Alexithymia and complex PTSD
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2018
- Are you struggling with naming your emotions and feelings? Can you describe feelings and identify them? People who have been exposed to prolonged trauma, abuse and neglect often loose that ability, which is called alexithymia... here are some tips on how to work through this....
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I’m 62 and only now do I recognise my emotions. Taken loads of reading, watching people, learning to ask people to explain things to me….62! I still feel numb most of the time but with brain storming in a journal I can uncover what that feeling is I have in my body and give it a name.
thanks for sharing. it's hard work to "re-wire" our brain. and it takes so much patience.
it helped me to accept my numbness, thinking that this is what my body needs in this moment to heal
Thank you Tanja. You explained it perfectly. It was very easy to understand how you broke it down with example. Makes it more relatable. I love your videos and your amazing way of keeping it real in a personal lived perspective. Lots of love and rainbows.
Thank you Rhonda. you timed the question perfectly as I was just reading about it in some of my old old therapy notes ( I don't often go through them, out of fear I might slight into crisis again...but there were so many exercises I did that I can't remember without going back to the notes lol) glad you find them useful :)
So nice to find someone else who has same thing. Such a relief. You are so brave and inspirational. You help me. Love and rainbows
you certainly are not alone with this :) so glad you find the videos helpful
I've been working on this for over a year now but this is the first time I went looking for others' experiences on alexithymia. Mine came from abuse and neglect throughout my isolated childhood. I want other people to know, too, that you can absolutely recover!
My experience was a bit different because I researched a lot of psychology, and became good at guessing which emotions I or another person was feeling. But a lot of the time, the guess was a bit off or didn't address the complexity of emotions, so I dealt with an immense amount of frustration and confusion. The best way to describe it for me is that the emotion would be out of the corner of my eye--I knew in a very unconscious way that it was something, but it was vague and impossible to focus on.
Now, I can tell something is happening; I can see it has a form, and often now I can understand and relate to others' descriptions of emotions. A lightbulb will go on, and I'll say, "OH, so this is what they were talking about!" I would often have guesses of what different emotions felt like, but they were usually off or oversimplified. I absolutely think this happened because I got all my emotional information from TV and movies during my very lonely teenage years. Something I see now when I watch movies is that they often sort of summarize emotional experiences and what is presented is a "between the lines" sort of thing where the full meaning is implied. I can suppose the subtext now, but it used to be impossible for me. The upside of this is that I actually enjoy movies and such now because I can see their thought process and state of emotions.
At this point I can identify most things as a feeling, and as different from other feelings; right now, the challenge is in descriptions! I never thought it would be this damn difficult to find the words to express what I'm feeling in the moment. But I know it will get better with practice, like the awareness of emotions happening did.
My life has already improved SO much now that I can tell I'm feeling something, and do my best to communicate it. It was horrible before when I couldn't express my distress or figure out what would help. Now I can tell people if I'm not feeling well or need something, and it makes a world of difference.
:) thanks for sharing. Our brain truly has tremendous capacity to change
_I want other people to know, too, that you can absolutely recover!_
You can recover only if you have Secondary Alexithymia (such as yours), you cannot recover if you have Primary Alexithymia.
@@stephenhowe4107 hello what does mean primary ?can you explain to me thanks
@@stephenhowe4107 hi have you had secondary alexithymia? Please tell me what is secondary alexithymia?
@@faisalbi1330 : No, because I have primary Alexithymia. It is common in autistic people.
Primary Alexithymia is basically genetic, you are born with it. You won't be able to recover from this.
Secondary Alexithymia is where your emotions may be altered by some kind of shock. Think "Tommy" in the Who's Rock Opera. But the author of clip says she recovered and she is right. Through therapy you can recover, you can be unshocked.
The difference between the two is the difference between nature vs nurture. The latter can be fixed (Secondary Alexithymia). The former cannot be (Primary Alexithymia), just alleviated.
Hi Tanja. I stopped speaking to my mother last year and I was so surprised at how my emotions were overwhelmed and of course, I couldnt experience the emotions. I have severe insomnia and only discovered Alexithymia last night. Im 54 and have known always that there was something wrong with my emotions. I finally worked through my grief in the middle of last year and I was so overjoyed,I thought my cptsd was mostky past.. In the past two weeks I have separated from my daughter who is now 28. Hving gone through so much grief last year and knowing how Im not able to deal well with my emotions, I thought I was handling it well. Then the twitching and wierdness began when I was meditating and after going intona panic about hving a phobia again, I realised it was my nervous system dysregulation and searching for ways to unwind myself, Im now doing research ...again. just when I think Iv finally got it, I get triggered and start again. I suppose there is relief in recognising justbhow tense I am and being able tonfind ways to deal with it to be honest, I am my own therapist. Therapists have ket me down terribly and I suppose only we ourselves can know how we do or dont feel. Thank you for your courage in making this video to help others like us. We should have a fb group for this. ❤️ Love and light on your journey
my heart goes out to you. I have a couple of free FB groups and an online Thriveroo Community Membership you are welcome to check out and join
details should be in the description below the video
@@TanjaWindegger ❤️
Anxiety was the hardest for me to iidentify as well. I never identified it as a matter of fact. I thought I suffered from depression until I read in the report I collected from the institution I was treated, that I mixed up depression with anxiety. At that point I must have been suffering from depersonalization for about 8 years and probably longer.
I hope you have access to some professional help with this. sending you an extra dose of love & rainbows...
