shutting down emotions just to cope

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Something of the kind happens to me at times - a thing will happen that (I guess) ought to be triggering a strong negative emotion in me, but all I will feel is a weird sense of shock.....an alarm bell will seem to go off inside me and my hands might start to tremble slightly. Later - typically 2 or 3 days later - I will start to see what the feelings are and why I had them. It's not a conscious process with me, and I don't know if it's just alexithymia or if it's a defense mechanism to make sure I don't make an inappropriate reaction to the event....if I don't know how I feel or what exactly has upset me, how can I react properly? At the time I just feel the need to get away from it and process the thing in my head so I can decide what to do about it.

This is a good description of my thought process. If I am in conflict with another person (someone said something outright rude, or is making fun of me especially) an alarm goes off, but my head is scrambling to make sense of all of the information: what was the antecedent? what was the last thing said? body language? tone of voice? eye contact? etc etc etc...

And then yes, DAYS afterward I put it all together. The same happens if I perceive immediate physical danger. My mind just goes blank. I go into automatic fight or flight mode. In both cases, I usually blame myself even though logically I know why I react this way.

In my case I guess flight usually wins out - not because of cowardice but because I have no sense of how much of a risk it would be to fight, until later......what I should be doing (I suppose) is to stay with the difficulty and just intuitively meter out the right level of assertiveness and the right words and actions, but at the time I know too little, so by default I do a tactical retreat and ponder the situation on and off......all those questions you mentioned can now really be looked at, though in my case I seem to do the work intuitively, just letting my mind loose on the new info and seeing what I make of it. All kinds of things can come up about what the alarming event means in terms of my previous experiences. Often I go to sleep while my conception of all this is still messy and bewildered, and when I wake it has clarified itself.

These days I've begun to be more immediate when the alarm first rings, but it's limited to dealings with people I'm used to (I need to feel confident that they won't feel offended or overpower me), and I miss tons more targets than I hit. It's good practice to enter into such dialogue via email, private messaging, and (when you're feeling lucky) instant messaging - IM to me is a "near-life experience" where realtime conversations happens slightly more slowly than it does in real life, and the situation is simplified because body language is eliminated from the equations. If you do these things obsessionally enough, the articulation skills (or whatever they are) are strengthened and I find myself transferring the skills to real life and "smooth-talking" my way out of trouble - though I wouldn't call it smooth talking, it feels more like joining in with people.

Everyone keeps telling me I am not one but I keep hearing that lack of empathy=sociopath. So I get told I lack empathy but I am not a sociopath. It's like they can't make up their minds. It's probably different people saying it an they don't think lack of empathy means sociopath and those who think lack of empathy makes someone one would probably think I am one.

Seconding this ^. I find the need to "go away" nearly inescapable.

I used to bottle everything up infront of people and let it all out when I'm alone. It did no good to me. I was constantly depressed. Didn't see the point of getting up in the morning and just hated life in general.
But these days I just avoid getting in to emotional situation and talk about the issues that come across, openly in my blog (To an extent). This I find much more effective. Whilst I'm not any happier than before, I don't feel down as often. I feel like I can deal with most things alone.