Alexithymia – Difficulty expressing emotions

Alexithymia is the inability or inability to identify and describe emotions. Do you know anyone like that?

Hello friends!

Recently, while reading an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) book, I came across a term I was unfamiliar with. That term was: alexithymia. So I did some research and found some very interesting information about this word that I wanted to share with you.

What is Alexithymia?

Alexithymia is a term that brings together two Greek words:

– λέξις (lexis, “speech”) and

– θυμός (thumos, soul, as the seat of emotions, thoughts and feelings).

The last word, thumos or thymos, is also at the origin of the word timid, as well as the thymus gland. Well, putting the two terms together we have that alexithymia is:

The (no) lexis (speaks) thymus (from the soul). That is, the letter in A in alexithymia a is a prefix of negation, while the combination of lexis and thymus leads to non-discourse about the soul.

Translated, we can define:

Alexithymia is the inability or inability to identify and describe emotions. It’s like “emotional blindness”.

In a way, we all go through times when we have this difficulty. You know when someone asks you how you’re feeling and you say everything’s fine, but deep down you can’t really say what you’re feeling? So that’s exactly it.

The difference is that the term is used for people who have the predominance of this difficulty. That is, psychologists use the word alexithymia to refer to a personality type in which the inability to recognize and say about one’s feelings is pervasive or constant.

History of use of the term alexithymia

The word alexithymia began to be used within psychology from the works of Peter Sifneos (1973). Another way of saying what alexithymia is is defining the concept as “absence of words for emotions”.

There are validated psychological tests that can measure the degree, such as the following (all in English):

– Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20)

– Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ)

– Online Alexithymia Questionnaire (OAQ-G2)

– Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS).

It is important to emphasize that alexithymia is not considered a mental disorder. per se. That is, it is a personality trait that may be present in certain types of disorder – and even be a vulnerability for its development. Another aspect is that the inability to talk about the “internal universe” also influences psychotherapeutic treatments that are based on communication between the patient and the therapist.

Features of Alexithymia

Alexithymia is defined by:

1. difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between them and bodily sensations;
2. difficulty describing what one feels to other people;
3. restricted imaginal processes, through the evidence of the existence of few fantasies;
4. a cognitive style linked only to external stimuli.

Some researchers such as the psychologist Michael Bagby and the psychiatrist Graeme J. Taylor argue that alexithymia must be related to the individual’s capacity for self-observation (mindedness🇧🇷

Self-observation (no better term for it) mindedness) should be understood as a person’s ability to observe and reflect on their internal world. To the extent that the mindedness is the opposite of alexithymia, let’s see the characteristics of the first to expand our knowledge of the second:

Characteristics of Self-observation (mindedness)

Ability to reflect (ie observe and experience at the same time) a wide spectrum of one’s feelings and experiences (including subtle variations in emotions). It refers to both the present and the most remote time and includes concepts about self, values ​​and goals. It may reflect the multiple relationships between feelings and experiences according to what is expected by age.

Conclusion

While writing the text, I was reminded of the perspective of behavioral psychology on emotions and feelings. As in other areas related to learning, after a while we end up not remembering where and how we learn. The same is true of the ability to describe one’s feelings.

Let me explain better: as children, through contact with other people and communication with them, we learn to distinguish what we are feeling. If we have a sad face, we can hear from someone: “why are you sad?” And, therefore, we link the “sad” verbal stimulus with what we are feeling. The same process occurs with the other feelings.

However, we can also imagine people who have not gone through this type of learning process of discriminating and describing emotions. I remember a colleague from college who always replied that “it was stable”. To what extent was he stable all the time and to what extent did he not recognize his emotional ups and downs?

Evidently, the answer can only be given with an evaluation – which was not done. But this small example shows us how stability reported is not always real stability. Many times what really happens is the non-saying or, perhaps, the difficulty of saying and responding (sincerely or being able to access) the feelings.

Questions, suggestions, comments, please write below!

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