Feelings
Whoa, feelings
Whoa, feelings
Get out of my life
Remember that song by Offspring? I suddenly got stuck in my head this morning while I was lying in bed, pondering on this with feelings.
After the test I took last week, I have started to come to the realization that I am very much not on touch with my feelings. Don't read that as if I do not have feelings, because I do - and lots of them, too. My body knows my feelings, but my mind does not. A recent example is a fight I had with my mom where I stared crying, and I did not know I was going to, and did not really register that I did at first. My body is great at letting the world know what I'm feeling. I can begin to cry without "feeling" anything before it happens. When I am poorly, my voice gets slightly whiny, and I have a hard time controlling it.
This is what I do not get with other people - why do they seem so content (which I've learn means 'in a state of peaceful happiness') all the time when my body reveals more or less anything that goes on inside?
To me it seems like other people are not feeling anything at all, and that they are the ones with a "problem" since I have no idea what is going on inside them since their bodies do not act as mine does. I have learned to read body language, at least a bit. I know when my husband has to go to the bathroom, for one. But other than that, I am clueless.
After denying for months that autistics does not have Theory of Mind, and that we do have empathy, I have finally understood it - after lots of reading. I think I have been so dead set against those ideas because I have thought it to mean that we are stupid, or bad people, or... something. But it does not. Just as I have problems understanding whatever is going on inside me, we have problems relating to what others could be feeling right now unless they strongly let us know, either through words or bodily functions like crying. Of course, such actions require that we act, and that is a whole other problem, is it not?
As always, I am unable to follow a blog post through, and offer a conclusion. However, again, that is not really my aim for this blog *wink*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Wow! I woke up a while ago thinking about theory of mind, and yours is the first blog post I read this morning. It hit me like a ton of bricks that we don't lack theory of mind; we just operate by an entirely different theory of mind. That insight needs a lot of working out, but I think I'm on to something.
I think you are too :)
I wrote a sort-of response to this, but put it on Gestalt, in the Alexithymia online questionnaire thread - beware_the_sluagh
Post a Comment