Alexithymia (trouble recognising and naming emotion)

Alexithymia is difficulty identifying and describing one’s own feelings — common in neurodivergent people. On its own it’s a nuisance, but it really hurts when interlocked with other mechanisms: RSD floods you with intense emotion, alexithymia removes the ability to name and communicate it, and impaired interoception means you don’t even notice the body heading toward overload — until it’s too late to intervene. It’s also part of the backdrop to self-harm, which in neurodivergent people is often not a suicidal act but an impulsive way to ‘voice’ an emotion there are no words for: the physical pain gives a release with a compulsive quality. The key is to build, over time, a vocabulary of emotions and body signals (e.g. a feelings wheel, labelling out loud) so that naming can get ahead of the shutdown.