I had no idea I was like this because how can u know what u never experienced or that there was even a deficit? Alexthymia explains it all
so true! before I heard about alexithymia, i had no idea either
Same. I could name and express emotions of others, but didn’t realize I couldn’t name and express my own feelings. Didn’t know there was a deficit on my part either.
I have been trying to work on it but it is difficult to recognize something when you don't know what it is or how to make a connection. To me emotions or feelings were more like concepts not actually something that existed as in people tell eachother "I'm so happy for you!" When something good happened to that person. It never occurred to me that they actually felt the feeling of happiness when they said that. I thought it was just a courtesy and civil practice.
I wonder when Tanja loved herself? She expressed herself very well from experience, Tanja is an excellent teacher & went through the same pain as me & I wonder if she even went through more or?
Everyone has to go through pain & this teacher happens to be excellent in sharing how she gets through it!😰
😂🤣Very well done😂🤣
Thank you :)
Therapist: "What are you feeling right now?" Me, visibly shaking with a trauma response: "Nothing. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little cold?" 🤣 I feel emotions from current events without a problem but can't feel emotions from previous traumas at all. And who would want to? Turns out that turning down trauma response emotions also turns down the feel-good emotions. It's a process but growth is where it's at. Thanks for this as I try to understand this diagnosis.
Great insights! thanks for sharing. not being able to feel when talking about previous traumas is a coping mechanism trying to protect us... like you said it's a process. sending you an extra dose of love and rainbows...
Yeah I do this! I can identify and explain emotions in literally everyone else (my other alter headmates included) but I can’t do it for myself! 😂 a year into therapy I can - mostly - reliably identify: happiness, sadness, loneliness, tiredness, pride, enthusiasm, worry, confidence and most recently actual anger which was a massive milestone 😁 usually everyone dissociates with anger (Alec is the only headmate who can handle proper anger) but here I am getting pissed off and standing my ground! Bloody marvellous haha - Jay
sounds like you are doing some hard work there. Isn't it great when we can sense some progress! take time and celebrate :)
I always was forced to disassociate my anger because I was never allowed to think of getting angry around my ABUSER'S just like every victim! Cause that's just the way it is unfortunately😰😫😓
But we can make it through with great teacher's of experience like Tanja😄😃😀😂🤣😆😅🤣😂😅😆😁😄😃😀
Thank's a lot for sharing your experience with us! It really helps me, as I think my boyfriend has this traits. I actually did the Toronto alexithymia test with him and he scored pretty high. I can't diagnose him, I know that. I am struggling with that in our relationship a lot, as we can't have discussions (especially If i show emotions or when asking him how he feels about somthing). He's reacting strongly to that and just leaves. I tried to show him how important it is to recognise oneselves emotions and that he should Work on that. Unfortunately he does'nt See a problem with that. I really Love him, and I don't think I have the right to try and „change“ him, but I think ignoring this won't be good for him in the Long Run. Do you, as someone who knows how he feels, have any advice for me? Especially regarding him not seeing this „problem“ and not letting me help him? You can already imagine that he does'nt want to Talk to a psychiatrist/psychotherapist :(
accepting him for who is and how he currently experiences emotions or not. If you try to change other people, you are sending the message that the way you are is not good enough for me... that is alwasy met with resistance
I have this along with CPTSD. For me, emotions and extreme emotional expressions are part of what’s triggering to me. So when someone would strongly express themself, all I could feel were heightened reactions to childhood violence and emotional abuse I witnessed repeatedly.
I literally felt like a little kid all over again and I’d shut down, despite wanting to speak up and communicate better. And it’d take me days to weeks to process just ONE emotion I may have felt over ONE interaction with all my various family members.
It would incite panic attacks and/or dissociation against my will, which looked like I was ignoring or being selfishly absorbed in myself. I wasn’t. I was having repetitive, intrusive trauma symptoms that I couldn’t even recognize because I had no idea what I was feeling or why.
I had no idea the physical sensations in my body were/are telling me what I’m feeling emotionally. My parents aren’t really emotionally intelligent people, and so I didn’t really receive proper mirroring.
For my part, accepting me right where I was and giving voice to what I might be feeling would have been helpful. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t voice the extent of the damage caused to me by trauma, abuse, and neglect due to the severely of the effects on my cognitive functions, and also wasn’t emotionally equipped to cope with all the traumas, nor emotionally supported properly through them (thus the neglect). And my verbal communication skillsets were severely lacking due to social anxiety caused by fear of people abusing/neglecting me and also fear of the outcome of speaking out about my abuses as a child which would have caused huge tidal waves in my whole family system, potentially causing CPS (Child Protective Services) to get involved and being put in the system and separated from my parents and siblings maybe permanently.
There are SO many factors that go into what causes CPTSD and or alexithymia in a person.
For me, I also had severe head trauma when I was 8, which I believe also caused regular PTSD, which later developed into CPTSD after many many more traumas and abuse accumulated with little to no access to reprieve or actual help for me, due to various factors.
Did your emotional flashbacks reduce after you studied emotional inteligents?
studying emotional intelligence will help you in so many areas (relationships, flashbacks, grounding, understanding yourself better ... ) emotional flashbacks were one of the last things that reduced for me. And I think the biggest contributor to reducing my emotional flashbacks was being able to feel worthy and be more loving, caring and compassionate towards myself.
yes i find it hard to know whats wrong with me
we missed some important developmental milestones because of all the trauma... these are all normal responses to abnormal events... but our brain has tremendous capacity to change :)
Camtasia? 😏
is this about the video editing program I use? yes it's camtasia 😀
I love ❤️ your videos ... please check out Dr Joe Dispenza.. he’s awesome 😎
thanks :)