Gum on My Shoe

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....

Let it go, let it go. Can't hold it back anymore. (Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. “Let It Go.”) In a previous article I discussed three kinds of conversation you might encounter in a mutually caring relationship. I call these “My Turn, Your Turn,” “It Will Be Your Turn in a Minute,” and “I Need to Talk Right Now.” Each has its place but the third is arguably the most critical — and perilous — because we’re at our most vulnerable when we allow ourselves to share powerful emotions. There are times when we want and need to just let the words flow, to “dump” (although I hate that expression), to express whatever it is we are feeling or thinking without being interrupted, questioned, or judged. In this article I want to explore how to let the words flow — to vent — as safely and productively as possible. Who, How, When, and Where It goes without saying that it’s best to vent to someone you trust; someone who can hold space without judging you or...

This article began as a fourteen minute audio clip recorded on my way into work. The recording is a bit rambling in places but I’m starting there because that’s how I was feeling that day. Flat. I’ve edited for clarity and added some other relevant material. You can listen to the recording here on our YouTube channel . Good morning. I wanted to see if I could capture a little of how I’ve been feeling since some time yesterday. It’s what I tend to call “flat.” That’s verbal shorthand for a sense of feeling fairly low. Not actively low or depressed; it’s more like the absence of any specific emotion than the presence of a negative one, if that makes sense. Over the past year or so I’ve noticed it occurring every now and again. It doesn’t usually last more than a day or so and it doesn’t impact me severely if I don’t engage with it too much. If I do engage with it, or if something happens to exacerbate things, it has the potential to take me bit lower but when it first occurs it’s ...