 Emotions tend to unregulate me. They are very overwhelming even pleasant ones. Yeah I think they feel all the same in categories of good feeling or is a bad feeling. It's why I have to mentally turn off Yeah, and that is like it's You know sometimes if I'm having a particularly in tough time with a really really strong emotion. I will just say like I'm not doing good or I'm doing good Sometimes like these the specificity on like how I am exactly feeling about something isn't always there For me to to give further detail on it Especially when I was in teenage odd when I was a kid It's kind of like pretty much had two states. I was like, you know free free status. I was either okay. I was depressed Or I was anxious and And those were like the the free sort of pillars of how I respond to people when they asked me how I am If you've got any recommendations, please Feel free to post the title of the video not the link because YouTube will like you put links In the comments if you've got any video that you want me to react to but I do have something to show you from How to ADHD and this is Alexa find me a from the ADHD angle Which is interesting because very very highly co-occurring with autism for anybody who doesn't know Okay Something that I talk about a lot it's difficulty Noticing and categorizing your own feelings Alexa find me is also in my opinion from my experience much like it kind of like a threshold condition whereby You don't necessarily have an inability to feel emotions. It's just the threshold of that emotional intensity is a little bit higher for us to notice Then usual definitely you can have some impact on like interpersonal relationships as well as self-advocacy like understanding how you feel about something Sometimes make it quite hard to like Take a stand in the moment You might have this experience where you say yes to something and then Or you say something's okay, and then later you you've had some time to think about it It's definitely not the case. You have to kind of go back in and sort of Reaffirm what you what you mean what you actually think this was from two years ago. This is from how to ADHD What if I can't tell what I'm feeling this sounds Relatable to you might be a good video to watch and it kind of makes sense done it like if it's highly co-occurring with autism An ADHD is highly co-occurring of autism. It makes sense that some ADHD is or ADHD is my Also have the experience of alexa finia brains. How are you feeling right now? Can you tell no some of us can't in fact? This is so common. There's actually a term for it. Alexa. Sorry. I don't know that Alexa Alexa, I'm not you 59 degrees with clear skies and sun. I don't need to know the weather Calls for more of the same I'm trying to do a video Okay, now might be a good time to unplug certain devices. Oh wait, yeah, I Have a bit of use that so funny Definitely happened to me when I'm talking about it I have a full-on switch and a full-off switch no gray area. I think it's self preservation to be honest Yeah, I mean it definitely has to be a lot more intense for me to to notice feelings less so now that I've made a few like mental readjustments into You know noticing what emotion I'm feeling in the moment Well, I wait I want to talk for a minute about better help who is sponsoring this video Better help is an online counseling platform that connects you with a licensed therapist that matches your individual Hasn't there been some like backlash about this this particular app? I mean this was produced like two years ago, but I feel like there's been some drama or controversy around this Alexa thymia Noun is the inability to identify and describe what one is feeling whether an emotional state or a physical state It's a Greek word that loosely translates into having no words for emotions It was first coined in the 1970s by Dr. Peter Sifnios to describe his patients who couldn't find the appropriate words to describe their emotional states There is also an aspect to this which I don't think is related It's is necessarily like the same thing Which is like emotional literacy because you can there's a lot of different words that you can use to describe like further sort of you know you have like the emotions wheel you have like Anxiety happiness like fear and anger and then below them you have like irritability and the other one you have like An even more complex way to describe what you're feeling emotional literacy literacy definitely does have like a a bit of a Impact I guess on how you communicate your emotions to while most people can tell what they're feeling if those feelings are intense enough People who experience Alexa thymia often can't it's a kind of emotional blindness They might be able to tell their feelings something just not exactly what yeah, and they tend to have trouble identifying what others are feeling too Because of this difficulty identifying and expressing feelings. Yeah And I'd say I say that's more to do with like the idea of cognitive empathy sort of interpreting communication, I guess if you struggle necessarily to like feel your emotions and know what your Your body looks like When you're in a certain emotion, then it might be a little bit difficult for people, but also like If you're a neurodivergent ADHD autistic The way that you express things or is obviously going to be a little bit different to How for example neurotypicals would my boyfriend with ADHD an autism told me he never said I love you to anyone Not even his mom or grandmother, but it's good relationships with them. Yeah, I know I think that's It might be nice it might be related to Alexa thymia, but I think as well, you know cuz love and it God, this is getting deep oxytocin Stick it back to a scientific perspective oxytocin is like this hormone that we produce which is very involved in bonding and They've done some studies on it's really cool. You should look into like particular like creatures who are like polyamorous and particular creatures who are like strictly monogamous really interesting like How oxytocin can sort of impact? other organisms to But it's a very important hormone when it comes to bonding and The thing is with love is that it's a very very complex emotion. It's very