Gum on My Shoe

TW: Mention of self-harm and self-injury.

Last week in Exploring Alexithymia and Emotional Blindness I described how hard I find it to communicate my emotions, and that there’s a word for that — alexithymia. I’ve looked further into the topic since then and thought it would be useful to share what I’ve learned. If you struggle to express how you feel, this is for you. What Is Alexithymia? Also called emotional blindness, Alexithymia (literally “no words for emotions”) is a personality trait where you have difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing how you feel. It’s estimated that one person in ten has alexithymia. The proportion is higher in people with certain mental and neurodevelopmental conditions. Given that I only learned the word existed a few weeks ago, it may seem premature to claim it applies to me. That said, I recognise many of its traits and score highly on alexithymia self-assessments. More on those later. The following description by UK charity Autistica resonates strongly with me. People...

And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in. — Jane Austen This post was inspired by a conversation with Fran. She’d shared a piece of writing with me and asked how I felt reading it. Not what I thought about it or whether it could be improved, but how it made me feel . As simple as it sounds, her question brought me up sharp. I didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t that I hadn’t felt anything. I just had no idea how to convey my feelings to her. I didn’t know where to start. In that moment I realised this is a big deal. Because it wasn’t just my feelings about this one passage of Fran’s that eluded me. I’ve been a writer most of my life, but I’ve always found it hard to communicate my emotions in words. I remembered my discomfiture years ago when Fran and I began studying Non-Violent Communication (NVC). This technique focuses on identifying feelings and needs as a means to understanding what’s going on in our lives....

Wife to husband on his return from the office: “What do you mean, ‘How was my day?’ Didn’t you read my blog?” — Cartoon by Denise Dorrance Fran and I began our blog Gum on My Shoe in August 2013. In ten and a half years we’ve published 650 posts covering a wide range of topics, primarily focusing on mental health and supportive friendships. I thought it would be interesting to draw on our experience and address some common misconceptions about blogging and bloggers. 1. We Enjoy Writing It might seem obvious that bloggers enjoy writing. Why else would we do it? In my case, it’s not that I especially enjoy writing. It’s more that I feel moved, even compelled, to write. It’s always been an important part of who I am and how I process and share my experiences. I’ve kept a personal journal for almost half a century. I’ve written poetry, short stories, articles and essays in the fantasy genre, and books. These days writing and publishing a new blog post each week is my primary ...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. Shhhhhhh! A Friend’s Guide to Secrets The Box on the Shelf: A Strategy for Handling Difficult Issues and Situations Lessons of the Night I Wish Our Friendship Could Keep You Safe But I Know it Can’t. And That’s Okay. The Last of the Irish Rover: A Tribute to Shane MacGowan Our Top Posts of the Month (December 2023) How to Use a Spreadsheet for Wellness and Self-Care I’m Weak and What’s Wrong With That? I Hope We All Make It 2023: My Year in Photos and Blog Posts Our most visited pages were: Contact Us News and Appearances Resources Our books About Us Testimonials   Photo by Martin Baker.