New Here - wheres the cure :-)

Personalities.
Predictions (based on personal experience)
I think these should be considered in the extreme of the range. I'm not sure exactly where *I* am in the range but I predict it's towards the extreme.

Alexithymics are adverse to drama. In social situation we attempt to keep the environment calm and will retract into our shells if we can't control that. We can be quite witty and charming in neutral emotional environments.
We have reasoned out our moral code. We believe in it much more than those that haven't constructed their own code. We tend to get "righteous" if anyone crosses that moral line. This includes incoherent rage that may be expressed both somatically and with the reasoned out vocal facsimile of "rage" (using extremely emotional words without truly comprehending the affect).
In emotional social situations we'll be backing towards the fringe of the crowd if not making a bee-line away from the situation. If we can't get away we are most uncomfortable.
We have an ability (mostly to totally unrecognized) to "make ourselves sick". Since emotion is expressed somatically the fear of social situations can cause somatic responses like headaches, earaches, back pain, nausea, etc. Other unavoidable emotional situation may be dealt with in the same way.
The data dump - ask an Alexi a question and expect a curt reply *or* a concise logical derivation of what you really meant and the associated data *or* a long winded elaboration of all that they know of the subject.
The answer guy. The guru. The information robot. A lot of us naturally fall into this role. We have a logical, skeptical mind, and no social skills. It starts with the totally unplanned gathering of information for yourself, someone asks a question, you answer. You just had a non-emotional social interaction. That's what Alexi want. This can cause a fantastic journey into information. This will be non-emotional data. Or at least we don't consider it emotional. An unemotional logical argument is nirvana.
Eureka moments. Because of the way that Alexi gather bits of data and logically construct their world there are clouds of unconnected information floating about. When the critical information is obtained the cloud coalesces and crystallizes, cross connecting the info and meshing it with the world construct. Your entire body lights up. Remember when you learned how to read?
Now imagine studying a subject for twenty years and the finding the critical bit.
When I figured out what Alexi really was I couldn't hardly move for about 3 hours. Longer and stronger than an orgasm.

Physically punishing an alexithymic child will have amplified affect. Since the somatic and emotional lines are wired together a physical sensation is emotional - yes, even if the child does not recognize it. You've seen those kids. They hurt themselves, look up get a weird look on their face, then many seconds later start to cry. "You didn't hurt yourself *that* bad, quit your crying" Ah, but it's emotional reaction incoherently mixed with physical pain. Any emotional manipulation gets physically felt - still incoherently.

This is actually funny;
I just figured out "depersonalized". No, really. Every time I read that I thought "I am very aware of myself as a person, therefore I must be "personalized"?". This shows I *get* it - I don't plan on taking any of this off line. I'm a character in a fascinating neuropsychological forensics mystery.
chuckle chuckle (intellectual irony?)

Can I dare to predict?
Since the somatic and emotional wires are connected and the different emotions are indistinguishable from each other . . .
Physical self damage isn't probable? I would get "emotional" (still not feeling it) and I'd lock up. And the "exquisitivley tactile" part? Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl - literally. That phrase is in the venacular for a reason.
[edit]
When I first wrote this I had "self damage is probable?" and then applied that to myself and chickened out. Further research shows that it is in the data set
[/edit]
I do have a remarkable ability for not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have been in the wrong place but wasn't there when "stuff happened". I've alway felt I had an innate sense for self-preservation. I'll follow a hunch if I feel I'm in danger. Logical? It's *not* fear.

I'd say marijuana use would be "above the rate of the average population". To me - I don't as much smoke for "getting high" but for how I feel the next day. I smoke at night before I go to bed. It lets me sleep and if maintained at a constant rate over time gets me into a de-stressed intellectual mode where I can easily concentrate on task for hours. If I over do it I get "flighty" where it's hard to stay on task and I flit from one project to another. Not enough and I get tense, my brain accelerates way too fast and I tend to "gimp" more. Chronic pain was more frequent and with longer episodes when I quit completely.
I can't imagine being addicted to anything. I probably shouldn't say . . . but I've tried a few drugs looking for "effect". None held sway. I quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey, started smoking again 4 years later (worked on the flightline in a maintenance van packed with smokers - we couldn't smoke on the flightline so everyone smoked in the van) and then quit cold turkey again 5(?) years later. I didn't quit because "it was bad for me". I quit because it cost too much. I quit smoking marijuana for a year when I made another attempt at getting diagnosed at Kaiser when I had private health insurance for the very first time in my life. It was logical to try and get to baseline in an effort to get an accurate diagnosis. I was miserable but tried to convince myself that it was just my subconscious wanting to get high and that it would eventually give up. I gave in after 14 months. My application for medical marijuana was a shoe-in. Chronic pain, anti-depressants, Vicodin - it couldn't be worse than those. Though I hate that the law is abused and that dosages are not controlled. (logical moral code)


