Alexithymia

The search function on Blogspot blogs is very good but has just let me down. I tried to find what I have written about alexithymia without success. I clearly remember writing about it but cannot find where. Anyway, I remember pretty much what I wrote so I will recapitulate.

Alexithymia is usually described as emotional flatness. Alexithymics don't display much emotion. I am very much in that category. I just don't get angry, for instance, and I just see criticisms as useful information, sometimes about me and sometimes about the critic. I am always "cool, calm and collected": Rather British, actually. The English are known for their horror of emotional displays. I fit in with that effortlessly.

The downside of that is that I don't express positive emotions much either. I am perfectly capable of feeling affection for the women in my life but have usually not done much to display it, which has undoubtedly damaged my relationsips at times. I am altogether too "British" in that department too. I am a very poor romantic. Any Italian would leave me in the dust in that respect, though I have had my moments. There is a rather famous movie about "Shirley Valentine" who leaves her boring British husband for a demonstrative Greek man which illustrates the national differences concerned. I have had Shirley Valentine aimed at my head a number of times

So when I heard about alexithymia I thought I might be an alexithymic. I discovered however that alexithymics are very distressed underneath their non-emotional exterior and that is certainly not me. I sail cheerfully through life in complete calm for almost all the time. Even my dreams are pleasant. I have only twice been very upset and those occasions were when the lady in my life walked out. Almost all my relationships have ended with the lady walking out but those two relationships were ones that I highly valued. Fortunately, the two ladies saw enough good in me not to walk very far and I remain on cordial terms with both.

So I am definitely not alexithymic. Maybe I should just describe myself as "British". I do trace all my ancestry to the British Isles and I have certainly got on exceptionally well whenever I have been over there

Maybe I am adaptible, however. Friends and family in Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Italy are well known for shouting at one another a lot. And my girlfriend haiis from a Mediterreanean country. And we do shout at one-another a lot. But we still love one-another. So I seem to have my Shirley Valentine after all