For years I thought my emotional system was defective. I was wrong.
Alexithymia is not an absence. It is a “low-noise” operating system optimized for logic rather than biochemical storms. I explore this paradox between neurodivergence and neural architecture in this essay.
You can read it for free (no paywall) here:
https://medium.com/the-unexpected-autistic-life/the-fish-that-no-longer-wanted-to-fly-06a1305113cb?sk=e6828f387679f8ff43429d287970dff4

#autism #actuallyautistic #psychology #audhd #alexithymia #neurodiversity #neurodivergent #science

This has been percolating in my #neurodivergent head for a while now...

I don't think the #autism #spectrum is an adequate way to view autism in the modern context of #neurodiversity.

I think there's a much broader neurodivergence spectrum that encompasses autism, #ADHD, #alexithymia, #RSD, #dyslexia, sensory processing disorder, etc etc.

Us #neurodifferent peeps are so often such an unseparable coagulation of many of the above, it's the only perspective that makes sense to me.

Thoughts?

my compass
always points home
--I'm far sighted

#Poetry #Senryu
#Alexithymia #ActuallyAutistic

Always a great professooonal development session when the trainer, a former counselor, says to look into the employee assistance program to find a therapist.

(It was about saying I might have #alexithymia without naming it.)

I need therapy, but there's internal resistance.

I know it would be adversarial. I would do it because my wife thinks I need it. I had a terrible experience with it because my mother thought I needed it. Went because her alternative was having me arrested and sent to into the juvenile court system.

I had the handful of therapists twisted into knots as a teen. As a middle aged dude with a psychology degree? It's unfair to them.

Plus, I hated clinical psychology. My classmates who went into it were the worst. It attracted the mentally broken needing to heal themselves by helping others.

I also doubt they can help me. It's a laundry list of issues I need to figure out where to start. #Autism, ADHD, ASPD, RSD, PDA, #alexithymia , insomnia, lack of boundaries, lack of asserting needs... all leading burnout. Meltdowns, shutdowns. I feel like I will spend 2 years just finding someone worth the time.

I finally landed on what's been going on with me for the past year (two years, really, with symptoms much much worse this year)—vestibular migraines. Really regular vestibular migraines with varying degrees of intensity. And then failing to take care of myself appropriately leading to a blur of migraines blended into one another with no clear beginning or end.

I'm finally eating more regularly. I have to use timers and I have to be careful about meal planning.

... It's so strange to me how much easier it is to take care of myself now that I know what's going on because I have a full understanding of what is happening and why. These solutions are, to me, very intuitive; the body will tell you what it needs. But. Without actual lines drawn between the dots it just felt like chaos despite the intuition. I was chasing solutions instead of calmly choosing what I could feel was needed…

... Which is weird for me to experience, but is nevertheless how it is. Part of this is #alexithymia adding to the confusion and chaos. Another part, I think, stems a bit from a lack of self-trust and the confidence that I actually know what I need. That has been a theme for me lately: trusting myself in terms of what I need instead of listening to what others tell me that I need and what I'm doing 'wrong.’

#vestibularmigraine #actuallyautistic #audhd

Music is such a great alternative to direct communication sometimes, especially (but not exclusively) if you're a neurospicy person who experiences any level of alexithymia, verbal shutdowns, or emotional dysregulation.

We often cannot tell people how we're doing or feeling if they ask us.

Even if we know how we're feeling, have the ability to form the words, and have the emotional regulation to describe everything, there are so many other factors that might make it too difficult, even overwhelming, to do so.

By comparison, sharing a song -- even one without any lyrics -- can do the audio equivalent of showing the answer more than we can tell it with words.

We need to remember to do this more often.

#NeurospicyThoughts #neurospicy #neurodivergent #alexithymia #EmotionalDysregulation #VerbalShutdown #music

"Internalizing Symptoms in Men: The Role of Masculine Norms, #alexithymia and Emotion Regulation" ; new article from Vincent O. Mancini, Julia Ditzer, Jack D. Brett, James J. Gross & David A. Preece published in Sex Roles.

A great read, linking theory to practice. Good job!

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-025-01615-0

Maybe it is actually #alexithymia speaking, but I am pretty sure I can’t feel hate.
Like, I can feel despise, disgust, loathe, horror, fear etc - but hate? Hate assumes certain amount of passion, strength - it’s something too big to bother to maintain for someone you don’t like.

Maybe it’s just my #autistic negation to use definitive labels - like the hesitancy to consider what I can feel ‘love’ or to call someone a friend.

@autistics
#neurodivergent
#autism
#AuDHD