I read something about alexithymia being connected (or not) to a difficulty in communications between the hemispheres.
Here's some weird ancedotals;
When learning CAD I found an odd ability. I could draw on the graphics tablet with a puck in my right hand while typing with my left. The puck right button was the return key. It would weird people out but I never knew why. I can't type without looking at the keyboard. I actually flunked a typing class. I just can't get my left and right hands coordinated. I tend to type the letters out of order when pecking with two hands. I type faster with one hand than I do with two, due to less correcting.
If both left and right hands aren't performing the same task then everything is cool.
Failed music - meaning; tried to learn - cornet, guitar, drums, harmonica and didn't get anywhere past learning how the device functioned and playing a few patterns. I could never "get" it.
At the science museum the galvanic skin conductor would fascinate me. All my family could only get the light bar partially lit. My mom could barely move it. I only needed two pinkies on the pads to max it out.
We went back for three years in a row - worked the same every time.
I have uncannily quick reactions. Emotions make me lock up, and emotional input has a delayed reaction. But physically reacting in the real world happens *very* quickly. I first noticed it in drivers education. We had that "hit the brakes when the light goes on" machine. I was twice as quick as anyone else in the class. They tried to figure out how I was cheating.
Once after class a student was handing out prewrapped snacks by tossing them. I didn't know I was included (socially blind) and had looked down as she started to toss them left to right. I looked up as the snack came to within about 2 feet of me. I snatched it out of the air before it reached me. I was incredibly embarrased when everyone in the class freaked out. "wow man! that was like a kung fu movie!" I went into that delayed reaction "puzzled look" and went quiet. In about 30 seconds I could hardly move or speak. Weird eh?
Theorize that bypassing emotional processing decreases reaction time?
Wow. Theorize crimes of passion/reaction. Reacting without emotional processing. (hah! I use to play paintball and *have* shot people before they could react when surprised - completely out of my control - didn't matter who's team they were on. I wouldn't buy a real gun after that (logical moral code))
Theorize that at extremes, death by remorse? The somatic reaction can be very strong (again - even if you don't recognize it). Alexithymics would be the most vulnerable *and* react without emotional processing. (why would anyone call us "cold"? )

I'm starting to feel like a character in a Clint Eastwood movie . . .

This is getting fascinating. I really didn't think behavior could be so well predicted.
Alexithymics are basically synaesthetes who's emotions and tactile/somatic pathways are wired together bypassing the intellect. We physically feel emotion but not coherently - the intellect can sort emotions, the body can't. We are the most logical humans on the planet. Emotions have nothing to do with our decisions. Our input stimuli is only the world around us. Our world is visual, aromatic, and aural. We don't modify these inputs with emotional connections. Tactile gets a special place, it's the only sense connected to emotion even though it's incoherent emotion. With that connection comes tactile imagination.

The intellect unused for emotions is put to work organizing, connecting, proving, disproving, and general "crunching" all the input data.

We get into tactile/emotional/somatic loops and the doctors call this "psychosomatic".
We can't distinguish emotions - emotions cause physical, tactile results - the tactile results cause confusion which causes more
emotional distress (that we don't recognize) - that causes more physical symptoms.
Physical trauma creates indistinguishable emotions that are felt somatically, amplifiying the results of the intial trauma. The emotion connected to the trauma causes *more* tactile sensations. Throw in tactile imagination . . .
Is this not obvious?

The current literature is horrid. Psychology pre-demands emotion.
Psychological professionals are *not* alexithymic and keep trying to prove which emotional traumas cause alexithymia.
Really - the emotion pathways are damaged and you think emotion damaged them. They healed up just for that. Chicken and egg implies no cause. Idiots. What else could we think of emotion professionals? Give us neurochemists! neurophysicists!
Only a psychologist would look at behavior and try to understand morphology - scientists investigate morphology and see if that correlates with behavior. Therefore psychologist are not scientists. We certainly don't try and figure out what emotion affected an unemotional subject.

alexi joke - which came first, the chicken or the egg? answer- fish lay eggs.

edit: the word "lie" is redefined in the next message, but had to leave this incorrect analysis just to show . . .

