≡ Topic: Alexithymia and TBI

Alexithymia and TBI
21.03.2016 by Xiazu

Since I've started looking into alexithymia, I've wanted to know how it came about. I've read that TBI(traumatic brain injury) can cause damage to the brain and the connection between the left and right sides of the brain.

When I was a young lad I played football. One day after practice messing about with teammates I slipped running up a hill. I was planted firmly on the back on my head hard. Hard enough that it knocked the color out of my vision. I saw black and white for several seconds. Then several years later I was in a car accident, 40 MPH head on into a tree.

So what I'm asking is, could that be the cause of me not feeling emotions and having trouble identify them?

And

Has anyone else here had anything that could be a TBI?

TBI does strange things
21.03.2016 by FermiParadox

I think its entirely possible to develop alexithymia, or something similar, from a TBI. There are many documented cases of various personality changes, including developing foreign accents, drastic differences in food preferences, kleptomania and other anti-social behaviors, and even changes in sexual preference and identity post-TBI.

I've never experienced any kind of head trauma (at least not that I remember,) but I had emotionally abusive parents and autism, which I believe are the cause of my alexithymia.

Forceps
22.03.2016 by DXS

I was delivered with Forceps, and my mom told me I was "upside down." Not breech, but, instead of face up I was face down, or maybe vice versa. Whatever babies are supposed to be I was the opposite. So, the doctor used forceps to "turn me around." Well, the forceps SMASHED my head down to my eyebrows. Mom said it was ugly. My head "popped back up" within a few days.

I was basically smart and made good grades. But I have always had trouble understanding my own emotions. I feel "something" but cannot "name" it.

Plus, my mom kept "telling me how to feel" which is something you should not do to a kid.