“I Don’t Know What I Feel” — Alexithymia, Neurodivergence & the Missing State Layer Beneath Emotion
- May 23
- 6 min read
Updated: May 28
Why Neurodivergent People Often Experience States
Before Emotions
Why Emotion Wheels Exist in the First Place
Traditional emotion wheels were never created because emotional identification is easy. They were created because many people struggle to accurately name, differentiate, and communicate what they feel.
Research has repeatedly shown that emotional granularity — the ability to identify emotional states with nuance and precision — varies significantly between individuals.
Many people default to only a small number of broad emotional labels such as:
stressed,
angry,
sad,
happy,
or fine,
even when their internal experience is far more complex.
For decades, the traditional Feelings Wheel has therefore become one of the most widely used emotional literacy tools in psychology, coaching, education, therapy, and communication work. Developed within frameworks such as Nonviolent Communication and affect theory, it helps people expand emotional vocabulary, strengthen self-awareness, and recognize emotional states with increasing specificity.
These tools support:
emotional awareness,
emotional vocabulary,
self-reflection,
emotional communication,
and emotional regulation.
Because emotions that can be identified are generally easier to understand, process, communicate, and regulate.
For many neurodivergent individuals, however, the challenge often begins even earlier in the sequence. The difficulty is not always finding the right emotional word. Sometimes the nervous system state itself is still unclear.
Alexithymia and Neurodivergence
For a substantial number of neurodivergent individuals, however, the challenge often goes deeper than emotional vocabulary alone.
A significant number of autistic individuals—and many people with ADHD, trauma histories, chronic stress exposure, or sensory processing differences—experience traits associated with Alexithymia.
Alexithymia refers to difficulty:
identifying emotions,
distinguishing feelings from bodily states,
interpreting internal sensations,
and translating emotional experiences into language.
Importantly, alexithymia is not exclusive to neurodivergent individuals. While alexithymic traits are significantly more common in autistic populations and frequently discussed in ADHD and trauma-related contexts, alexithymia can also occur in neurotypical individuals.
Chronic stress, burnout, trauma exposure, emotional invalidation, depression, and prolonged nervous system dysregulation can all reduce emotional accessibility and emotional differentiation.
Importantly, alexithymia does not mean someone lacks emotions or empathy. Many alexithymic individuals experience emotions extremely intensely. The difficulty often lies in emotional identification, interoception, and emotional translation rather than emotional depth itself.
This distinction matters enormously.
Because many neurodivergent people do not first notice:
“I feel sad.”
Instead, they may first notice:
sensory pressure,
internal static,
agitation,
shutdown,
exhaustion,
urgency,
cognitive overload,
emotional numbness,
overload,
fragmentation,
hyperfocus,
masking,
cognitive saturation,
or nervous system activation.
The emotional meaning may only become clear later.
Sometimes hours later.
Sometimes days later.
This distinction matters because many neurodivergent people are repeatedly taught to identify emotions without being given language for the underlying neurophysiological state shaping those emotions in the first place.
As a result, emotional identification can become confusing, delayed, or inaccessible—not due to a lack of emotional depth, but because the internal sequence of processing differs.
What Is the Difference Between a State and an Emotion?
One of the most important distinctions in neurodivergent emotional processing is the difference between a state and an emotion.
Traditional emotional models often assume that emotions are the primary experience.
For many neurodivergent individuals, however, the nervous system state comes first — and the emotional interpretation comes later.
Emotions
An emotion is usually:
a specific feeling,
relatively short-term,
emotionally identifiable,
and often directed toward something.
Examples include:
shame,
joy,
fear,
anger,
sadness,
excitement.
An emotion answers the question:
“What am I feeling?”
States
A state is broader.
It is a neurophysiological and cognitive condition that shapes:
sensory processing,
emotional access,
executive functioning,
attention,
energy,
social capacity,
and behavioral responses.
Examples of states include:
overloaded,
shutdown,
activated,
fragmented,
threat-sensitive,
dysregulated,
regulated.
A state answers the question:
“What condition is my system currently operating in?”
Why This Difference Matters
For many neurodivergent people, emotions are heavily influenced by the state of the nervous system.
For example:
“I am irritable”
may not primarily be an anger issue.
It may reflect:
sensory overload,
cognitive saturation,
transition fatigue,
social exhaustion,
or nervous system strain.
Similarly:
“I feel ashamed”
may actually emerge from a threat-sensitive state associated with:
rejection sensitivity,
hypervigilance,
chronic invalidation,
or masking fatigue.
In this sense, the state often shapes the emotional experience that follows.
The Missing Layer Beneath Emotion
This is where traditional emotion wheels can become insufficient for many neurodivergent individuals.
Most emotion models begin with the assumption that:
the emotion is already consciously accessible,
verbally identifiable,
and internally differentiated.
