How do you feel?

Perhaps the most irritating thing I remember about my experiences in therapy (especially as a teenager) was being asked "how do you feel".... I never quite knew how to answer that questions and would therefore always reply "fine" which is actually a very common response of individuals with eating disorders to this question. In fact, throughout my years of treatment I learned that FINE was a commonly used acronym among patients and counselors for either F***ing Insecure Neurotic Eatingdisorder or F***You I'm Not Eating. Now that I am older and wiser I understand that my response truly was not a defiant behavior to be difficult and noncompliant; rather, the response was reflective of the fact that I honestly did not know how I feel and a clear indication that I have alexithymia which can be defined asa subclinical phenomenon involving a lack of emotional awareness or, more specifically, difficulty in identifying and describing feelings and in distinguishing feelings from the bodily sensations of emotional arousal (Nemiah et al., 1976); In fact, recent research has shown that alexithymia is quite common among individuals with Anorexia (Westwood, Kerr-Gaffney, Stahl, Tchanturia, 2017). Moreover, research also indicates thatalexithymia is;quite common among individuals with ASD (Kinnaird, StewartTchanturia, 2019)...yet another connection between ASD and AN. I have not yet looked into it but I think it would be very interesting to explore this connection further as well as explore the brain regions involved when an individual engages in an activity that involves identifying emotions.Kinnaird, E., Stewart, C., & Tchanturia, K. (2019). Investigating alexithymia in autism: A systematic review and meta-analysis.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European PsychiatristsJournal of psychosomatic research