Right now I just sort of feel like crawling into a hole and curling up in a ball. Not depressed, I don't think, and it doesn't feel much like sensory overload. But something seems to be more than I can handle, even if I have no idea what it is.
It's true that I've been getting things wrong, and not getting things done, for the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's all just gotten together and hit me all at once.
OK, depressed. Still don't know why.
Today I have been reading about Emotional Intelligence, at a site I found while looking up alexithymia, which is basically the opposite, and is a condition I already knew I have.
I think it probably explains a number of things about me, including the fact that I have trouble communicating with Colleen, and the fact that I haven't gotten much out of therapy. With both of the therapists I've tried, I've seemed to go through an initial period of getting my immediate questions answered, and then I run out of questions and am left with a vague feeling that something is wrong or missing, but no words to express it with.
I suppose it must be frustrating for everyone else, too -- the therapists who can't help me because I can't coherently express what's wrong, the women I've had brief relationships with who felt that there was something important missing that they couldn't quite pin down. My kids. Colleen.
I don't know whether there's much to be done about it. Here's a list of "feeling words" -- many of which don't even seem to me to describe feelings at all.
There's a related term: Emotional Literacy. I had an experience of its opposite, emotional illiteracy, yesterday, when I completely failed to pick up on the emotional consequences of something N said to me in an IM.
I've been told that I have a lot of empathy. Sometimes I wonder. Other times I think I suppress it because it overloads me. Other times I'm just plain baffled.
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