Understanding What You're Feeling-Anyone Else not able to?

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OP: It's the strangest thing because I know I feel angry, or I know I feel frustrated (I've never felt happy, if you get my meaning), but trying to explain why I feel angry or frustrated is impossible. It's like a gap in my mind where the words simply refuse to rub together. People don't even understand it (especially when they ask me, "Are you all right?" and I answer, "I don't know," and then I get the usual, "Yes, you do know ...") and the fact that my NLD gives people the impression that I'm actually articulate pisses me off. Along with NLD, I'm also an Aspie. It's like being trapped between two worlds. I want my brain to work and it just won't.

I only suffer when I'm around people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia
I *think* this is what you guys are talking about!

I can identify anything I'm feeling and usually describe it. Apparently I didn't or couldn't when I was younger, but I dont know which it was. Is this something that's trainable?

Yeah that's a good way of putting it. I can identify with that.

I can identify basic emotions, but anything more complex translates to me as anxiety or a complete blank. I know in my comprehension I should feel something but don't know what I am feeling at all, it's like a blank page. I've always hated the 'how do you feel question' too as until diagnosis I had no idea why I was seen as either repressed or insane by psyches/social workers.

Knowing the term alexathymia helps SO much in comprehension as to why these things happen.

"Fill out this mood chart for me every day so we can follow your progress"

That didn't work out too well

LOL! No.

Glad I went to the second page before I reposted this lol.

Yeah, Alexithymia is common among Aspies it would seem. I have it as well, though most specifically with Anger, Grief, Love and Contentment. Irritation I can do, small bouts of happiness, laughter, and of course Fear, the rest being pretty much non-existent or non-identifiable. At least, I don't believe I've ever experience those four in particular.

I don't quite know what I feel, believe it or not. Especially when I feel...sad, I guess I should say. It's like...physical pain as well, I'm like, 'I can't go on like this'. It's quite difficult to explain.

sometimes my feelings are really complex. The anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach can accompany affection, sadness, anger, fear...sometimes happiness and sadness gets blended together until I don't know what I'm feeling.

I am very aware of my emotions (presence of), but I can only deal with them if I distill them into something I can grasp cognitively.

I'm extremely aware of my emotions.

Ugh, emotions, I try to avoid thinking about those -_-

Like, what am I now? Happy? But I don't feel particularly happy. Sad or angry? But those don't fit either. I'm feeling more than nothing, but what's the word to describe it? I'm just me-ish right now, no other way I can think of to put it. And when I can identefy an emotion, it's always tied to another. Anger (An emotion I cannot maintain for more than 10 minutes), sadness, and frustration go together. So does happiness, being exited, and anxiety. And which one is the one I should name as my current emotion? Once I was asked how I was feeling by a person just passing by me. I was utterly stumped. There are only two answers to that question in my opinion: good and okay (Okay for when you're not feeling so good), but which was I? Even if I wasn't good, I knew I would have just said good anyway, so why couldn't I respond? In the end, I said I had to get back to them on that.

Sorry for the long post, lol XD.

I often have trouble identifying my emotions, and I don't react to most emotions in a "normal" way, which probably just compounds the situation. The emotions I can identify are ones that I have visual referents to. I can identify loneliness (it's being surrounded by people but none of them have faces) and depression (sometimes-- that's laying on the floor with my face buried into the floorboards). I can usually tell if I am feeling content, because that's what I have labeled a less-than-average amount of anxiety. I can usually identify anxiety as well, because it's what I always feel. But laughing doesn't mean I'm happy (whatever that really is) and crying doesn't mean I'm sad (whatever that is, too). I think what I go off of emotionally is my anxiety level. That's one emotion I've got down, since I feel it constantly. I feel better when there's less anxiety and worse when there is more (except for when I've had a crush on a guy or am waiting ofr something I like to happen, which increases anxiety!). It's really no wonder why they are so confusing!

I can specify what emotion is what but how I feel will change faster than I can sort it out. Like I might be angry I could scream, and do scream, but eventually it will build to a point and then just feel a blank and there is nothing there and definitely not a feeling about anything just like my mind didn't like the direction it was going and simply turned around. Happy is just not an option -- I am virtually never gleeful, although I've learned to smile and it will reassure people at work that I am not going to hurt them. When I do feel okay for any length of time it will usually turn into a kind of sad, but it doesn't last long either. It's like the anger where it will build and then my mind will just blank on it and then it's like it returns to zero.

If my emotions are mixed or too intense I often get very confused and frustrated because I just can't put my finger on it, if I'm alone and feeling this way my natural reaction is to start crying because I can't do anything else if I don't know what the emotions are.

I do get tears as well. I just feel empty and cry out of nowhere really. I'll just sit down on my bed and I think there is just nothing there at all.