Alexithymia, Core Self and Meta Selves
Interestingly, the majority of those with Asperger’s Syndrome have Alexithymia, an inability to read their own emotional states or even know if they are having any.
My Core Self though well dented and fragmented had taken a backseat in the body around age 2-4. As an adult it is finally able to begin to present in and through the body. But my question is whether Alexithymia could be the product of living as a split off self which became like a satellite, doing social interface on behalf of the Core Self and that once the Core Self was ‘replaced’ by this ‘meta self’, the meta self went on to experience itself as Alexithymic?
Watching those stuck in their own world whether autistic and overwhelmed by inability to process the world or emotionally disturbed/traumatized could we sometimes be looking at a Core Self pulling away or splitting off from presence in the body? Of course it remains, just it may experience itself as an observer, outside of the body, merged with an object or pattern, watching from the ceiling.
Watching those in their own world struggling in incomprehensible interactions with themselves, could you be witnessing their Core Self interacting with split off internal selves with you as external observer wishing to get in or that they’d come out and interact with ‘real people’?
Watching those stimming (using compulsive self stimulatory behaviors) to keep the external world and its overload and emotional impact and demands at back, could you be witnessing their Core Self unable to make the leap to being interactive between an internal and a sensorily overwhelming and emotionally confusing external world?
And what if a person does interact with the external world? Are they actually ‘intact’?
If they make that connecting leap through the use of meta selves, is this the success we’re looking for? That at least they are ‘functioning’? If they are automaton and prompt dependent or wooden and purely rote, or all mind without being able to bring emotion or spontaneity to the table in interaction, then did their Core Self really make the leap? Or are we interacting with a meta self? And if so, how integral do these interactions FEEL to the dissociated person? As soon as we got off their back would they actually feel relief? Might they feel alienated from all their ‘functional’ achievements in that external world simply because, without knowing it, they were merely a split off piece of their Core Self?
If you had lived externally as that meta self for a few years with your Core Self merely a whisper, or dormant, dissociated far inside, or too non-functioning to pass in the external world without being in a care institution, which one would you identify as ‘self’? The functional ‘meta self’ or the non-functioning and under developed Core Self which as an integral self had rarely or ever sustained direct communication or interactions with the external world?
If you made it to adulthood with one meta self then knew you’d left your Core Self behind would you dare to collect it, make a place for it in your present world? If you had work, a partner, a family, would they manage the arrival of a Core Self that had spent decades being dormant? Would this process be somewhat ‘autistic’ as well as dissociative?
And if instead of one meta self, you have developed several of them, yet all still split aways from the original Core Self, would you then simply present as someone with a dissociative identity disorder?
Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com
MON PETIT MOI, my real me, the child inside me ,……………all these expressions would lead us to think that all of us, have a core self,that is hidden to others , and we are often suggested to” look inside yourself”, ” get to know yourself”,”get yourself free off “,…….& so many more”let your inner voice talk, or listen to your inner voice”.My feeling is that one cannot get to know others until one knows himself, but there are very few, a handfull of humans who really are in touch with themselves as most of us are using “dissociative”personnality patterns to be able to cope with the world.(in some extent),The difference would be in how & how strongly the spliting is felt, & how much any of us is willing to peal off all it’s covers (protection)!,when we have spent our life adding layers to protect the selfcore : bulding up our personnality (personnalities). the difference to me is inthe spliting.
;
agreed, empathic, insightful.
🙂
I do have a “self” that interacts successfully with the world – has a husband, a career, friends. In therapy, I am working to create a safe environment within and outside in which my “core self” can become connected to all the other selves I have, including my public self. I don’t think she’ll ever really be in direct contact with the world, and whose core self is? But I do want her to have some kind of connection, some kind of authentic relationship with some parts of this world.