you're so calm

In a previous post, subtle, I alluded to how calm I am in real life via the device of rarely using exclamation marks in speech. Of course, you can't use them in speech, so what I really meant is that I rarely use them in my writing, because I don't need to indicate that I got excited enough - or indeed experienced any other emotional state - to need to communicate that to the reader in some way.

It is only very recently that I have taken any time to think about why this is.

I don't bother about 'why?' much. Normally, things just already are, and you have to deal with that. Yes, there are lessons to be learned from why things have happened like they did. For example leaving your thumb on a nail head that you are about to hammer in, you remember that removing your thumb from that nail head prevents you hitting your thumb and experiencing a world of pain, so asking why - when you've calmed down and the bruise is forming - is logical the first time it happens. And the fourth or fifth. That sort of why is instructional and worth asking. But mostly, I find it's not helpful to trouble my poor brain in to trying to investigate the past over and over.

I realised that I generally display very few emotions at all, and after some pondering, I recognise that is because I genuinely don't feel that many emotions.

I have gradually realised that what I am doing is approximating emotional reactions to situations and circumstances based on what I have learned would be the right way, the socially accepted and morally correct way (itself a minefield), for a normal and well-adjusted person to react to that situation or circumstance. But I am not actually feeling it. I am just doing all the things - facial expressions, voice tone moderation, body language -which will make it look like I am, so that others can feel better that I understand.

On social media, I have more difficulty. There aren't the physical cues to read, just someone's text. I generally stay away from implying sympathy or expressing support for people who are posting about something emotionally difficult, because I know that I have a hard time really empathising, and will probably get the tone of my reply horribly wrong because I don't really understand it. I get that I should feel sympathy or something, and I know possibly the appearance of support would help the poster feel better if it was positive, but I can't access any authentic feelings and don't know the words to use to describe me being supportive.

I do try sometimes. Then I am wracked by anxiety about how it will be taken until I see some reaction. Anxiety I can do.

I stick with my safe places on social media. And to a large extent, on this blog. Humour. Irony. Sarcasm. Self-deprecation. If it gets emotional, I can just not reply, or log out entirely.

At home, my wife has got used to me watching or listening to sport and not even flinching when my team scores. Internally I am pleased. I might crack a small smile. But I will not scream, jump up from the sofa waving my hands above my head and cheer my head off loudly. Similarly, I won't hold a cushion over my face, sob, or be otherwise outwardly bereft when they are scored against. I will probably tut. Maybe roll my eyes and look a bit resigned.

She shouts at people doing stupid things on the road. She flinches and loudly reacts ("What are you DOING!") if I get close to a hedge when passing another car in the narrow lanes. Sometimes I call someone a tosser if they're driving stupidly. Fairly quietly, under my breath. And of course, that's factual. They are driving like a tosser, so that's what I call them. I don't do rage. I do 'mild irritation' sometimes.

I do cry though. I do get upset - although perhaps not at the points or at the same things where most people would be upset. The most recent occasion was at my Brother-in- Law's funeral. I didn't cry from hearing he had died through to his funeral a few weeks later, but when I saw that my sister was crying at the funeral I cried with her. I was upset about how upset she was. Everything else had just left me typically stoic. When we talked on the phone in that period, I felt emotional when I heard her crying, but was fine the rest of the time.

I have recently learned that there is a name for this blindness to emotion and the language of describing it that I could possibly have. Alexithymia. 

Alexithymia (/əˌlɛksɪˈθaɪmiə/ ə-LEK-sih-THY-mee-ə), also called emotional blindness, is a neuropsychological phenomenon characterized by significant challenges in recognizing, expressing, sourcing, and describing one's emotions. 

I know that I know very little about it ( I know that I know very little about anything, which apparently makes me quite wise) and I haven't even got to the bottom of that one Wikipedia page yet, but I think that I am now fairly confident, having read the bits that seem to explain it, that I am now able to say 'Yes, that's me'.

It turns out that I can reasonably describe and feel four regular emotional states in myself.

• Basically contented.
• Mildly annoyed.
• Anxious.
• Fuck it. 

(I don't know if that last one qualifies as 'an emotional state'. But even if not, fuck it, it's staying.)

It's interesting that it's often tied in with Autistic Spectrum Disorders as I have my suspicions about that (and have done a couple of tests online which have put me high on the likelihood), but I've not really delved that deeply into it. Largely because I'm certain that I display very strong signs of ADHD, which has meant my attention is rarely focused on one thing long enough to explore anything in any depth.

My reaction to all of these things as I've uncovered them has pretty much been "Oh. Alright then."

Obviously.
Because I'm so calm.

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