a physical sensation in my chest which I believe is a hormone release. An example might be that a shopkeeper short-changes me, I bring it up with him, I notice I am behaving in what is possibly an unreasonable way (although I would not neccesarily say I felt any different to 2 minutes previous) and I join the dots and tell myself that I might be feeling angry.

Luckily my wife knows many of my quirks better than me and is often able to act as my early warning system when I fail to realise that I am getting very stressed/frustrated/angry.

While being quite an alarming thing to realise this late in life, it explains a hell of a lot.

163. Welp... That explains some things. People are always joking that I have three emotions: anger, elation, and depression. It's interesting because I can usually identify those three, but it's always with an odd sense of detachment. Like "oh, wow I'm not eating and my chest feels tight. I have no energy. I must be depressed" or "huh, I'm shouting and throwing things and I have a lot of energy. There are tears in my eyes. I must be frustrated/angry." I honestly thought everyone was like this? I can spend hours or days trying to figure out if I'm happy or sad about something because while I've obviously had some kind of emotional response to an event, I don't know what I'm feeling if the response isn't extreme enough.

151. No surprise.

Just took the quiz a while ago. I got 120, which was still in the "very high" range. The only category I scored "low" in was ability to describe MY feelings. I'm very opinionated, and I never have trouble figuring out what I feel. I have trouble figuring out other people's actions and interpreting them. I also don't "feel" the way most people do. My emotions are very intense and not the norm. But I've always been very, very self-aware.

Where is this quiz that everyone is taking? I would google it, but I want to make sure I'm taking the same one.