"What’s wrong with you?!"

Alexithymia is defined as the "...inability to identify and describe emotions in the self." (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia) for a brief overview on the condition. Many people with Aspergers Syndrome are described as lacking empathy and lacking feeling, including myself, but this is, as I have said before, rarely the case. The feelings are there, we just have trouble associating these emotions to others and identifying them in others. Also, those with Aspergers often have emotions, we just have difficulty relating to them when others express them. In the words of the immortal Mr. Spock, "They are just not logical."

I have wondered, however, if my own difficulties with emotions is because of my Aspergers, which is very mild according to my "supports" and my family, or due to the co-morbid existence of Alexithymia. I often do not recognize emotions in others except through explicit signs (crying, sniffling, explicitly telling me, etc.). Also, I have difficulty identifying, in myself, when I am experiencing an emotion, much less identifying which emotion I am experiencing. In fact, I never used to understand emotions at all, and until my Aspergers' diagnosis 2.5 years ago, I just described myself as, "not having any emotions at all."

Yet, something happened this morning that really made me consider what was really going on with me. Is my apparent lack of emotion, and inability to control emotions due to my Aspergers Syndrome or an undiagnosed case of Alexithymia? This morning, I heard of the passing of someone dear to a number of people whom I am close to. This person, whom many people in the room had known for many years, was one of the kindest, most sincere, caring, TRUE people that I have met in my entire life. I only had known them for a year, but many of those in the room had known this person for upwards of 20 years. There was, of course, a lot of sadness in the room. Yet, I was only able to identify this emotion due to the auditory and visual clues of those around me. I felt no emotional response to this news, despite the fact that I had known this person. My only response was to close my eyes and do some deep breathing. Later, I spoke to someone to verify that this was (1) an appropriate response to this news and (2) that I was not just some sort of monster.

This was a lot like other times in my life when people close to me passed away. My grandfathers passed away when I was 9 and 29. When the second one passed away, everyone at the school I was teaching at expressed their sympathy, but I could not identify exactly what I was feeling. It took my wife and my co-workers pointing out that I was walking around in a fog, and seemed "out of it" for three weeks before I recognized that something was wrong, but I still could not identify that it was sadness. I suffer from depression - it took me a long time to identify something was wrong, but it was my actions rather than my feelings that told me there was a problem. I thought, though, the fatigue was because of a physical illness, not emotional. In college, I broke up with a girlfriend and spent hours convincing her it was OK, having no emotional response to the charged situation - that is until I woke up crying at 3:00 AM, not knowing that I was upset about it until then.

So, in looking into it, I have realized that I am both an Aspie and Alexithymic, however both of these conditions are, as far as I can tell, mild. My Aspergers is mild enough that it is difficult to notice it unless I am stressed out. My Alexithymia is, in my opinion, mild, since I do not exhibit at least one of the symptoms of it:

1. difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
2. difficulty describing feelings to other people
3. constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a scarcity of fantasies
4. a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style.

I fit into categories 1, 2, and 4, but not 3. People have told me that I am creative and imaginative. This is partly because, due to my Aspergers, I can see the world differently than other people. This unique perspective gives me ideas that others might not have thought of. However, I rarely fantasize about things. I am a realist, a real-world Mr. Spock.

On the other hand, I DO have emotions, I just have difficulty recognizing them. And, whether is it neurological, like my Aspergers, or psychological due to holding down my extreme emotions, I don't know. Plus, as my friend said when I spoke with her, this is just "...part of who (I am), and that's OK." I never really had responses to things like this, and I should look at this as allowing me to "...steady the ship in times of turbulence." Sometimes, it makes me feel like an anchor making it even more unbalanced and, on occasion, "swamping the canoe," but I think I need to look on the bright side of things.

So, I will take this time to reflect on my issues and try to make lemonade out of the lemons of my life, Alexithymia and all!