Ask Me Help Desk - Emotions and Words Don't Mix.

Emotions and Words Don't Mix.

I cry when I am forced to express things in words that have an emotional connection. It is not sad-crying, it is to mask emotions (positive or negative doesn't matter). I can express things with art but not words.
This is interfering with school because there are some writing assignments that are hard because of this. If I am under a lot of pressure I will hesitate to say or write things with even a weak emotional connection. I can finish some things with a writing tutor but I do this only by blocking the emotional connection. If I read my writing afterwards I will start crying. I've tried drawing things first and then trying to put things into words but it doesn't work. I can't "make up" things because I have no verbal imagination (Not going to be helped by reading more books. I already read books faster and I read more advanced-level books than anyone I know that's my age.)
The school did a lot of tests and did not come up with any results that would allow modifications to be made so I am expected to be capable of doing this stuff. I'm currently seeing a psychiatrist but things are moving too slowly. Also it's hard to tell the psychiatrist a lot of things because they have emotional connection and I start crying when I try to say them.
This problem has gotten worse over time and I'm really at a loss for what to do.

You are seeing a psychiatrist, which is great! Things are moving too slow. Well, there is always a downside. Have some patience, I understand the frustration, but all you can do is take things step by step.
Do and try everything your psychiatrist suggests and see how it turns out.
Most importantly is that you should give this a chance before asking for any other help. I mean, who cares if you're making a slow progress as long as you're actually improving?

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Originally Posted by Zea

You are seeing a psychiatrist, which is great! Things are moving too slow. Well, there is always a downside. Have some patience, I understand the frustration, but all you can do is take things step by step.
Do and try everything your psychiatrist suggests and see how it turns out.
Most importantly is that you should give this a chance before asking for any other help. I mean, who cares if you’re making a slow progress as long as you’re actually improving?

The psychiatrist doesn't exactly suggest a whole lot. I'd like to tell him to take note of every question he asks me that I don't give an answer to or start crying because that would maybe show more clearly which kinds of things are more difficult. But that in itself would be one of the more difficult things. And I'd take note of those questions myself but I don't have that good of a memory and I can't exactly write everything down. And I'd also like to find a psychiatrist that is willing to consider drawing my answers a form of therapy because then I would be able to 'say' things more clearly and also do it without crying (most of the time with the psychiatrist is either spent quiet or crying). And he also doesn't even understand core the problem itself, which is a difference in the way I express things. Which I wouldn't consider a problem if I wasn't failing my classes because of it, so 'improvement' is not the word, 'change' is more like it.
And the psychiatrist that did the school testing understood everything I said perfectly but he's not a real psychiatrist if you know what I mean so I can't just switch to him, and I only talked to him for a short time after I finished testing.

Um.. hello? Is anyone still reading this? I still don't have answers. I told my mom I want to switch because I'm not getting anywhere with the current psychologist. She said she would look for someone but I've already been through 3 different psychologists and I never want to see any of them again so there aren't really a lot of options left.

Psychiatrist or psychologist? Two different animals.

Find a master's level counselor/therapist who deals with young people and their emotional problems. Be sure to meet with this person at least once a week -- or even twice a week.

I know the one I'm seeing right now is a psychiatrist and he has a master's. The woman who referred me to him had a PhD and a master's in clinical psychology (her website doesn't specify whether she is psychiatrist or a psychologist) and "specializes in neuropsychology with a subspecialty in children, trauma and balance" and it also says she deals with adolescents, and she tried to convince me that I was crying because I was depressed. I was referred to her by another psychiatrist (psychologist? I don't remember) who actually understood what I said and listened but she mostly dealt with family and relationship problems.

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I know the one I'm seeing right now is a psychiatrist and he has a master's.

A psychiatrist is an M.D. and is far above a master's level.

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The woman who referred me to him had a PhD and a master's in clinical psychology (her website doesn't specify whether she is psychiatrist or a psychologist)

A Ph.D. level is a psychologist.

Thus --

psychiatrist = M.D. = doctor (has been through medical school and can prescribe medications)

Ph.D. = psychologist and cannot prescribe (although there are changes in that recently, depending on additional education)

Psy.D. = similar to a Ph.D. but without all the research and math, and concentrates on the client/patient situation

M.A. or M.S. in counseling or clinical psychology = one to three years of grad school

Usually, a student interested in psych starts with a bachelor's in almost anything, gets a master's in some aspect of psychology, then may go on to a PH.D. in psychology program (separate or combined with the master's program).

Ok that clears things up a bit, thanks

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Originally Posted by yttrium

Ok that clears things up a bit, thanks

Do you live in a populated area or near one and have master's level choices? Those are the therapists who will spend time with you and will work with you on what you really want and need. They don't work off their own agendas like psychiatrists and psychologists too often do.

I live in a city with about 90,000 people so not very populated. My mom is looking for a therapist so I can tell her to try to find someone with a master's.
Also I've been researching alexithymia a lot and it kind of looks like it would fit the description. But even though it's pretty well researched it's not considered a real "disorder" so it would not show up on the usual tests, although some of my scores correlate with alexithymic traits, like verbal and opinion problems being exceptionally low.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

I live in a city with about 90,000 people so not very populated.

There should be a nice choice of counselors in a city that big. (I live in a village of 53,000 and there are counselors here in town as well as in nearby suburbs.)

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Also I've been researching alexithymia a lot and it kind of looks like it would fit the description.

Please do not diagnose yourself. I tried that once with a medical problem and ended up in the hospital with something totally different. My diagnosis was way off the mark. Yours might be too. (The term means "pushing away emotions," being unempathic, and that's not what is going on with you.)

Were you always like this or did something spark this problem? Does anything cross your mind that makes you cry? If there is no reason for it, then take a brain scan instead?

