Alexithymia - Quiz and Discussion

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I have been reading about Alexithymia lately. It is classified as a personality trait whereby the individual has problems understanding, processing, or describing emotions. It is thought to more or less overlap with Asperger's Syndrome. If you have never heard of Alexithymia, read about it here:*CLICK HERE*

An online quiz was developed to assess the degree to which you may or may not have Alexithymia.
*CLICK HERE* to take the quiz.

After you do, *CLICK HERE* for another page with score interpretation and background information.

My interest is to see how you feel about this trait...
How do you think it corresponds with AS?
If you took the quiz, how did you score?
Do you demonstrate characteristics of Alexithymia? How so?

As for myself, I took the quiz and got a 138 out of 185, which translates into my solidly having this trait. I believe it has a lot to do with AS, although I don't think it is present in all cases. It seems like there are just too many variations within the range of AS for there to be a 100% correlation.
Here is how I relate to the commonly defined characteristics:

1. difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
Yes. I've heard from others that I do this routinely. When expressing strong emotion, I will focus on the physical sensations instead of actual emotions. For instance, sadness. If I am really sad, I might talk about how there is a wrenching pit in my gut, my eyes feel like they will sink into my head, and my legs give out from under me. I might say little or nothing at all about the internal emotions I experience. I sometimes feel like I don't have the words. Which leads to...

2. difficulty describing feelings to other people
Yes. Others have told me that when I describe my feelings, I use odd metaphors instead of direct emotional language. It sometimes takes me awhile to discern just exactly how it is that I am feeling.

3. constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a paucity(shortage) of fantasies
Not really. But to be sure, my fantasies (dreams) hardly ever involve people or social/emotional situations. I dream about environments, places, mundane and functional happenings from daily life. When awake, my daydreams and other products of imagination are much the same.

4. a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style.
Yes. I find myself most aware and mentally engaged when I am working with my hands, doing physical things. Very much external. Although I can process mental abstraction, I can get confused easily unless I have something tangible to correspond to it.

Thanks in advance for your responses to this topic.

My score was 151. I've read about Alexithymia before and I think I have some mild symptoms.
I cannot express my emotions very well, or even at all.
I know when I'm happy, angry or sad but most of the time I would describe myself as neutral.
I relate to a lot of those questions about relationships. Before learning about AS or Alexithymia I would wonder why I showed hardly any emotion towards someone I loved and I had some confusing physical symptoms.

I scored 128 on this- which equates with a high level of Alexithymia. I thought that i had learned to really understand feelings a lot more than i evidently have. in fact, i am quite shocked. i know it is only an online test , but still - i just assumed i was more able than i am, in this area!!

i have done a lot of work trying to get better at this. I thought i had improved, so goodness knows what my socre may have been when i was 20!! ! woo hoo. one has to laugh. i have been under the misguided illusion that i have had this one well and truly "sussed."

Result: 140
Alexithymia: You show high alexithymic traits

What exactly is it talking about when it says "odd physical symptoms"?

Oh, and I found this intresting on the Wikipedia article:

127: I can attach some words to feelings... I really only have something like 3-4 different emotions: excitement, happyness, lonlyness, anger/hatred... oh and infatuation... but that doesn't count. If there is a wider range of emotions than this, I am lost.

I got 84, It says "few or no traits". One more thing to cross of the "what is wrong with me" list.

high traits.

I wonder if those questions apply a lot more to schizoids than AS. I'm big on daydreaming so I was surprised I scored 'high'.

I got a 112, possible alexwhatsitthingy.

I find it difficult to answer these kinds of questions where they want you to consider situations in which you have some kind of personal conversations with others. Like, "Friends often tell me..." or "I don't like conversations in which..." or "I sometimes ask people..."

I have only a small handful of people that I have conversations with, and there are only a handful of topics we discuss. I cannot answer those questions, because those situations never occur. So, if I put "disagree" for a question about whether friends often tell me I'm cold-hearted, does that mean I'm not cold-hearted? No. It means I have ten conversations a year, and I don't know anyone who is in a position to say a personal thing like that, except for my husband, who would never say that, because it's out of character for him.


I have a particularly hard time thinking about how I think. I don't know if that makes sense, but my mind doesn't work that way.

Oh well.

104 - apparently I like sex too much...

I got 102 "possible alexithymia".

Admittedly I had to leave a lot of questions "undecided" though. A bunch of them don't apply to me at all.

I wonder if it's possible to have alexithymia for some emotions and not others? I have no problem identifying negative emotions but positive emotions other than excitement feel a bit muddled and insubstantial. Or is that just depression?

Result: 131
Alexithymia: You show high alexithymic traits

Result: 158

Alexithymia: You show high alexithymic traits

I'm really surprised that I scored as having a high amount of these traits.

I think I might be mild at best. I understand pretty much most of the basic emotions, but when it's displayed in a nontypical way or in a way I've never heard it described it before, I get confused.