From Overthinking to Clarity: Harnessing Your Emotions and Cognition!

#Emotions #Cognition #MentalHealth #SelfRegulation #Mindfulness #BiopsychosocialModel #Alexithymia #Neuroscience #EmotionalIntelligence #CognitiveProcesses #MentalWellness #BrainHealth #EmotionalThermostat #MindOverMatter #Psychology #EmotionalAwareness

https://youtube.com/shorts/2VTlnMoeCMk?feature=share

I'm often at a loss for words for things happening inside my body. Physical things, emotional things. I wish I could express them to you but I've not figured out how. I feel hope and despair at once. I feel alienated and overwhelming compassion for people. The words I use juxtapose them but inside me they are one. What should I call these things?
(We can talk about physical stuff another time.)
@actuallyautistic #actuallyautistic #feelings #mentalhealth #buddhism (?) #alexithymia (?)

This one:
*Difficulty identifying/remembering faces.

I don't know if it's because I don't look at faces much (in person as opposed to on screen, pictures, etc), but I find it very hard to learn faces. I can't even tell if a customer's ID photo is actually them.

I didn't realise it was linked to #alexithymia.

Alexithymia & autism guide: https://embrace-autism.com/alexithymia-and-autism-guide

@actuallyautistic

HE’S JUST LIKE ME FOR REAL

One of my crushes sent me this and it basically hit me in the damn soul and I started crying laughing and had to share it here.

If I don’t know you or trust you, I would rather do ANYTHING ELSE than acknowledge that you’ve just flirted with me, but believe me, I know, and believe me, I’m Fucking Panicking. Often for YEARS. OOOPS

I do really like this guy, though…

-Lazarus

This #autistic #alexithymia is so hard to deal with sometimes, especially when I'm under a lot of stress. For me, it can take a while for an emotion to register as a physical feeling, and then it's also hard to understand the connection between the physical sensation of feeling an emotion and the emotion itself. Much of the time I feel sensations that make no sense and appear to have no cause.

A lot of what I go through these days is that I see something upsetting, but I don't immediately feel it in my body. Then some random amount of time later – minutes, hours, days even – I suddenly feel sick to my stomach, or I get the chills, or something equally mysterious. And I have no idea what it's about, so I worry if I'm getting sick, or if something else is wrong. I'm just starting to be able to notice when this happens, and understand that this upset stomach might be about something that upset me a while ago.

I know this is just another confounding part of autistic sensory and emotional processing. But it's confusing and exhausting and I wish it wasn't like this all the time. No wonder I stim so much these days - I have a lot of shit to process and my body needs some relief from that.
#ActuallyAutistic

You know what I would love? A mood detector to alert me when I am mad so I know to back off on responses before I start a fight...

"I just want to be on the outside looking in and dwell on a feeling of being forlorn-"

_eat, have tea and put the heat up to a sensible temperature_

_fine now._

"...wait that was just my body reminding me I have needs again?"

"CAN YOU JUST ASK THE NORMAL WAY PLEASE"

Emotional blindness
Is a great name.
Just like with
Visual blindness,
You bump into stuff
Unexpectedly.

Plus there's always a chance
To fall off a cliff.

I'm waving at you
From the bottom of one.
Not much difference,
The view is worse.
Would be quite comfy
If I still had
My executive function.

#Poetry #ShortPoem #Smallpoems
#Autism #ActuallyAutistic #Alexithymia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

Alexithymia:

I think I experience shame and anxiety in almost exactly the same ways. Much of what I think is anxiety is really shame, and I've been trying hard to unpack that the last few years, but nope, they still feel the same. It would be useful to know the difference, because the best steps for attending to these feelings can be different.

I once knew an autistic girl who couldn't tell the difference between hunger and anxiety. This is a common form of alexithymia, not just being unable to know what you're feeling, but mixing feelings up.

I am often good at knowing how I'm feeling due to habits I formed attending CoDA 12-Step meetings in my formative years in the mid-90s. They had a spot on the sign-in sheet to label your emotional state. It's a good habit.

But I do have alexithymia blindspots in many areas, and still have old habits of minimizing. "Anxiety" is the generic dumping ground for many of my negative feelings, probably.

Does the #Alexithymia come from being #ActuallyAutistic or does it come from the trauma we endure throughout the years of growing up in a world not configured for us?

Personal #ActuallyAutistic struggle: #alexithymia making me question my actual feelings on things and whether I truly believe them or not, solely because even despite my age I still don't understand how my feelings work or how to tell when I feel a certain way on said thing.

And so I'm either non-committal or overly-committal and end up with less than ideal situations and bad decisions because my vibe check is defective

#Introduction

The kids I grew up with knew I was "different", but my parents and school insisted I was normal. Now I've explored #Autism #Prosopagnosia #Alexithymia and #Aphantasia and have an idea what was going on, but then I thought everyone saw the world like I did, just coped better. I coped by becoming a #PluralSystem by age three when I realized my girl self would have to be hidden. After six "guy" IDs, I'm now back being that girl. Still running the system, but with more E and less T...

Age nine I was forced to wear #Bifocal #PlusLensTheory glasses every waking moment. Shattered my body sense and #CognitiveMap - https://www.psychoros.com/consumed-by-the-light/ Spent endless days of lonely boredom exploring the ~30° wedges of #SpatialViewCells and the flat dioramas between them. Now I'm rebuilding a 3D world around my body, where #HeadDirectionCells can have a single basis and #DorsalStream depth can pop out of the flat distance like content from a random dot stereogram.

Despite all that, I've been online since #ARPAnet and #DJNR, wrote the first magazine article with simultaneous code distribution (via 8" floppies in the post), coded fab robots to move 6" & 8" Silicon wafers, built my (almost) independent #SolarPV and #SolarThermal house (7K lines of C++ from 1998, 42 device outs), and evolved an audio system with bandwidth from DC to a half MHz. Helped raise four unique kids, as adult minds in young bodies. Still mystify most of the adults I encounter...

#Introduction The kids I grew up with knew I was "different", but my parents and school insisted I was normal. Now I've explored #Autism #Prosopagnosia #Alexithymia and #Aphantasia and have an idea what was going on, but then I thought everyone saw the world like I did, just coped better. I coped by becoming a #PluralSystem by age three when I realized my girl self would have to be hidden. After six "guy" IDs, I'm now back being that girl. Still running the system, but with more E and less T...

#introduction

I decided to make an intro toot before it becomes possible for this to make it too far out into the Fediverse. It might already be too late.

I'm Krona. I'm typically a lurker. I'm sure I'm #neurodivergent, but I doubt I'll ever reach the level of certainty necessary to confidently say that I'm Autistic (and possibly an ADHDer). I'm #disabled but new to thinking of myself that way. I'm a #BIPOC, #nonbinary (#agender specifically), and #aroace. I have #alexithymia and am most comfortable when my environment and the people around me are neutral and calm.

I work from home as a #SoftwareEngineer and am currently only working on websites. The languages I use the most are C# and the standard front-end ones. I mostly work with Vue and TypeScript.

I spend most of my free time playing #RPGs (mainly on #PS4, #Android, and #PC), watching #fantasy and #SciFi tv shows, and doing #genealogy and #Autism research. I sometimes also attempt to #write fiction. I used to #read fantasy fiction voraciously but somehow managed to forget how to do that. I spend too much time obsessively reading news stories and blog posts instead. I also forgot how to watch #anime and read #manga.