subjective to what that person experiences And so it's not easy always the most easily translatable thing and if You know if you really struggle feeling those emotions, obviously going to be harder to like Say definitively like this really, you know hard-hitting word No, that obviously means quite a bit There's obviously going to be like some level of hesitancy around that people with alexa thymia can often come across as unfeeling or uncaring Even when their internal experience is actually quite intense someone with alexa thymia again different terminology phrase You know, it's it's the alexa thymia is the internal experience of it, but things that they're expressing If they're they're autistic, you know, they have that idea of like flat-effects and Sometimes vocal monotony things like that whereby we don't necessarily express the emotions and feelings through those indirect methods of expression Like through body language tone of voice like that. We more or less tend to explain things I found different thing. I would say that it is related to alexa thymia though 100% yeah often finds their feelings frustrating and overwhelming and needs time to process and understand them Situations where emotional responses are expected in real time They often rely on external cues memorized scripts and what they think others expect Yeah, figure out how to respond alexa thymia. And that is a really important thing because It does have like an impact on like self-advocacy as well So you imagine if if you're in like a confrontation Or you're in like a Situation where a response is required very quickly. You don't always know like how you feel about it So you might just just tend to like agree with things That you don't necessarily actually agree with Just because you don't know how you're feeling so if you if you if you struggle with that and it's something that I Stuck with quite a bit especially like in the context of work, you know, so I said, oh, would you want to do this? I'm like, oh, yeah, why not and then 10 minutes five minutes a day after and like why did I agree to that? I don't want to do that If you have a lot of experiences like those Try to artificially put in like breathing room to think about things especially when it's Quite important. It can also I think make like arguments like interpersonally quite hard as well You don't know how you feel about something and you're having quite an emotional Discussion it can sometimes, you know, people kind of expect you to to say how you feel like on the outside like oh, just just tell me and You know for me particularly and I get I guess for quite quite a few people We do need time to like step back and like view it from like a whole more whole situation understand how we feel a Little bit more cries a bit more of that time But that can be sometimes quite frustrating for people if they are like expressing negativity towards us or just in general We don't necessarily know how to respond or How we feel about about said thing, you know, obviously can cause some some level of friction I mean it can create a lot of challenges in personal relationships, which rely on real-time genuine emotional reciprocity It can also make it really challenging to practice self-care It's really hard to know when to feed yourself if you can't even tell if you're hungry or not And it makes it hard to get a fact again a little bit of a different concept is related to elxpime This is the idea of interreception. It has a lot more of a feed-in to different aspects of our life than necessarily think like decision-making if we are deciding between Two things like for example you went to like a bakery you thinking oh, do I want a sausage roll? Or do I want a muffin removing all conversations of like health and sort of thoughts about that involved in in that When you think about those two decisions you model what it would be like to eat said things Internally again you monitor in this this kind of Mental gymnastics way You're modeling how it feels to eat it and then your emotional response to to eating that that thing and That has a large feed-in like You know especially when you're like hungry or if you're like craving something sweet You might find yourself buying a lot of sweet things when you do any grocery shop The same thing you like constantly like modeling eating different things and Understanding your emotional responses to it and that feeds in a lot to like the decisions that you make So that's the kind of that you know the interceptive element of it, you know struggling to understand that you're like bodily cues your bodily cues are kind of There's sort of like different emotions to some degree like in terms of like understanding it then they're not you know from distinctions that we make but They do definitely like The senses, you know the senses are very highly linked to like Our emotional experience to emotions tend to unrogate and regulate me. They are very overwhelming even pleasant ones Yep, I think they feel all the same in categories of good feeling or is a bad feeling. It's why I have to mentally turn off Yeah, and and that is like it's You know sometimes if I'm having a particularly You know tough time with a really really strong emotion. I will just say like I'm not doing good or I'm doing good Sometimes like these the specificity on like how I am exactly feeling about something isn't always there For me to to give further detail on it Especially when I was in teenagehood when I was a kid. It's kind of like pretty much had two states I was like no free free states. I was either okay. I was depressed or I was anxious and Those were like the the free sort of pillars of of how I respond to to people when they asked me how I am because I respond obviously in my very autistic way of Giving a genuine response to how how are you? Which is sometimes met with nice responses and be like, oh, you actually told me how you are and sometimes just like complete and Auto like annoyance because now I've dumped some some emotion onto them And they're not comfortable with it Look it says now once I feel it it is usually beyond my ability to control that is you know a hundred percent like One of the difficulties with Alexa find me and I think