This is just my experience, but something I figured out for myself (actually during a long break from therapy) about what has stifled my ability to be in touch with my feelings in the moment, is that various "predictive" labels I was given by my parents from a very young age (the worst being names they called me before I understood what they meant and long before I'd made the kind of intimate adult choices that might have remotely warranted them) meant that when I heard those words later, they stuck to me like the worst kind of glue. I couldn't easily experience whatever natural, real feelings I might have otherwise had, because of all the layers of mucky emotional residue they'd left on me.

I think it's all these layers one can have, made of various old feelings already convoluted, that can make it difficult to identify and name feelings in ways that make sense to others. But I no longer consider it trouble -- I just consider that there is something else there to look at. I'm at peace with my layers, which is good because from what I can tell I can repurpose them, but can't entirely eliminate them.

Back when they did this to me, I was hurt and confused; without understanding what they meant I could tell they wanted to be very hurtful. This created a delay for me: once I would come to later understand it, I would be hurt again, differently. Thus I ended up in a pattern of feeling things out of step with real time, and this continued for me for a very long time with no one at the reins. It helped once I was able to realize what was happening, and could accept the levels of complication that are involved for me; as I'm better able to identify an array of feelings I might have in a given moment, I have a better opportunity to feel them and not have them become just more residue. It's definitely "in progress" though. There are probably a couple of stray horses still on the run somewhere.