Hello Charlie. Thank you for this and your previous postings and YouTube videos, which I’ve always found very helpful. Like you have had difficulties with feelings and I’m pretty sure I have Alexithymia. You might be interested in these recent interviews about my late autism diagnosis.
'I felt broken until my autism diagnosis at 70' - BBC Wales, 9 November 2024
Hello Andrew - I'm also recently diagnosed with autism at 54 and have been referred on for ADHD. I really appreciate that you've shared your experiences with the nation. We found your article yesterday on the BBC news website. My husband also benefits from seeing that other people are discovering that they're neurodivergent. He's starting to query whether he has traits. That'll be our next chapter as we get to know our true selves and adapt our lives and expectations and banish the dreaded ableism. We're seeing it as a very positive journey!
Once again I feel as though you've spoken straight from my brain/heart, Charlie!!
I have always had a very strong and particular affinity for *things* (especially mementos and nostalgia), and I always felt that physical items felt filled with meaning and emotion and memories—*things*, that to other people might just be an inanimate object, were always more to me; they represented stories and histories; even if those stories weren't mine, or were even unknown to me (who made it? Who previously owned it? How did they feel about it?) I somehow feel them hiding in the item like secrets...
It took me a long time to realise the deeper significance of this for myself. I spent a long time carrying shame about being called 'materialistic', 'sentimental' (could never understand why this one in particular was negative?!), and 'boarderline hoarder'. And I think that shame stopped me from investigating further. I would just quietly keep my collections of sentimental items, sometimes unexpectedly taking them all out (as you've said—usually when looking for something specific and mundane) and spontaneously soaking myself in the memories and feelings before putting it all away again.
It was relatively recently (sometime in the past 5 or so years) that I realised not only do these precious items hold feelings and memories for me, in many ways they *are* my memories. They act as a kind of 'key' to unlocking whatever moment or feeling from my past they associate with—holding and looking at each item takes me right back into my past self and I can feel it like I'm there. But in many—most—cases, I can't seem to access the memories without the key. My memory is full of holes and my emotions are generally kept behind a wall, and apart from those times when I'm walking down memory lane with my little bundle of keys, I can't seem to access those feelings/memories at all.
What a beautiful and evocative piece of writing, Charlie - the essay itself is like a memory box, in that as readers open it, they wade into genuine feeling that elicits a sympathetic response.
Your question as to whether we can truly feel emotions we've deferred struck a chord with me. I realized recently that I'm carrying unresolved grief for some difficult things in my childhood, and I had the same question: What would this have meant had I been able to grieve it as a child? How would my memory of the events be different? And can I truly go back to those emotions, somehow, or am I interacting with an echo?
Thank you for sharing this. It reminds us that, even though we might put things away for a while, they don’t disappear. They’re part of who we are, and they’re waiting for us to be ready to welcome them back when we can. It’s okay to take our time with it, and just let ourselves feel without needing to understand it all at once.
Thank you for sharing your experience so eloquently and giving voice to something that I also experience but never hear being talked about. I’m awaiting an autism diagnosis and often struggle with being asked to tell people how I feel. Sometimes I just make something up because I know they won’t want to take the time for me to really introspect and feel them, to work out what they are. This notion of holding feelings in the objects we collect is something I have done for as long as I can remember and never had the words for why! Grateful to you for helping me to think about my experiences through this lens 💖
Thanks for this Charlie - my whole loft is like this! The feelings from finding my memory objects are so powerful... And this is compounded by the fact that I sneeze my head off whilst disturbing all the old dust 🤢!! It doesn't help that I'm supposed to be decluttering this loft! But the feelings and sneezes are huge barriers to this... Overwhelm city!! Oh well - maybe three things at a time with music on might be a helpful strategy.. and maybe I'll get some decent boxes to put tenderly store selected memories in....
Hello Charlie. Thank you for this and your previous postings and YouTube videos, which I’ve always found very helpful. Like you have had difficulties with feelings and I’m pretty sure I have Alexithymia. You might be interested in these recent interviews about my late autism diagnosis.
