Topic: Recently finished undergrad studies for my degree... but I feel nothing.

Hi all,

I am new here, and am reading about Alexithymia after seeing the word for the first time just yesterday. Here's the thing. I'm 56, about to graduate with a degree in History, and I feel nothing about it - at all. No sense of accomplishment, none of what might be "normally" expected of someone who has done the same thing (with a 3.97 average, to boot). It's like "Ho hum, who cares"? No sense of excitement.

I have suffered from depression most of my life and attempted suicide back in 2014. The reality is I am depressed mostly out of alarm that I do no feel anything, and if I do feel things they are usually the wrong emotions in the wrong places and I misread everyone else's emotions. I don't miss people when they are away, I don't celebrate major life events ("everyone has life events, so what?" I say). The more I realize how strange my lack of emotion is, the worse I get emotionally. I cry sometimes for hours at a time. I have been in therapy since 2014 and none of my therapists has ever said that there may be something else going on besides the depression (they will, of course, point out the narcissistic parents and that kind of stuff). I won't even get started on telling about my childhood and family because, well, everybody has something in their lives that has left them messed up and my story is nothing special.

If you've read this far, you probably get where all this is going and I would like to work towards "normal" whatever that is. I'd at least like to feel like getting a college degree is an accomplishment of some kind so I can feel good about it - at the very least. It would beat feeling nothing at all about it.

Feel free to comment. Input is good.

QP