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Alexithymia

 Many Neurodivergent people have a difficult time naming their own emotions or describing how they feel. I am far from being immune to this, despite being a synesthete. For me, when I'm around others, I'm not sure whether their emotions are mine or what my emotions even are. When I'm alone, however, I have a very difficult time even naming what emotions I am experiencing, unless there is a specific trauma-related trigger. I have read that Alexithymia often develops as a trauma response in many cases, and I am basing my information off of my own Autistic experience of it. For example, I can sometimes name loneliness when it hits me, but some of the more basic emotions elude me.  It can be difficult to express your emotions, particularly in a neurotypical way, if you're unaware of what you're actually feeling at a given moment. As a mirror-touch synesthete, my emotions get entangled with others and it can sometimes be chaotic trying to juggle another person's emot
Recent posts

Mirror-touch Synesthesia & the "Empath"

 I personally do not like or adhere to the term "empath," but I believe I have figured out the explanation for this phenomenon, which I do experience. It's specifically called mirror-touch synesthesia, and is also related to mirror-pain synesthesia and mirror-emotion synesthesia, which I spoke of at an earlier time. Studies show that mirror-touch synesthetes experience heightened levels of empathy because, in addition to feeling at least an echo of another person's pain, many of us also feel their emotions as if they were our own. This sounds an awful lot like the horrific pop psychology term, "empath," but most people attribute it to a supernatural phenomenon if they're not lying about it, rather than a Neurodivergence. It's a lesser known type of synesthesia, but I experience mirror-touch, as well as more "traditional" types of synesthesia where many of my senses blend together. I was actually misdiagnosed with schizoaffective because I d

Trauma Response on the Poet's Stage

 Last night I attended an event locally entitled Poetry Speaks, and it was a celebration of the life of the late Bill Sovern. I have known him since I was 15, and he gave me a stage to read poetry at a young age. The last performance of his that I attended when he was alive was over a decade ago, long before I started transitioning, and he made a comment about Jack Kerouac (likely in relation to my poetry style), and I took offense to it, although I should have taken it as a compliment since I was a voracious reader of the Beats and fashioned my early poetry after them, especially Kerouac. So, that was the last time I performed while he was still alive, but I had planned to start going to more poetry events since the publishing of my book, Cracked Around the Edges, and he tragically passed in a car wreck before I had a chance to read any of it to him. Well, going to Poetry Speaks last night was surreal. It was the loudest and most emotional poetry reading I have ever attended during th

Fluidity in Sexual & Romantic Orientation

 Sexuality can be a fluid experience. I know from past experience of identifying as a gay male that would occasionally alternate with biromanticism that my sexual and romantic orientations could be fluid, but I didn't realize to what degree until I started socially, and later medically, transitioning. I am genderfluid: equal parts femboy, masculine girl, and otherkin (partially nonhuman, particularly technogender, which is a gender that has a strong connection to technology, and aliencatgender, which means that I sometimes feel alienated from gender and like I'm trying on human genders and I'm also a cat, but that ties into my neurodivergence and they can fall under the xenogender and agender umbrellas). I can identify with the gay, lesbian, and bi communities, as well as the trans and queer communities, not to mention the asexual/agender spectrums. I am also possibly at least hormonally intersex, as I am very sensitive to estrogen injections, but I am simply trying to alig

A Little Bit of Background Regarding Disability Status

 I have been reading the book, Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price, PhD, and it has been making me think about the past 13 years of my life and how I handled it. It took me 12 years to go back to university and change my major to an associate degree in social science, then a bachelor's degree in psychology with a double minor in sociology and gender studies. I used to be an art history major and studio art minor, but after a while, and an attempt to switch to psychology in my early 20s, resulted in burnout that lasted over a decade. For a decade, I spent most of my time in bed and just thought I was "lazy" for being on SSI and being unable to do much other than indulge in learning about my special interests in my own time, including psychology. I didn't think I would ever be able to go back to college because I had, and continue to have to some degree, significant executive dysfunction. I am both Autistic and ADHD, but I was misdiagnosed with schizoaffective disord

The Rise of Existentialism in Culture & Existential-Humanistic Therapy

 It's interesting to me that the concept of existentialism has caught on on a very wide scale on social media and in culture because when I was 15 or 16 seeing my first therapist since early childhood, I was told that I "think existentially." It was also suggested that I read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl to get acquainted with the concept, but I forgot the name of the book and author until I entered psychology at university. Instead, I started studying primarily Albert Camus and Franz Kafka, although I have read a large variety of other existentialist thinkers, such as Dostoyevsky.  I also put absurdism and nihilism under the umbrella of existentialism, although there are slight differences in approaches, but they all seek to better one's understanding of the nature of existence. Existentialism is what got me initially interested in philosophy, and I took an intro to philosophy course when I was 18, and philosophical ethics more recently. Existential

Genderfluidity

 Over the years, my gender identity has shifted many times. I knew initially that I was genderfluid, but tried very hard to be a binary trans woman, along with various other non-binary identities until I came to the conclusion of being a genderfluid hypertwink and otherkin (a partially nonhuman entity).  I consider myself a girl, a boy, technogender, and aliencatgender. The latter two can fall under Xenogenders or agender. The reason I call myself a girl and a boy is because I'm uncomfortable with woman or man due to developmental delays caused by trauma that have put me in a near permanent state of regression. I am also a hypertwink and try to take twink aesthetic to its fullest reaches in my presentation, and I am on hormone replacement therapy primarily to preserve my youth, my hair, and make me more twink-like and androgynous. The only gender affirming procedures I find necessary for myself is further laser hair removal. I would also like to describe how my genderfluidity manif