Some jumbled thoughts on alexithymia & processing feelings through songwriting.
🧵
Music has always been a huge part of my life, & I’ve written songs since my tweens.
Looking back at songs I wrote when younger they’re almost all about, in relation to, or “for” other people.
The hardest part of processing my feelings through my songwriting was (and still is) allowing myself to write things I’m not sure about or maybe even don’t think are true.A few years ago I realised that music was one of the only ways that I actually felt & processed my emotions.
Since that realisation I’ve been more intentional about giving myself space to write, & I’ve found recently I’ve been writing more songs about just myself.
For me, that means allowing myself to write things “because they fit the song” and not necessarily because it’s 100% true to what I feel/think – but it almost always turns out that it is actually how I’m feeling.
Reading those lines back with the idea in mind that they probably express something I do actually feel is interesting.
And difficult.
I’m still learning to trust this process.
Something that’s happened a number of times now is I’ve written something I initially feel is overly dramatic, exaggerated from the truth, or simply suits the song artistically, but then as soon as I try to sing it, I choke up and/or start crying.
As someone with alexithymia plus a history of being gaslit, putting trust in something I can’t fully understand is hard, but I know that I tend to attempt to intellectualize my feelings, which, as I’ve been told by my therapist, is not how feelings work! 😅
This thread was brought to you by the most recent song lyrics I wrote that made me unexpectedly choke up:
“I’ll wear dresses when I’ve got a flat chest,
When the reason for them staring is of my own making,
Maybe then the high heels and the skirts and corsets,
Will feel how I want them to,
Will make me look how I feel I do,
Inside”