feel like it's one of the key Like parts of why we we can struggle so much with emotional regulation I mean, we don't struggle emotional regulation But we can struggle a lot with like implementing strategies to sort of sort myself out I guess, you know, if you if you are getting frustrated or angry or like perhaps doing a project or like You know at school of the work or something like that And you just you really want to get it done But it is causing you anxiety and stress you might you might go on for a longer period than most people would Without like stepping away to regulate yourself. So a lot of the ways that I went about so I mean proving my way of Regulate myself was just trying to you know, think of those Sort of free categories the three ways that I can better like cerebrally monitor my emotions And ever since then You know now now I know I feel Sort of a bit of I have a bit of a stomach ache and my legs feel really sort of erratic and irritable I know when that happens that I am you know getting to a level of anxiety that is not good for me I said, okay legs are going a bit crazy Probably should like take a break regular do that kind of thing took a long time not saying that that's necessarily an easy thing To do if you do struggle with alexa thymia But it has definitely been been helpful for me. You're blowing my mind tonight. So many revelations about myself. Well, I'm really glad about that Did care from others if you can't describe how you're feeling or what your body needs It can also be really lonely and confusing both for them and the people who are trying to connect with them alexa thymia isn't a separate mental health diagnosis But it is a characteristic that tends to go along with them Current research suggests around half of autistic brains have this characteristic Compared with 10% of the general population and it's also more common in those with ADHD Depression and PTSD because it's not a diagnosis. There's currently no specific treatment for alexa thymia But it is something mental health professionals need to be aware of while treating the mental health condition that it accompanies Since therapy typically requires talking about how we feel if this sounds familiar and you'd like to learn more about alexa thymia I've included resources in the description below and if you would like to learn more about alexa thymia go look at my mountain of Posts on Instagram all my videos on it didn't know I had alexa thymia until he introduced me to the term Well, I'm glad I um introduced you to it. It's quite it was quite like a Pivotal thing of understanding myself in my life very much like my mind was blown. I was like I've I felt all this time that my emotions was just so like separated from How I fought like the thoughts that I was having And I even I even made a video about it quite a long time ago called like my split brain where I was talking literally about like What we consider to be alexa thymia, but I just didn't know about it up and up until you know, I came across it so that it was really like Pivotal in like my own personal autism journey. Yep stomach issues, teeth clenching, shaking, that's what I've learned for me Yeah, and everybody has their own particular responses when I when I experience like fear Um, I tend to yawn a lot. It's just really weird like I think it's because I tend to hold my breath a little bit more Um, I know that that's why when you get tired, you know, obviously like your body's winding down You don't take in as much oxygen Um, you tend your body wants to get more oxygen and so you yawn. I yeah, I don't know maybe That's that's an experience that I've had particularly like if I become like really fearful about something I just tend to yawn Especially like a pre-competition, you know before I go went into my fights and stuff um, I'd be wanting like I feel like my opponent would probably be like looking over me like sitting down Waiting to go go and have one of my fights thinking This guy's so churly. He's like yawning. It's like he's about to go to sleep Oh If not, maybe the next time someone struggles to express how they're feeling Give them the space to do it or give them a few choices of what you suspect They might be feeling and don't assume that what it looks like somebody is feeling is actually how they feel Some people need more time or a little help processing to figure it out Thank you to my brain advocates and all my patreon brain and there's a really interesting part of alexa feimia like It makes us really really good in emergency situations Or for a lot of people very good in emergency situations um, because we don't necessarily feel those like emotions Instantaneously and we can sometimes think a lot more clear headed especially when it just kind of Comes out of the blue really quickly. So that's really that's really interesting part of it And it kind of explains why I see a lot of autistic people in those kind of emergency services Roles makes a lot of sense to me and especially looking back on my own life When things have just happened like emergency situations have happened to other people I tend to be like the first person who kind of gets my gets their head together and sort of sort of sorts things out I laugh under fear and discomfort. Yeah, I do emergency response tech and rope rescue There you go Do you find that you cope with those Abundancy situations a lot better than you peers brains for supporting us in increasing awareness around neurodiversity And all of the challenges that come with it so we can better understand ourselves and those we care about Like subscribe click all the things and I will see you next video. Bye brains I love I absolutely love love love the fact That they say like by brains like it just tickles me. It's like Someone who also speaks about like Things very scientifically wise But that has been uh, how to adhds What if I can't tell what I'm feeling about like supply me if you have enjoyed this make sure to go and like it of course and subscribe to their channel Even though they have managed to use more like Subsidiom at the moment Um Really great video as always Some some things which I feel weren't particularly explained in the best way But great video all in all