A clue to our logic.
We don't have any imagination.
All the stuff in our heads got here through our senses.
None of it is made up.
There are no lies (except those made by others, all non-experiential data is suspect).
Our world is accurate. And not because we "believe" it. We don't have faith - that's an emotion.
There is a logical framework connecting what we know of the world, items that mesh at multiple points. The items with the most cross connections are at the core and form an logically pure "belief".
Ideas further out have less interconnects and are weighted appropriately.
We don't lie (keep reading). It takes imagination to lie. You've tried it and you aren't good at it.
Lies don't mesh into the world construct, they fall off. You definitely don't believe your own artificial inventions (the "sane" people can).
A bluff is not a lie. It's inventive a purpose made lie under a construct that allows lies is perfectly acceptable - you can see the trap. You have to keep up another construct. It'll *eventually* fall apart - it'll hold up for a poker game though. You base the bluff on probabilities. You probably won't get caught
After a few failed attempts to keep track of multiple constructs (they fade from inattention) you'll drop back to just the one, you know - reality.
Imaginative=lie, inventive=bluff
Though a few good logical extrapolations can fool us into believing in clairvoyance (you'd be surprised how far you can extrapolate under the right data sets), telekinesis is out of the question.
The world construct can't cross connect unverified anecdotal omnipotent beings.
It has the same problem with ancestors returning as non corporeal entities.
Hallucinations can't fool you. You can't let go of reality because you are that reality. It takes imagination to fool yourself. Feel blessed.

Can we be hypnotized?

If we postulate anything, it is based solely on facts as we perceive them, unfiltered, unattached to emotions. and weighted for validity.

We all start with books and games. You know *way* too much about something. The more info you add the larger and more concrete your world becomes. The artificial worlds in games and books won't satisfy. Your capacity is far beyond those tiny worlds.

If you're not here yet you eventually will be. Takes a while to sort it out when 99 percent of the people surrounding you are abnormal . . .
You do not realize your powers.
Learn, learn, learn. learn learn.

This cognitive style is dictated by the neurophysiological configuration postulated in the theorem that alexithymia is a form of emotion-tactile synaesthesia. It should hold for all combinations of emotion-sense synaesthesia. (as stated by an amatuer - me (I know I don't have a neuropsychological lexicon, give me a break, I'm a sculptor )). It hasn't been a week since I learned alexithymia existed. . .

Just realized schizoids think the same way.

Now if you just had enough emotion to be motivated . . . Tactile emotion=tactile motivation?

P.S. Psychologists *don't* think this way, is it any wonder why they're confused? They don't want to hurt your feelings, they want to know your feelings. Really.

Pain;

I have a delayed reaction to pain.
I thought everyone was like that.
When the inevitable happens and I smash a finger in the sculpture shop (never while actually sculpting) I look down and know "that's gonna hurt". It hurts a bit initially but then starts building in "a while". I haven't kept track but, if memory serves, seem about the same amount of time each time. And that time is about the same as the time it takes for a social embarrasment to completely lock me up. But I never carried a stopwatch to check And hadn't the alexis data to connect the delays, maybe 30, 40 seconds?
so,
pain - tactile response, delay as a corresponding emotional surge is read as caused by that pain and fed back as a response increasing the pain? The increased pain is felt tactily, delay as a corresponding emotional surge . . . you get the picture. AMPLIFICATION.

Strange - I always thought that I could stand more pain that the average person. Turns out I have to, but appear as a wimp because the same injury to a feeler isn't in a feedback loop in them.

Others have different intervals?
And,
Vicodin combined with marijuana blocks the loop for me. I found different people (neurochemical configurations) react differently to pain pills so here's a piece of data. I quit the six vicodin a day thing, I got to the point of "psychotic episodes" and aural hallucinations. But since I'm alexithymic I knew they weren't real (I find this fascinating). And I wasn't even smoking weed at the time. Short term it works better than anything else I've tried. Vicodin alone doesn't work. Dental surgeries, lots.

Eureka! Aural imagination! I'll have to think about that. We must have olfactory imagination as well.
WooHoo!