'I felt broken until my autism diagnosis at 70' - BBC Wales, 9 November 2024
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy87542l14ro
‘Former Welsh Minister, 72, reveals he's been diagnosed as autistic’ - Nation.Cymru, 17 October 2024 - https://nation.cymru/news/former-welsh-minister-72-reveals-hes-been-diagnosed-as-autistic/
Hello Andrew - I'm also recently diagnosed with autism at 54 and have been referred on for ADHD. I really appreciate that you've shared your experiences with the nation. We found your article yesterday on the BBC news website. My husband also benefits from seeing that other people are discovering that they're neurodivergent. He's starting to query whether he has traits. That'll be our next chapter as we get to know our true selves and adapt our lives and expectations and banish the dreaded ableism. We're seeing it as a very positive journey!
Thanks again
Natasha
Once again I feel as though you've spoken straight from my brain/heart, Charlie!!
I have always had a very strong and particular affinity for *things* (especially mementos and nostalgia), and I always felt that physical items felt filled with meaning and emotion and memories—*things*, that to other people might just be an inanimate object, were always more to me; they represented stories and histories; even if those stories weren't mine, or were even unknown to me (who made it? Who previously owned it? How did they feel about it?) I somehow feel them hiding in the item like secrets...
It took me a long time to realise the deeper significance of this for myself. I spent a long time carrying shame about being called 'materialistic', 'sentimental' (could never understand why this one in particular was negative?!), and 'boarderline hoarder'. And I think that shame stopped me from investigating further. I would just quietly keep my collections of sentimental items, sometimes unexpectedly taking them all out (as you've said—usually when looking for something specific and mundane) and spontaneously soaking myself in the memories and feelings before putting it all away again.
It was relatively recently (sometime in the past 5 or so years) that I realised not only do these precious items hold feelings and memories for me, in many ways they *are* my memories. They act as a kind of 'key' to unlocking whatever moment or feeling from my past they associate with—holding and looking at each item takes me right back into my past self and I can feel it like I'm there. But in many—most—cases, I can't seem to access the memories without the key. My memory is full of holes and my emotions are generally kept behind a wall, and apart from those times when I'm walking down memory lane with my little bundle of keys, I can't seem to access those feelings/memories at all.
What a beautiful and evocative piece of writing, Charlie - the essay itself is like a memory box, in that as readers open it, they wade into genuine feeling that elicits a sympathetic response.
Your question as to whether we can truly feel emotions we've deferred struck a chord with me. I realized recently that I'm carrying unresolved grief for some difficult things in my childhood, and I had the same question: What would this have meant had I been able to grieve it as a child? How would my memory of the events be different? And can I truly go back to those emotions, somehow, or am I interacting with an echo?
Thank you for sharing this. It reminds us that, even though we might put things away for a while, they don’t disappear. They’re part of who we are, and they’re waiting for us to be ready to welcome them back when we can. It’s okay to take our time with it, and just let ourselves feel without needing to understand it all at once.
Thank you for sharing your experience so eloquently and giving voice to something that I also experience but never hear being talked about. I’m awaiting an autism diagnosis and often struggle with being asked to tell people how I feel. Sometimes I just make something up because I know they won’t want to take the time for me to really introspect and feel them, to work out what they are. This notion of holding feelings in the objects we collect is something I have done for as long as I can remember and never had the words for why! Grateful to you for helping me to think about my experiences through this lens 💖
Thanks for this Charlie - my whole loft is like this! The feelings from finding my memory objects are so powerful... And this is compounded by the fact that I sneeze my head off whilst disturbing all the old dust 🤢!! It doesn't help that I'm supposed to be decluttering this loft! But the feelings and sneezes are huge barriers to this... Overwhelm city!! Oh well - maybe three things at a time with music on might be a helpful strategy.. and maybe I'll get some decent boxes to put tenderly store selected memories in....