About ten years ago I realized that my body, to me, is a vehicle for my mind, which lives in a tiny pinpoint an inch behind my forehead. I had never thought about this, but wanted to try hypnotherapy. It was not possible. Then I wanted to try something where they put their hands on your head and give you something from India. I was impenetrable. Someone who had proven again and again to be able to heal things with her hands tried to heal me. I had a rock-hard shell around all of my body. She had only seen a really mild form of this once before. I have been told I started screaming when I was a baby when anyone tried to touch me. I always ducked, involuntarily, or withdrew, startled, whenever anyone tried to embrace or touch me affectionately and it took me by surprise. I could only refrain from it when I saw the person coming.

Something like nine years ago, I saw a psychologist who did talking, then made me lie down and she rubbed spots underneath my toes. She asked me to name the emotions this evoked and where they were. It was so surprising to find that so many different emotions were clearly there, and they all had a different area of my skin. But she had not realized I was already very emotional, because I was in the habit of not showing emotion. I had been badgered a lot by my mom, my sis and at school. So the night after this treatment, I had a bump, the size and shape of half a tennisball, sticking out of my stomach right above the belly-button. It throbbed like a heartbeat and only disappeared in the morning, I did not sleep all night. The woman was very worried when I told her this. She otherwise made me feel more relaxed than any other therapist.

I have also found that when I was in extreme emotional pain, I would obsess about the person I had the conflict with or was about to lose. Once I did this to the point of sitting on a chair, trying to frantically think of solutions, and I just lost 3 hours. I kept going to work but made too many mistakes, so I was sent home for a few weeks. I got myself two baby cats and went painting in the park a lot. That helped me get over it. And music. I feel the obsessing, dissociating, had everything to do with being unable to feel emotion as emotion, it was a huge pressure from below the diaphragm upwards instead, which made my brain go into overdrive, which made it worse. I can now sometimes be in the present long enough so I feel an open flow between that place under the diaphragm and the brain. That is the desired result. I have also got excercises, very simple one's, like feel the pressure on the skin of your butt, on the soles of your feet, when sitting down. It makes me spread out into my body from that pinpoint behind the forehead. And praying and feeling confident that my Higher Power can and will take care of my also lessens the fear.

I am autistic also. People say autists cannot feel the emotions of others. This is not correct. I feel them very accurately and usually get cowed or insecure. I have to be careful to react to what someone is saying, not what they are feeling. Autism is a form of hypersensitivity of all the senses, including the sixth sense, whithout the possibility to react adequately, hence the impression that there is no empathy.