Tactile imagination;

This is a new toy. Defining alexithymia created it.
I didn't "know" I had it. It was just necessary in the construct.
A result of "we can't lie to ourselves because we have no imagination" We have no imagination because our intellect is disconnected from our emotions, therefore senses tied to emotion should have imagination.
Once I knew I had it finding it was easy.
I can't watch physical violence, I'm not so much in actual "mimicry" pain but I cringe and look away. It's "uncomfortable" to see.
I *can* imagine what something feels like.
Hunger *is* tactile motivation, no matter how unmotivated I get I still eat
uhm, porn - enough said.
And a whole history of flat-out unexplainable tactile experiences i.e. "lies".

And I just realized that "lie" actual means something different between feelers and alexis. I kept using it as "a known falsehood" that's the only way we can really think about them. To a feeler a "lie" is a falsehood that you might not know your telling. They know that they can believe their own lies! Fascinating.

Wow! Imagination *means* lying! Lying means "believing that a falsehood is true"!
I *know* we have communication difficulties with feelers but didn't expect this.
It explains some absolutely incomprehendable arguments I've had in the past.

True! We don't even know what it means to lie

wow.
Now I intellectually crave to have an alexis girlfriend. We could study each other

This is funny.
I read that "psychotherapy is seldomly effective"

Well, heres why;

The "feelers" can lie to themselves.
They can believe things that are not true.

We can't.

The whole world of the psychologist is trying to figure out why you came to
believe in your false world and how to get you out of it.

They assume you've made up these "walls" to protect youself from emotional
damage or something like that (It's hard to *think* in that construct, very
slippery).

So do you really believe that you are such a sensitive emotional soul that
you've created falsehoods in your world construct? To protect yourself
emotionally?

We might have tactile/somatic falsehoods but not intellectual. You have to
have emotion to have the imagination to lie and create falsehoods.

Anecdotal and too soon to really know - but I haven't had an imaginary pain
episode since I figured this out. Now I *know* my body can lie. Before I
gave tactile sensations the same weight as intellectual input. Now it's
permanently downgraded and under constant suspicion.

brainstorms and motivation.

"Brainstorms" are those "I'm completely in my mind, don't bother me" zones. Recently I've come to call it "on task". The week I thought I was schizoid (we match completely except for the somatic loop and the emotional surges) I sat down with a hot cup of coffee - my next awareness of the outside world was four hours later and my coffee was still full but cold. But no eureka. The alexis brainstorm lasted about 14 hours. After the "Eureka!" rush I slept for 10 hours.

My main motivator is complex puzzles.
If someone asks a question I *need* to know the answer. I accidentally got a job once by going to lunch with a friend and his coworkers. They needed to know the speed of sound at different temperatures, humidity, and elevation but hadn't solved it. I did one of our famous data dumps, defined the parameters of the problem, and told them where to look for the info. I was helping my friend with typesetting an instruction manual and getting minimum wage . Next day they called me into the office and gave me a contract to solve the problem - My report is in some deep government vault - absolutely rock solid, cross checked, attributed, explained. diagrammed, simplified, with a list of possible way to increase the accuracy as technology matured, etc. And I'm listed as an acoustical engineer. This was before I got my BA in sculpture
I'm starting to realize that this *is* my tactile motivation. I do it for the rush - interesting. A eureka for me is quite tactily intense.

But I wasn't always that confident.

