Hi all
I’ve recently learned more about these concepts: Alexithymia being emotional blindness, and emotional neglect resulting from how I grew up in my childhood.
I often (every week) find myself completely exhausted, painful, and often vomiting every morning. This seems to happen more frequently and intensely when I’m going to work/training.
I’m trying to find a way to be aware of any emotions I might feel and try to place them before getting overwhelmed. But often it still results in a shutdown basically.
Anyone have tips on how to deal with this?
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This is a massive topic and it helps to have someone to talk to. A professional would be most beneficial but I’m aware not everyone has that luxury. Alexithymia is better understood as emotional colour blindness, that is because absolut blindness implies one does not register emotions, rather it’s a question of fully processing them - which is impaired because one would not be able to label them properly to begin with. I like this analogy: Someone growing up with a language that describes colours in restricted terms such as bright and dark might struggle differentiating colours yet still sees them. Someone with alexithymia might be as restricted in their emotional awareness: feeling good and bad. Even good emotions might feel overwhelming such that we would not be able to tell them apart from bad. (I use good and bad to keep it simple, but know that these labels aren’t really justified). This is because someone living in conditions that give rise to CPTSD has learned to survive a life by disregarding their own internal state. This learned behaviour has to be undone. One has to trust that aside from the logical part of one’s mind there’s a vast ocean of information that is encoded in one’s emotional state. Professionals usually let patients map it to the body: what goes through you when you experienced that event and where in your body does that make itself aware. There’s a lot of good information out there to learn more. Last point: the fact that you are aware of this condition / behaviour alone is highly beneficial and conducive to further improvements. Best of luck.
Cool, now I get what my therapist was doing.
I can add another example:
My go to term for negative feelings is “frustrated”. In therapy I often had to break this down (which was surprisingly hard…) to see what kind of feeling “frustrated” actually means in these cases. Like I was “frustrated” with something my spouse did but I actually felt sad and left out but I didn’t realize that I felt that way at this moment.
The body mapping also helps a lot like feelings of connection and community give me a warm bodily sensation in my chest and make me very teary eyed meanwhile strong negative emotions like fear of abandonment gives me a very uncomfortable pulling sensation in my finger tips, this is also a warning sign of an imminent shutdown.
Are there things a person can do by themselves to become better at differentiating the different emotions they feel? And what kind of therapist would be able to help with this? Often I find that things like CBT can actually detach me more from my emotions, making me try to analyse more instead of trying to feel.
My guess is that the thinking part is still blocking the actual processing of the emotions. Reminds me of when you’re trying hard to remember something and it doesn’t come until you stop occupying your mind with that question. You’re on the right path. Your counseler might want to give you more time to sit with these emotions. This is where people talk about acceptance and integration. See them as a part of you, like your heartbeat or the view of the tip of your nose (provided your face has the topology that allows for this). There is no fast way to do this and unfortunately you’re to reprogram your mind after it has been trained by years of adverse life experiences.
I think this is exactly what I experience. Everytime I try to look at a wheel of emotions or something similar to identify my emotions, I stop actually feeling anything.
The heartbeat example is funny, because I was in a situation not many years ago where I was measuring my blood pressure consistency, and started feeling queesy when hearing/feeling my own heartbeat. Then on the third measurement, my heart stopped for a second or two and I fainted.
It shouldn’t surprise you that this thinking / feeling dichotomy is a result of traumatic upbringing. If this isn’t clear to you, let me know, I’ll be happy to break it down for you. Your second point bears out a notion of strong focus in regards of your symptoms (physical and psychological)and is a bit worrying to me. Assuming no underlying medical conditions present, this way of obsessing could lead to somatization disorder. Obviously I do hope you’re well looked after medically, but please note you’re not thinking your way out of this. Of course self awareness is worth a lot but in the extreme it seems to me just another coping mechanism: a tactic I alluded to in my first point above. I’m not saying to ignore your physical experiences nor that you should keep it to yourself and I hope this has been discussed in therapy. Hopefully this makes a bit sense to you or let me know if it doesn’t.
Thanks, it does makes sense to me.
I find it difficult to explain to my therapist though. Often I can’t find the words to explain it to them (But maybe the issue is that i’m trying to find words for it) It seems that all of the therapists I’ve been to also focus on analysing and behavior, so maybe that’s why I never felt much improvement.
I often experience moments of vomiting, tension and backpain, especially during periods of mild stress. But all doctors I went to say that i’m perfectly healthy.
How invalidating that must feel when your genuin suffering does not really register with the doctors. When such a bout of discomfort or pain appears notice your response to it. This gets quite meta, but that’s alright. How do you feel about how you feel about it? You might get anxious or frustrated or angry? Try not to distract yourself and focus on your self responding to it and let it sit for a bit, and once the storm has passed try to perceive how you feel then. This takes practice and it might feel overwhelming at first. Again, better to do this with a therapist. A few words of warning. Imagine you build up a dam to hold back a river. It feels safe to not subject yourself to the incessive force but cracks are forming. Now, you are being told to break down this dam and that the stream is natural and everone else relishes its flow. Take it on your own pace as to not drown as you find a way to let the water free. In the worst case you might experience a panic attack. This is not to scare you, but to foster awareness. I hope this metaphor appeals to you.
This is a really good way to put it indeed. I definitely feel emotions, perhaps even too intensely. But I can almost never figure out what they are trying to tell me. Very often it’s just Pain/Bad or Pleasant/Good
