≡ Topic: Alexithymia and Mania Psychosis

Alexithymia and Mania Psychosis
10.08.2016 by RobotWithASoul

Hi, I have strong Alexithymia traits (entire life) and I am also Bipolar! I was wondering if anyone could share their experience of being manic or psychotic? I am having a hard time identifying with how I felt and properly assessing how mania and psychosis present themselves. When I ask this question, I am thinking about these particular Alexithymia traits: Lack of imagination, Logic without emotions, Stoicism. For some reason I feel like I may experience mania and psychosis with minimal interferance in my ability to function. I believe that I am able to control myself while in a period of mania and that my psychosis is very unintrusive on my life. Or - I could be experiencing hypomania and a separate psychotic disorder to a minimal extent. The point is, I need some testimony from other individuals to properly assess this situation. Thanks.

Robot2
20.08.2017 by jas01

Hello
Yes.. I can agree with you. I had a very strong psychosis and (mostly thanks to me being more emotionless + stronger) I could function fairy well. Nobody could really tell that I was psychotic at this time.
In my opinion alexithymia was even helpful - As my 'disorder" got stronger my psychosis (and other problems) was no longer there.I could see observe something like this - I was becoming a lot more rational, calm/ cold, emotionless/ hollow, immune to stress/fear and angry. All my dellusions were slowly diseapering and now I'm pretty much'immune' to irrational thinking (like bullshit about aliens, angels and other things ;) ). While I'm having a 'psychotic attack' - I'm only feeling (physically) a litle 'buzz' in my head (nothig strong) and a dull pain at the back of my head (I'm also a little more angry + sexual). Then after a few days everything is back to normal and I'm even more 'hollow'. I don't have 'mania' (I'm normally very cold) and my 'psychosis' is appearing only after some extreme hard shit (life is not easy :p).

Here you go. You don't have to believe me at all (you don't have any reason to do so). I just said my words. I score around 167 points at 'alexithymia test'.

Post
20.08.2017 by jas01

* My alexithymia is stronger now (and so I am), because of my hard experiences (two years of very 'negative' experiences).

From the forum:
- "So is emotional trauma the only way to develop alexi or is it possible to just have it?"
- "It is often considered a personality trait. While emotional trauma might increase incidence, it is not the only cause. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17917473 "