My 'strongest emotion' is righteous indignation....that's about it. Anyone relate?
16.10.2020 by elainedThe only time I feel a strong emotion is when people are incompetent, stupid, or wrong, or a system is poorly organized.
Oh, and I CAN read other people's emotions and feelings, but I just don't care, so usually I ignore them.
I've never accepted the social 'game' that is played. On the other hand I am excellent at organizing groups and events, when there is a formal system involved.
I find that the 'small talk' of groups just annoys me as it is a waste of time. And yet, intellectually, I know that 'small talk' is the glue that binds groups together. Still, in the moment I am just annoyed. So I don't keep the ball rolling, or interrupt with something I find interesting. I'm not 'popular' as a result.
As a child, I found that 'groups' bind themselves by forcing opinions and actions on the members. i never wanted to 'go along to get along'. I always pointed out that the opinion or action was silly or wrong. Sigh. I just couldn't bend my will, my actions, to those of the group.
However, I've always found people fascinating, and gravitate to the 'outsiders' to find out what makes them tick.
I never had a name for this until I found Alexithymia! I'm 78 and have been in many important professional jobs, consider myself successful, have been married for 58 years with two now adult children and 6 grandchildren, and in weekly therapy most of my life since age 30!
06.11.2020 by User60629K92
I signed up just because that fits me to the T, even though I'm only 1/3 of your age. It is intriguing finding someone who I can relate to so well but at a much later stage in life.
At some point I was even considering psychopathy simply due to my level of emotional detachment, people dying or losing things would not affect me emotionally, and if it did then I could just switch it off manually and not look back. The only times I allow myself to be burdened with the past is if I feel there's something to be learnt, something needs resolving, or has some other purpose, I don't trouble myself with memories that serve no purpose. I always brushed it off under constantly relocating when I was younger, never having developed dependancy on emotional investments. I'm often worried I will hurt people simply due to not caring, people just feel so fragile to me.
I can attest to being able to read other's emotions well, if anything I believe to have acute sensitivity to people's feelings, just not my own. I can read people within seconds from their body language alone, with high degree of accuracy, and it only gets more precise the longer I get to know them to the point they become predictible and boring. I connect with people easily, so much so I end up feeling strained by all these social responsibilities, often causing me to retreat and cut contact with everyone I know as a form of social purge. And so is the irony, where I end up incapable of maintaining relationships, yet find no resistance in creating them.
My greatest pet peeve are inefficiencies. When I do something, anything, I need to do it in a way that respects the craft, which some referred to as a form of perfectionism, though I don't necessarily agree. I'm not sure how to describe it properly, but as a result I tend to learn quickly and efficiently when I vibe with the craft. If I don't vibe with something, if I don't connect with it at a primal level, such that I could engage with the craft in a way that would respect it, I cannot do it. For example, when it comes to reading I can't read unless I feel I can properly engage with the material, I can read half a book in a single sitting and then not touch it for months or years at a time, and when I do come back to it I genuinely don't feel like I could have done it any time sooner. I don't read just to gloss over the content, I read to absorb the spirit with which it was written, I find it jarrying when someone tells me they read a book but when discussing a central theme they omit the point it was making. One example I can recollect happened when I was discussing The Great Gatsby and at the time we were discussing how profound the opening of the book was, yet in the next beat they would chat shit about someone they knew, completely oblivious to their, at least how I perceived it, hypocrisy.
Speaking of books, I find existentialist reads to resonate with me. Currently working through Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the book feels like it was written in blood so familiar it could have been good enough for transfusion.
On the subject of conversations, when interacting with others I abor vapid conversations. If I feel like there's no new information, no purpose, being presented, it's a waste of time. I'd rather remain silent than talk nonsense just to fill the silence, like gorging yourself on fast-food equivalent of chit-chat. I much prefer spending time with people when there's something we can do together, than just hang out and waste time for no good reason. The interactions and conversations I do enjoy the most though are the kind that throw the other person or persons off of their balance. Observing how a person reacts to something that they aren't familiar with, where they can't resort to canned responses and are forced to improvise, tells me more in that single instance about the person than any amount of small talk ever could.
In regards to the unbending will, that too sounds familiar. The way I see it is that when I'm part of a group, it's not that we're travelling together, rather we just happen to be travelling in the same direction and it is better to travel together than by yourself. I don't compromise, I don't negotiate, just because I share some values and interests with a group doesn't mean I will blindly identify with them all, and I won't think twice about leaving such a zealous group behind. Easy to come, and easy to go, that's just how I am. To that extent, the only person I consider a friend became a friend through our differences, we enjoyed arguing with one another, and no matter how heated our arguments got in the moment, we'd be perfectly cool once we dropped the subject and carry on like nothing ever happened.
I'd be interested to hear more from your perspective on the topic, it's relieving finding someone I could relate to.