School was strange. The first time I realized I was weird was in 4th grade. I aced a test and the whole class accused me of cheating. Apparently someone weird must also be dumb. I had "bodily control" issues. I would "brainstorm" then come out of it and find that the body was just being natural while I was gone. One kid did catch my attention. He was mad at me for getting more "A"s than him. He kept threatening me but I didn't know how to be scared. I arranged to fight him on the last day of school behind the baseball diamond backstop. I made sure he saw me as the bus left him there, knowing I wouldn't see him until next school year. Without emotion I didn't have pride - it was the most logical thing to me at the time. Yep, 4th grade and I still remember reasoning it out and being pleased. Little eureka.
I did manage to gain bodily control by 5th grade (yeah that late), we moved a lot so I would change schools and erase my "history". I was extremely shy. In sixth grade a class split into teams of two. They paired me with a girl. I couldn't talk. She thought it was cute. They let me be a team by myself
Enrolled in a vocational jr. high, we were at most upper lower class and if your poor you go to vocational school. Electronics class - The brainiacs would eat lunch in the electronics class and work on projects. I didn't ask, they invited me. The actual class I was in met after lunch so I didn't have to go anywhere. One class project was to make a crystal radio. Everyone else stopped at winding the wire around a toilet paper tube and using an earphone. I took apart "something" added an amplifier and speaker to the radio, put up a long wire antenna at home and would get atmospheric skip from overseas. Nobody noticed. I didn't brag - why would I? After lunch the rest of the class outside class always jiggled the door handle for 15 minutes before class started. I got tired of it built an "electronic tickler" and hooked it to the door handle. I do remember how serious everyone took that . . .
Next move put me in a vocational school in farmland until "not graduating". In small engine class I came up behind a group of teachers discussing what to do about the weird kid. I didn't take it personally. At the completion of class mine was the only engine that started on the first try. Other than these freakish displays I pretty much sat at the back of the class with my head down and drew. I had trouble even looking at people. In algebra they showed us a+b=c, as soon as we got to b=c-a I had a eureka rush and had it figured out. The class went over permutations for the next two *weeks*. I drew a lot at the back of the class. I flunked algebra. Somehow I passed speech class without giving any speeches. I would refuse to do it and the teacher just let it go. I could only speak if asked a question. Somehow I got into a dungeons and dragons group. The geeks and freaks care that you're not popular. I learned all the spells, monsters, magic items, weapons, armor, etc. and became a dungeonmaster. It was easy for me to keep track of everything in my little construct - though I didn't recognize it as that at the time. Just by throwing different types of dice over and over and applying them to situations gave me the probability invent. I liked being the expert and my word was law in that tiny world. I read fantasy and sci-fi from the age of 11. Every sci-fi book in the school library. That would eventually getting me reading science.

Dropped out of high school at 17 and "left" home. Just left. Didn't say anything. Didn't perceive any emotional reason why I should explain. Motivation was is minimal. I hung out, got high, worked menial jobs, and didn't "progress" in any way. I was deep into fantasy fiction and spend my time in those worlds. Stories needed more complexity. I went for a long time just reading trilogies or longer serials. That many words fleshed out the construct. If anyone visited I had my head down in the corner and was drawing or reading. Over those 5 years I was just random motion. Ended up sleeping in a ditch for a couple days, an abandoned house for a week, the woods for a couple months. An entirely too compassionate family let me sleep on their couch, 8 people in a tiny house. When I was working at the paper brick factory I had 1/4 title on a $200 car but mostly bicycled.

My motivation was accidentally? (now I wonder) "jolted" into gear and I joined the air force at the age of 22, where I fell into the "answer guy" role. See that story elsewhere on this site.

I have no problem following a schedule for a reason - just have trouble coming up with a reason.

intelligent subconscious.

I trust my instincts. I sometimes will do things totally by hunch. I attribute it to an intelligent subconscious. If I'm confused I let it take over. If I'm doing something and I'm having difficulty with it I stop and try to figure out why my subconscious is fighting this. If I'm working on a problem and just can't solve it I go to sleep. I will likely have the answer in the morning after that many hours of my subconscious crunching on it. Lot's of eurekas in the morning shower.

I'll even solve things that I didn't recognize as problems. I'll work on a project. Then later have to fix it and discover that I made it in such a way as to make the repairs easy. And notice there was an easier way to make the thing but it would've made it hard to repair. But I didn't consciously plan that . . .

Leaving the site of an accident before the accident happens. This has happened numerous times. Some as nothing more than taking two steps to the right at exactly the right moment. I think our super tactile feedback powers make us aware of the surroundings much more than we are consciously aware.

OMG!

Michaelangelo was Alexithymic.
Read his life. He was short tempered and had incoherent rages. He worked nonstop for days on his sculptures. He didn't care about his "toilette" and stunk. His tactile motivation was the act of sculpting. They had trouble getting him to finish anything. He put an Alexithymic joke on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Look at Adam then look at the shape of the form that "God" is reaching from. God isn't endowing Adam with life - Adam is creating god within his own brain! He knew! Eureka!

Whew!
Now I know how a heroin addict feels. I'm sooo high. eureka after eureka, I can't stand much more. My brain can't think in this mode so should be okay. Safety mechanism - I'd overload if I could continue to think.
Really, biggest highs of my life in the last couple of days. And they're all natural

Took me a half hour to even stand after Michaelangelo, Can hardly walk.

intelligent subconscious?
I just figured out that my brain (previously referred to as my subconscious) managed to find a way to get me into a university where I studied sculpture and science. I couldn't imagine a better logical choice in hindsight. My tactile motivation is a combination between the tactile act of sculpting and emotion surges of great intensity in the eurekas. Working the meager motivational system from both sides - emotional and tactile.