Author’s Note
This article is part of my ongoing writing about understanding myself and my neurology. It’s not medical advice – just my lived experiences of what it’s like when emotional processing and interoception (sensing internal states) work differently.
When I was diagnosed with autism in 2019, I was shocked. But it did finally give shape to the many things I was piecing together, but hadn’t had words for. What I didn’t yet understand was that part of my neurology would extend beyond thinking or movement – it touches emotion itself.
In my case:
Over time, through self-reflection and further research, I’ve come to understand that my emotions work differently. I can recognise emotional situations cognitively, and I can act with care and compassion. But I don’t feel the emotion internally. There’s an absence where most people experience physical or sensory signals – no physical sign or inner cue to acknowledge physically what I’m feeling.
It’s present, too, in the quiet spaces of connection – the moments where emotion is most expected to be felt.
For me, words about feelings are descriptive, not sensory. I can name the context of an emotion, but I don't physically feel its sensation. And sometimes, I can’t find the word at all – the emotional vocabulary just isn’t there when I reach for it.
I have learned over time, the difference is neurological, not personal. It reflects what researchers call alexithymia – a difference in interoceptive processing, the brain’s ability to sense internal emotional states.
Alexithymia can occur alongside autism or following a brain injury – later learning I’d sustained a stroke just after birth reading through sporadic medical notes. It’s not a detachment or a lack of empathy; it’s simply a different way the brain maps the body’s emotional landscape.
It's continually challenging, but my awareness is now turning difficulty into understanding. Seeing compassion as something I do – a choice, an action, helps when the sensation of feeling isn’t there.
Writing to my diagnosing consultant, felt like closing a loop – asking if this difference is relevant, for it to be formally recognised as part of my diagnostic profile.
It isn’t about collecting another label, but about giving language to a reality that has always been part of me. It’s important others understand how this shapes the way I relate and respond, and how I am able to function.
The absence of visible or felt emotion doesn’t mean the absence of care. For some of us, compassion lives in thought and action rather than in sensation. When you meet emotional quietness, try not to mistake it for indifference – sometimes, it’s simply another form of connection, expressed differently – but meant just as sincerely.
Being able to understand our emotional landscapes – however they manifest – is part of self-acceptance. For me, naming the condition, hasn’t created distance from emotion but it has helped me to understand its shape and context.