But for many neurodivergent people, the nervous system state comes first.
The person may first recognize:
overload,
freeze,
hyperfocus,
fragmentation,
masking fatigue,
or dysregulation.
Only afterward does the emotional interpretation emerge.
This is the core idea behind a neurodivergent-informed State & Emotion Wheel:
emotions are still present — but they are often mediated by nervous system state, sensory load, cognitive processing, and regulation capacity.
In other words:
Emotion answers: “What am I feeling?”
State answers:“What condition is my system currently operating in?”
And for many neurodivergent individuals, understanding the state is what finally makes the emotion understandable.
Why This Matters
When emotional experiences are detached from nervous system context, neurodivergent individuals are frequently pathologized for reactions that are actually regulatory responses.
A meltdown becomes “anger.”
A shutdown becomes “laziness.”Hypervigilance becomes “oversensitivity.”
Masking fatigue becomes “depression.”
Executive freeze becomes “lack of motivation.”
The underlying state disappears.
This creates profound misunderstandings in:
leadership,
education,
relationships,
therapy,
and organizational systems.
State-based emotional mapping offers a more accurate framework because it recognizes that:
nervous system regulation shapes emotional access,
cognitive overload changes emotional interpretation,
sensory stress alters behavioral expression,
and executive functioning affects emotional retrieval.
This aligns strongly with current neuroscience and polyvagal-informed models of regulation.
Research in affective neuroscience increasingly supports the understanding that emotions are not isolated psychological events, but embodied predictive and regulatory processes shaped by physiological state, environmental safety, and cognitive interpretation (Barrett, 2017).
Similarly, polyvagal theory emphasizes how autonomic nervous system states influence perception, emotional accessibility, and social engagement capacity (Porges, 2011).
The Missing Layer: Neurodivergent Emotional Translation
One of the most powerful aspects of a neurodivergent-informed wheel is that it does not remove emotions.
It translates them.
For example:
Overloaded
may emotionally feel like:
irritability,
panic,
pressure,
helplessness,
agitation.
But the source may actually be:
sensory overload,
transition fatigue,
decision saturation,
excessive social input,
or cognitive accumulation.
Similarly:
Threat-Sensitive
may emotionally appear as:
shame,
defensiveness,
panic,
hurt,
rejection,
catastrophizing.
Yet the underlying mechanism may involve:
RSD,
social hypervigilance,
chronic invalidation,
or uncertainty intolerance.
This distinction changes intervention completely.
Because the solution is no longer:
“control the emotion.”
The solution becomes:
regulate the system creating the emotional amplification.
Why This is an Important Tool
A neurodivergent-informed State & Emotion Wheel has implications far beyond self-awareness.
It is very useful for:
coaching,
therapy-adjacent work,
neuroinclusive leadership,
burnout prevention,
conflict repair,
team communication,
emotional literacy,
education,
HR systems,
relationship dynamics,
and executive functioning support.
Most importantly, it offers language without pathologizing.
It validates that many neurodivergent experiences are not irrational emotional failures.
They are understandable regulatory states emerging from overload, masking, cognitive friction, sensory intensity, and environmental mismatch.
And once states become visible, regulation becomes more possible.
This is exactly why the State | Emotion Wheel™ was designed differently.
Instead of focusing exclusively on emotional labels, the framework integrates:
nervous system states,
emotional experience,
cognitive overload,
sensory processing,
executive functioning,
masking,
and regulation patterns.
The goal is not simply:
“What emotion am I feeling?”
The goal is also:
“What state is my system currently operating in — and what would help rebalance it?”
The interactive tool therefore allows users to:
explore all 12 core states,
understand the emotional patterns connected to each state,
identify common neurodivergent friction experiences,
and access direct regulation-oriented support strategies for rebalancing.
Because emotional awareness alone is often not enough.
Many people first need:
nervous system awareness,
state recognition,
and a clearer understanding of how overload, masking, hypervigilance, shutdown, fragmentation, or cognitive saturation shape emotional experience in the first place.
The State | Emotion Wheel™ was created as a practical bridge between:
emotional literacy,
neurodivergent processing,
regulation science,
and real-world self-understanding.
The most transformative moment is not:
“I finally found the right emotion.”
It is:
“I finally understand what state my system has been in all along.”
References
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton.
Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013). Mixed emotions: The contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism. Translational Psychiatry, 3(7), e285.
Brown, T. E. (2013). A new understanding of ADHD in children and adults: Executive function impairments. Routledge.
Kinnaird, E., Stewart, C., & Tchanturia, K. (2019). Investigating alexithymia in autism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Psychiatry, 55, 80–89.
Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The double empathy problem. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer Heresies. Autonomous Press.
Singer, J. (1999). Why can’t you be normal for once in your life? In M. Corker & S. French (Eds.), Disability discourse. Open University Press.
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