{"id":10319,"date":"2022-06-21T02:33:05","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T02:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/vi\/?post_type=product&p=10319"},"modified":"2022-06-21T02:35:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T02:35:19","slug":"the-only-emotions-i-can-feel-are-anger-and-fear","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/vi\/the-only-emotions-i-can-feel-are-anger-and-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"The only emotions I can feel are anger and fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

One in ten people struggle to recognise their emotions. New research suggests a vital link between our ability to sense our physical bodies and knowing how we feel.<\/h4>\n
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Stephen has been married twice. Two wedding days. Two \u201cI do\u201ds. Yet Stephen has no happy memories from either \u2013 or, in fact, from the marriages or any of his relationships.<\/p>\n

He met his first wife on a pre-nursing course when he was just 16. Six years later, they were married. Three years after that, they got divorced; she was never really the right one for him, he says. Almost two decades\u00a0on, in 2009, he met his second wife through a dating site. He threw himself into the relationship and, the following year, with his father and her two adult siblings present, they married at the registrar\u2019s office in Sheffield, where they both live.<\/p>\n

He put on smiles for the wedding photos because he recognised that they were expected but, as he explains: \u201cFrom an inner feeling point of view, anything I do that requires an emotional response feels like a fake. Most of my responses are learned responses. In an environment where everyone is being jolly and happy, it feels like I\u2019m lying. Acting. Which I am. So it\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Happiness isn\u2019t the only emotion that Stephen struggles with. Excitement, shame, disgust, anticipation, even love\u2026 he doesn\u2019t feel these, either. \u201cI feel\u00a0something<\/em>\u00a0but I\u2019m unable to distinguish in any real way what that feeling is.\u201d The only emotions he is familiar with are fear and anger.<\/p>\n

Such profound problems with emotion are sometimes associated with autism, which Stephen does not have, or with psychopathy, which he doesn\u2019t have, either. Last year, at the age of 51, he finally learned what he does have: a little-known condition called alexithymia, a word made from Greek parts meaning, roughly, \u201cno words for emotion\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite the name, the real problem for people with alexithymia isn\u2019t so much that they have no words for their emotions, but that they lack the emotions themselves. Still, not everyone with the condition has the same experiences. Some have gaps and distortions in the typical emotional repertoire. Some realise they\u2019re feeling an emotion, but don\u2019t know which, while others confuse signs of certain emotions for something else \u2013 perhaps interpreting butterflies in the stomach as hunger pangs.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, given how generally unrecognised it is, studies show that about one in ten people fall on the alexithymia spectrum. New research is now revealing what\u2019s going wrong \u2013 and this work holds the promise not only of novel treatments for disorders of emotion, but of revealing just how the rest of us feel anything at all.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reference:<\/h4>\n