≡ Topic: My Alexithymia didn't last forever, but it isn't completely gone.

My Alexithymia didn't last forever, but it isn't completely gone.
19.08.2015 by Dewab

Hello,
So I have had Alex for about as long as I can remember, and for the first time in my entire life I have started to have really strong emotions and attachment. And it was all centered around one person who i had a relationship with. Even when the two of us started dating, I started getting random spurts of really strong emotion. like there was one time when I got upset and slapped one of my best friends for almost no reason at all (don't worry, he understands and it didn't hurt him. we are still really close friends) And I almost freaked out that I did such a thing which was also completely new for me. and little things like this continued to happen to me throughout this relationship and for the first time in my life I honestly truly believe that I started to fall in love with this girl... And when she left me I felt truly upset. I cried for the first time in I think about 5 years, and everything in my chest hurt and I missed her and I was upset. It was freaky as hell. XD To have so much emotion after having basically none is really hard to deal with.

I guess that I am putting this out there because there is so much stuff out there that there is no cure for Alexithymia, but I seem to be going through some transition where my Alexithymia is slowly melting away. I doubt it will ever fully be gone. Even now if I ever get upset it will flicker on and off. like one second I will be really sad, and the next I will feel completely fine and I will wonder why the heck I am crying and then I will be back to being upset. Also I found that it was still very easy to shut off my emotions which I can understand why people would do this, but I fought it and let my emotions run. At first it felt really fake, but after a while I started to realize that this is actually how I feel. So, it sure is tough and isn't that great, but it IS possible to get rid of Alexithymia. sadly I don't know how I really succeeded in doing it. And I also have no idea if it will stay like this or if after a month I will revert to my old Alex unemotional self.

P.S. For those who are curios, emotions aren't really that great at all. They are painful and annoying and don't seem to have anything to do with logic and reason. And yes they don't make ANY sense... however, I have found that even though they are so horrible it gave me some weird sense of being alive. Like as if it was all worth it. Hahaha, it's basically a nice distraction from the huge questions that we know can never be answered. It makes you feel important to this world, cause emotions can be so strong and large that everything else in existence is small in comparison. I know that I haven't been able to capture it completely, but I hope it helps.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Voluntary emotion
24.08.2015 by Chrisl

When I was younger, I could turn on and off my ability to feel emotions voluntarily. It took a little concentration, but like a switch, I could flip back and forth between feeling and not feeling. Mostly I kept my emotion on because it felt better--which is to say, it felt at all, and took less energy.

In middle school I started to stick one way or the other, such that I felt strong stress or fear respectively when going between the two. Ultimately I decided to side with emotions, although there are downsides. I have weird emotional regulation, where sometimes I struggle with being overwhelmed with emotion, sometimes they are normal, and sometimes the emotions I feel and the emotions I think I ought to have are different. A few years back I fell into a depression, and at times, I stopped feeling again, with the difference being that I didn't have any control over whether I felt or not. There would be times where I started crying when I wasn't feeling sad at all. I was embarrassed because I didn't know how to stop it and had to wait things out, and it wasted tissues. That stopped after EMDR therapy, and additionally, my emotions are more stable across the board.

For me, emotions are like moving in a different dimension. Happiness lifts you, sadness lowers you, jealousy is focused, and feeling nothing goes mostly unnoticed. But if you've seen both sides, having no emotion for long periods can feel flat. I don't know if your emotions will stay, but if you like them, keeping them in mind may help them to stick.