I guess I was kind of always like this, and no, nothing in particular that makes me cry, just being forced to find words for feelings. I got an EEG because the previous therapist recommended it (the one that said I was depressed) and that resulted in nothing. She also suggested a hormone level test or something but that never happened.
But I guess it wouldn't hurt to get a brain scan.

I was thinking about PET scan. Maybe you should ask if this is possible (I read about it A LOT).

I looked up PET brain scans and basically it's only for really specific and easily noticeable disorders - dementia, epilepsy, and stroke.

I don't quite understand. Are you saying you can't write stories/fiction? If that is true, you can't even write happy stories?

What would be an assignment you wouldn't be able to do?

It really doesn't matter if it's a happy story or a sad story or a story that appears to be completely unrelated to me. If it is not 100% factual and objective, it ends up getting some kind of emotion attached to it, which means that it can't be put into words. And even objective things develop emotional connections over time, which means I hate re-reading any of my old assignments.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

It really doesn't matter if it's a happy story or a sad story or a story that appears to be completely unrelated to me. If it is not 100% factual and objective, it ends up getting some kind of emotion attached to it, which means that it can't be put into words. And even objective things develop emotional connections over time, which means I hate re-reading any of my old assignments.

So you can do non-fiction writing, but nothing fictional?

Yup. That's kind of what confused my teachers. I can write lab reports just fine and I love science class but I can't write stories or answer questions about love and Shakespeare so I hate everything in English class.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

Yup. That's kind of what confused my teachers. I can write lab reports just fine and I love science class but I can't write stories or answer questions about love and Shakespeare so I hate everything in English class.

Yet you are expressing yourself very well here and even discussing your emotions.

Can you tell stories out loud (rather than write them), for instance, when babysitting?

Here I'm not really naming or expressing emotions using words. I'm saying I love this or hate that but that's not really naming what I feel, I'm just trying to describe events and causes and effects (for example writing assignment, unnamed emotion, and crying) and trying to avoid actually describing feelings.
Also it changes depending on how much pressure I am under, so "you have 45 minutes to write a paper about how love is portrayed in Shakespeare" actually made me cry just from thinking about having to do it the next day.

And it doesn't matter whether I am talking or writing, just that it is with words.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

And it doesn't matter whether I am talking or writing, just that it is with words.

Has any psychologist or psychiatrist given you the T.A.T.

No and I don't think it would make any difference in whether I put things into words because it would be just like writing a story which always has a bunch of feelings in it and even though they may not be expressed directly they are still expressed in words.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

No and I don't think it would make any difference in whether I put things into words because it would be just like writing a story which always has a bunch of feelings in it and even though they may not be expressed directly they are still expressed in words.

Do you know what the T.A.T. is? It would be a very good indicator of how things play out for you.

Yes it's the Thematic Apperception Test. And I know exactly how it would play out: I would say nothing and then start crying.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

Yes it's the Thematic Apperception Test. And I know exactly how it would play out: I would say nothing and then start crying.

I would show you three pictures and ask for three sentences each. That's all. None of them are loaded with emotion and can be responded to unemotionally. No crying would be necessary.

I cried when I was asked to write 1 sentence that used a certain set of words under a time limit. It wouldn't seem to have emotion but there was more than one way to write the sentence and there wasn't an obvious answer. And I cried when I was asked to list different kinds of food under a time limit. The time limit created a lot more pressure but the TAT seems scary even without a time limit. It has infinite possible answers and none of them are obvious or normal or right so whatever I say will have feelings in it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by yttrium

I cried when I was asked to write 1 sentence that used a certain set of words under a time limit. It wouldn't seem to have emotion but there was more than one way to write the sentence and there wasn't an obvious answer. And I cried when I was asked to list different kinds of food under a time limit. The time limit created a lot more pressure but the TAT seems scary even without a time limit. It has infinite possible answers and none of them are obvious or normal or right so whatever I say will have feelings in it.

The T.A.T. can be responded to as emotionally or as unemotionally as one wishes.

It doesn't sound like emotion has much to do with your writing. Something else seems to be going on.

PET can be used to detect brain disorders (ex- alexithymia). Just ask someone who knows, if you can take a PET test.

Give me one example of how you could respond to the TAT in a factual and objective manner.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

Give me one example of how you could respond to the TAT in a factual and objective manner.

Give me a picture suggestion as an example.(Just briefly describe one of them in a couple of words -- I know them all.)

Here's an online TAT. TAT
And the instructions say "Try to portray who the people might be, what they are feeling, thinking, and wishing" which is completely non-objective and would definitely require writing something that has feelings in it.

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Originally Posted by yttrium

And the instructions say "Try to portray who the people might be, what they are feeling, thinking, and wishing" which is completely non-objective and would definitely require writing something that has feelings in it.

But that is not what I would ask you to do. I'd ask you for three objective sentences in two minutes or less.

Well, what is your objective and factual 3-sentence answer to that picture?

That picture has been thrown out, by the way.

Two women are in a lab. One is testing something. The other is watching her.

All right, if I can be that objective, I'll see if I can do it.

By the way what do you think is the "something else going on" that you mentioned earlier?

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Originally Posted by Zea

PET can be used to detect brain disorders (ex- alexithymia). Just ask someone who knows, if you can take a PET test.

Who would be the person that knows?

Let me ask you this -- if I showed you three T.A.T. pictures and asked you to come up with three objective sentences in one minute for each one, what would happen?

I guess I would be really nervous. But I can't predict the outcome. There is a chance that I could start crying but that might depend on the individual picture. Some pictures have less obvious answers than others and sometimes if there are multiple answers that might work but none of them are good then I would start crying.