Topic: Do I have alexithymia? Heck if I know

Also, I'm good at imagining what others may be feeling given their situations. I enjoy doing that.

You sound quite similar to me. I scored 152 on the Alexi test and I also have Bipolar II and Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD). For me I’m not consciously aware of experiencing emotions and I’ve always related strongly to Spock as it was the first time a fictional character actually made sense to me.

I’ve always had this problem of not being able to stay connected to people, especially if they don’t live near me. A few years ago I found out that my father has stage 4 prostate cancer, and to be honest I never particularly felt anything about the situation. In fact I had to make myself go visit him and spend time with him while he had chemo treatment. I only did this because of a vague sense of familial obligation and to be honest I hated the week I spent away from my family, routines and things. I mostly missed my things!

In relation to the imagination I have a vivid and strong imagination. When I was younger I used to play role playing games (like D&D), I can spend quite a bit of time designing characters and then I think about what sort of story would they be involved in, how they would react and what they would say.

Most of the time I can keep it in the confines of my head but I do have to be careful as when I’m out walking, in the bathroom or somewhere else private I can act out (as in speak out loud) what they would say in a given scenario. I also ponder how I would react if I was kidnapped, or my life or the lives of my family were in danger.

Having a vivid imagination is common with people who have SPD as is having alexithymia. You might grow out of it (I didn’t), or it might be with you for the rest of your life. Time will tell.

Hi I'm Michaela and I'm 18.

I'm in my teenage years and I have gotten to the point where I am seeing a therapist every week (where I go they don't have any groups that talk like this or any thing so that's why I started looking online to see why I feel or in this case don't feel and I found this and now I don't feel so alone). For years I had and still have trouble even expressing and even interpreting my emotions. I have panic attacks and trust issues galore and I was bullied when I was in school so I just stoped going and now I'm doing virtual schooling. When I was younger I realised I wasn't 'normal' like everyother kid I just didn't know why or how (btw I was a avid bookworm but now it just seems boring I guess so I stopped reading I barely ever do anything because I don't know what I like To do anymore everything just became pointless like it doesn't matter anymore) then I entered my teens and then hormones got added to mic and complicated things further or really the lack there off ( I see no reason for any type sexual contact at all it just see so troublesome to me I guess), idk honestly if I have this or not guess I have to talk to my therapist (which is honestly really tough when I am not good with emotions in anyway shape or form, i am anti-social. I basically have no friends now because I messed up in the emotion department with them all and the few I do have barely know me except for when we are at school and never actually ask about me at all just talk about there problems and drama, I'm always the one that instigates any conversations which honestly I am the type of person to sit back and observe and listen, if I didn't do that I am 100% sure they wouldn't even talk to me let alone try and be friends but honestly now I just don't care to pretend any more. I always now that I think about it didn't know my emotions so I just observed and copied people around me in till I seemed 'normal' to them but now that I don't have anyone but my family and I'm doing virtual school I have stopped pretending and I started looking up what all this could mean and it lead me here. I honestly hope this is it cause it explains so much and it started freaking out my family (my no emotions) because I told my mom right after my step sister grandma died that I didnt feel anything when she died (I was the one who saw her take her last breath while they were all crying and had to go get the nurse's). So then I got shipped to the therapists and was diagnosed with bipolar2 and adhd and I going to ask her about this in our next meeting and see if she can give a real test to see if I have it for real or if it's something else entirely.

I hope some of you reply so I can see what you think of this cause I really don't know what I have and neither does my therapist about the no emotion thingy as I call it.

You perfectly described how sadness feels for me: tension in the chest. Either we both have alexithymia, or neither of us does.
Incidentally, that happens to be a lot like how dread feels for me. So when my grandfather died, I must have misidentified sadness as dread, because where else would I have gotten dread from?