I pretty much agree, except I don't think people are always experts on their own feelings. There are cases where people do not understand what they feel well enough. There are also plenty of cases where people are using the words differently, so by one person's definition so-and-so is X, and by the definition the other person is using they are not. But then, misunderstandings can happen with anything.
The first case that comes to mind for when someone is not an expert in their own feelings is with very young children. It's not uncommon for a very young child to say that they don't feel tired. This is partly because learning what "feeling tired" is takes time and experience. You'll have a cranky young child who clearly needs a nap, insists s/he does not feel at all tired, and when you get the kid to lie down for a short time the child drifts off to sleep ~very~ quickly.
You also get cases of adults who don't seem very self-aware. Or incidents where self-awareness isn't functioning very well. Sometimes someone very close to you can spot the signs of a problem you're having better than you can (generic you in this sentence).
But in a case like an internet discussion, I would definitely be inclined to trust the poster's statements of their feelings unless I had good reason to generally distrust the poster's words (after all, some people lie).
I also find cases of alexithymia to be fascinating. It's hard to say though whether the person is not feeling the feelings they are expressing and acting on or are feeling them and unable to connect that in any way to their ability to speak. Since that's a question about the subjective experience of the disorder, there is really no good way to answer it. We can get a best guess someday through brain imaging to see exactly which parts do and don't light up and what connects to what, but it's hard to know. It also might touch on issues of identity. Usually we think of a person as one thinking-feeling whole. But the brain actually has several modules. If some of them are not talking to others of them, you have little thinking-feeling parts working independently. Is the person feeling it if part of them is, but not the part you're talking to? Is the person one person?
no subject
The first case that comes to mind for when someone is not an expert in their own feelings is with very young children. It's not uncommon for a very young child to say that they don't feel tired. This is partly because learning what "feeling tired" is takes time and experience. You'll have a cranky young child who clearly needs a nap, insists s/he does not feel at all tired, and when you get the kid to lie down for a short time the child drifts off to sleep ~very~ quickly.
You also get cases of adults who don't seem very self-aware. Or incidents where self-awareness isn't functioning very well. Sometimes someone very close to you can spot the signs of a problem you're having better than you can (generic you in this sentence).
But in a case like an internet discussion, I would definitely be inclined to trust the poster's statements of their feelings unless I had good reason to generally distrust the poster's words (after all, some people lie).
I also find cases of alexithymia to be fascinating. It's hard to say though whether the person is not feeling the feelings they are expressing and acting on or are feeling them and unable to connect that in any way to their ability to speak. Since that's a question about the subjective experience of the disorder, there is really no good way to answer it. We can get a best guess someday through brain imaging to see exactly which parts do and don't light up and what connects to what, but it's hard to know. It also might touch on issues of identity. Usually we think of a person as one thinking-feeling whole. But the brain actually has several modules. If some of them are not talking to others of them, you have little thinking-feeling parts working independently. Is the person feeling it if part of them is, but not the part you're talking to? Is the person one person?