It's 5.07 at the moment and I didn't plan on writing. However, I've been up, thinking, and knowing I'll try find the time tomorrow to put this down, and it's just adding more and more bits onto it in my head. So I wonder if actually I'm more likely to sleep if I do write now.
Alexithymia. Some years ago someone I saw used that term to describe me. I knew it was completely inaccurate. Recently, as in the past couple years, I wondered if maybe it had some truth to it. A couple days ago I read some articles describing it and it did and in many ways completely did not describe me. Because alexithymia describes an inability to feel - both for oneself and for others. I don't feel for myself. I feel for others. And the why, and the past years, has been going around my head.
If I go back to when I was a kid, there are some memories I have that tell me that as a child I experienced emotions. I should probably first explain why I don't have the language of emotions. My mother doesn't have a language to express what she feels. My mother doesn't find it safe to feel. My memories, thinking back, to what My mother felt when I was a child- is primarily overwhelm.
My mother created various ditties over the years. 'Jam (I) can't cope, jam can't cope, yes jam can yes jam can'. Something about daddy I can't cope.
Whenever we expressed emotions as a child, it wasn't. To explain that, today my mother is in a healthier emotional place. If I say to her, I'm hungry. Her automatic answer will be - you're not hungry. Her denial came from her inability to handle our emotions, also because she felt it as a reflection of herself. She lived with denial. That's how she could let my sister say for about a year that she wants to die and it's her families fault etc, and do nothing about it. Because it didn't actually exist to her.
I've a memory of when I was maybe 16 telling her that it's not okay to respond that it isn't, that if I'm saying something is, it is.
I've lived with some form of disassociation since I'm not sure when. Until 2/3 years ago I lived with depersonalisation/derealisation. (I'm not saying I don't at all anymore, however it's definitely not in the same way). I used to question whether I was real. Whether the world was real. I didn't actually know if it was real or not. Did it exist or not? It wasn't until I watched some random video someone had shared by Kati Morton that I had the answer. She was explaining depersonalisation/derealisation and it was like, oh. There's a word for this. When I'd asked my friends if it was real, they wanted to know who cared, or said of course it was. I wonder from when. I don't want to read through my journal entries as a kid. I have a feeling that I expressed this definitely at age 15 (I once read what I wrote then).
When I was 16 I went to seminary - Jewish college. It's not a time I want to remember. I know the last year was traumatic for me. When I visited my younger sister there I learned that. Maybe 4 years ago? It was the first time I burned myself with a curler. Unintentionally, unplanned. Meaning I didn't realise I was burning myself until I already was - and it's not something I would have done planned. I was in someone else's house in am open room. (I do have more choice today). I can't think back to seminary. I hate hearing people mention the name of the place. I'm not sure why it was traumatic to me. So I lived alone. I did have friends even if not my friends. I was alone.
Seminary, although I hated it, also gave me distance from home.
My entire family, excepting my youngest sister who grew up with 5 other mothers, shut off feeling emotionally. They all expressed their feelings logically,and never experienced their feelings. I know it's something they've all spent years working through.
We grew up with a lot of denial. We were taught not to trust ourselves. I have a special needs sister who my parents believed was normal. My mother still doesn't fully accept that she's not.
After I came home from seminary, I didn't just create distance in my mind (living with the disconnection). I acted to create distance. Looking back that's what I'd say. When I was 18 or 19 I began to read. Reading has always been an escape for me however this became much more than that. It became the only thing that existed. When I was teaching I was thinking about reading. I was late to school because I was reading. I was up all night reading. It was the only thing that existed. When I stopped trying to read material that drew me in I'd always go back to it. And when I stopped, I started cutting. When I trued to stop, that's the first time I was consciously aware I was suicidal - about 5 years ago. I say consciously aware because looking back to seminary, I remember telling a friend something like we should jump out the window as a joke, and then freaking out that she might realise it wasn't a joke. I used to have a running joke with a friend about the green bridge that has the number for samaritans for it since it was so often used for suicide. When, a year or 2 later I came across what I wrote when I was 15 - 16 and saw the guilt I felt running through all my words it was eye opening to me. I hadn't known I'd felt guilty for living as a kid. Guilty for living since I was 9.
So, emotions.
I learnt as a child that it wasn't okay to express what I feel. That if I said I felt anything- it didn't exist. I learnt not to feel. I lived in a world of books since probably age 9. Lived with some form of dissasociation since I don't know when. And actually tried to create distance between myself and living in the world since I was home from seminary.
Naturally, by nature, I, and my entire family, are emotionally intense. We all experience emotions more than most people. We're all NFP's (MBTI - myer briggs). We're all 2/4/6 on the enneagram - the numbers that experience emotions the most intensely. And we all learnt not to trust ourselves and to cut off from what we feel.
Cutting off from what I feel means I don't have an emotional language. It means I literally don't experience what I feel. It's something I've really worked on at times. To tune in to my body. It means I don't always recognise what my bodies telling me. I won't necessarily realise I'm hungry since I've learned to create a distance.
I don't have the ability to handle what I feel. I never learnt to handle what I feel, and whenever anything is too intense, it just doesn't exist, it isn't there. Which makes sense considering that's how I was brought up - whatever I said just wasn't.
However. That never took away my empathy for others. Naturally, I would experience my own, and others emotions. I don't experience my own. I experience others to an extent. I say only to an extent because it is only to an extent. I cut off from what I feel for others too. I don't have the emotional language to feel their experiences. I have some of the logical language since it's something I've looked up a lot.
So when I read through some articles on alexithymia, I related to one of someone describing her experience not feeling what she feels, and when I read an article describing what exactly it is - this wasn't me. At all. It split alexithymia into if I remember cognitive and affective. And there were 2 ways to experience. One wasn't relevant to me at all. And the other- wasn't either. The other part described both not experiencing your own emotions, and not feeling empathy for others. I've always lived with empathy for others. Enough that others have described me before as an empath. I experience others emotions - until it's too intense. I feel, and understand others emotions - although I do not have the language for them. Disconnecting from myself, and from my own emotions and body, to the extent that they didn't exist, never meant disconnecting from others. Because my own feelings didn't exist (which is why I never knew what I enjoyed - for what does 'enjoy' even mean? Bringing that up because I had a therapist for a year 3 or 4 years ago and I'm remembering that conversation. Where he asked me what I enjoyed. And we both realised that I had no idea what enjoy felt like or meant. I still don't know what it feels like. I know what it means. And I know some things I like doing. I've slowly learned over the past couple years things I like, that give me space, that help etc), my own lack of feelings, never negated others. It did negate the terminology, it's something I don't have, an emotional language, not experiencing for them. If I wonder if that's true, all I, or someone else, has to do is speak to my friends and ask them. I've cut off from myself. I didn't cut off from others.
So unless that article I read was incorrect, I gave my answer. That article described alexithymia as not experiencing emotions for oneself, not recognising bodily needs (both true) and not recognising others emotions - not the case for me. Could it be described for just the first, not the second, I've never actually researched the term. Was just putting this down to explain why. Which is something I could have - and have done before - in one sentence. That I grew up taught not to feel, so don't.
6.01. I wondered if I was actually ever going to find the time to put down what I was thinking, I knew I wanted to for someone, and knew that either I'll find the time, or I won't. I actually thought maybe I'd have time in school tomorrow - today - since I've more free lessons and may be bored. I didn't think it would be nearly an hour of writing.... 06.03. I do still hope to sleep a bit. Meant to be teaching at 9.30.
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