Do you struggle with alexithymia?

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This has been a really hard one for me as far back as I can remember. I struggle with expressing my more complex feelings and usually end up saying something that will offend or hurt people or push them away. As a result, when I was a teenager I decided I would keep such feelings to myself and avoid sharing them. Without fail, to this day, if I slip and try to share them, it always ends badly.

I’m ok with the basic emotions. But if I try to share something deep, I lack the words or can’t really express them well.

It happened again last night and I am extremely sad today. See, I never knew all of the things in my life actually have a name or are explained by some condition. This is all very new to me and I had no idea up to about a month ago. So I’m very overwhelmed with having my life and my quirks being all spelled out and perfectly described in books and YouTube videos.

I understand not everyone on the spectrum might have the need to express what they are feeling. But If you struggle with expressing complex emotions, how do you cope with it?

I wouldn't say,for the most part, it has a bad effect on me. One of the hardest things I had to do at my autism assessment was to describe what love etc meant .

I really relate to what you are talking about. I get into sticky situations when trying to express how I feel all the time. I recently am seeing a therapist who is helping me with this a lot, but also having someone you know you can trust like a parent or sibling helps too. Practice is the only thing that has really has helped me verbalize my feelings better. Practice usually involves making mistakes, which is ok, even though it's quite embarrassing.

Firemonkey - I don’t remember them asking me about love during my interviews... He asked me about anxiety, and I told him I didn’t know how to differentiate that from being prepared.

Fern - practicing expressing would sound like a natural step. But in reality, for me it works like this: imagine you have a monkey in a controlled room. There is a cookie on a plate. The monkey is hungry and wants to eat. But when he touches the cookie he gets an electrical shock. Soon, the monkey learns that even tho he is hungry, he doesn’t want to touch the cookie anymore.

I’m like that monkey, who longs for sharing the feelings, but can’t. And when I try, I not only get “shocked”, but I end up “shocking” someone else in the process too.

My husband is wonderful and wants me to be able to share. But if I am not able to see that something I’m sharing may hurt his feelings, I end up hurting him. And I don’t want to do that.

There is an element of being comforted when you share deep feelings with someone close to you. But I don’t want to hurt anyone with my messy thoughts.

I don’t feel comfortable sharing this sort of deep stuff with any other person. Hard to find a solution for this...

Creative outlet

Well. I may have it because I was for years teying to describe how I felt to doctors and I was never able to put it into words that made sense. They would say "Do you get anxiety?" I would say "No" because I didn't really realize I was having it. I mean... It wasn't until Kraftikorte helped by explaining i in a way that I understood.... I had had it on and off... Well... Since I was a child.
But I am still working things out so I do not know what I have or not in this way. I was going to answer "Yes but only in a few small ways" but to say the truth, I don't really know. It is like the "Do you feel empathy?" I don't know now. I believed that I did but what some have said, I am feeling sympathy and not empathy. I am confused because the question of "If you saw someone in a certain situation, do you know what they are thinking?" While I know what I may be thinking, no way can I know what they are thinking as I can't read their minds. How can I? This empathy is rather puzzling... I know I am very sympathetic, but I am puzzled! Haha.
It could be why if someone hurts themselves I just stand there and don't know what to do. The strange thing is that when I was working on the railways and I was masking, I was able to function and take over... But this was due to masking. Strange eh? Hard to figure things out.

Double post.

I can't say I ever really have a need to express complex emotions. I do think I struggle to express what I feel though. I have bad emotions/feelings and then good emotions/feelings but I can't say that I can accurately describe the emotions that make up good and bad.

There is quite a mental block if I try dig deeper to uncover different emotions. I'd say I'm stuck with happy, sad, scared and jealous. I also can't AT ALL describe what love is or if I even feel it, because I genuinely don't know if I do.