There are people who are not able to know what joy and sadness are and they do not know love either. They seem cold and distant, the world passes before their eyes and they don’t seem to blink in amazement. Inside, unknown and indecipherable sensations flutter without being able to be expressed. Do they really feel nothing? Is the inability to feel love real? That is the question that many people ask themselves when observing these types of people. People who suffer from alexithymia. In this Psychology-Online article: Alexithymia: what it is, symptoms, causes and treatment It will explain what happens inside people who have this condition.
What is alexithymia?
Alexithymia affects approximately 10% of the population according to the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN), affecting more men than women. Therefore, it has an important weight in society. But what exactly is alexithymia?
Alexithymia: etymology
The term alexithymia derives from the Greek prefix “a-” (without) and the words “lexis” (word) and “thimos” (emotion, passion).
Meaning of alexithymia
For psychologists, alexithymia is a neurological disorder that makes it impossible to detect and recognize one’s emotions and, therefore, makes incapable of emotional expression of the affected person, making it seem like they are people without emotions.
What is alexithymia in psychology?
- Interpersonal problems. A person with alexithymia has difficulties with their interpersonal relationships, since they cannot give emotional feedback to the people in their social circle. For example, a person with alexithymia would be unable to show condolences or sadness over the loss of a loved one of a friend or family member, or would be unable to show joy over a colleague’s promotion to work. In the eyes of others, an alexithymic seems like a person with a lack of feelings, with emotional insensitivity, cold, calculating and pragmatic.
- Emotional suffering. Are they really emotionless people? Alexithymia does not imply an absence of emotions, since an alexithymic still preserves them. Unable to recognize or define the flurry of emotions they feel, they find themselves unable to regulate their feelings. This leads to them easily being overwhelmed by sensations that they do not understand and that they cannot control, generating a high level of emotional suffering. As expected, it implies a significant deterioration in the quality of life of a person with alexithymia.
Who suffers from alexithymia?
The disorder is usually more present in people who have suffered from a neurological disease or suffer from psychological disorders, such as depression, cyclothymia, schizophrenia, or in patients with .
There is a high incidence of cases of alexitima in people who present , being present approximately 85% of the time. There are more cases of alexithymia that are not included in the previous explanation. More details are given on the topic later.
Alexithymia: symptoms
People with alexithymia are unable to recognize their own emotions and express them. Therefore, alexithymics will show certain characteristics typical of these deficiencies in their way of acting and communicating. What are the symptoms of alexithymia? We’ll see now What are people with alexithymia like?:
- Lack of empathy due to not being able to recognize other people’s emotions.
- Poor ability to imagine and fantasize.
- Indecision: the lack of introspection towards their emotions makes it difficult for them to know their motivations.
- Simple and concrete thinking and communication: they do not use abstract references and are not able to appreciate art or symbolism.
- Distant and cold appearance.
- Poor verbal communication: they speak little.
- Limited . They seem very rigid.
- It is difficult to maintain interpersonal relationships.
- Absence of sexual desire.
- They confuse emotions with bodily sensations that they cannot locate.
Alexithymia: causes
Why does alexithymia occur? What is the cause of alexithymia? Not all those who suffer from alexithymia have the same profile. Depending on the cause that caused the appearance of alexithymia, its symptoms and severity may vary. They can be differentiated two types of alexithymia depending on its origin:
1. Primary alethymia
Its cause is biological and they are the most serious. In these cases, there is a neurological deficit which can affect the brain in two possible ways:
- The deficit interferes with the communication of the , which is involved in the management of emotions, and the neocortex, involved in reasoning.
- It is also possible that there is a deficit in communication between the two hemispheres of the brain; cutting off the left hemisphere, which is involved in the production of language, with the right hemisphere, which regulates and catalogs emotions.
This type of alexithymia can have a hereditary origin and is shown in the beginning of childhood, or appears after neurological disease, such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. There are also cases of alexithymia due to stroke, brain tumors or trauma.
2. Secondary alethymia
The cause is psychological and its severity varies.
- This type of alexitima may be due to the experience of traumatic experiences by the person, whether it has been in childhood or in adulthood. Many of these people also tend to suffer from (PTE).
- It can appear in various psychopathological disorders such as depression, addictions or .
- It can occur in cases of emotional learning disorder due to a bad emotional education.
Alexithymia: treatment
Does alexithymia have a cure? In most cases, it is not patients with alexithymia who make the first step to start treatment. Their lack of understanding of what is happening to them means that they do not associate their problems with a psychological problem. Therefore, the majority of alexithymia cases that come to consultation are due to the insistence of third parties. Since it is not voluntary, most of the time, treatment of alexithymia is difficult If there is no motivation on the part of the patient and social support it will be vital for the success of the therapy.
What is the treatment for alexithymia? The treatment for alexithymia is reduced to working on the development of abilities and skills of the person. The objective will be to help the patient to recognize emotionsgive them names and then work the emotional self-regulation.
The origin of the alexithymia will have to be taken into account, since in the treatment of primary alexithymia there will also be a pharmacological treatment. While psychotherapeutic treatment will be more affective with people who present secondary alexithymia.
Alexithymia: examples
To facilitate the understanding of what alexithymia is, we leave some examples to better visualize what it would be like to meet someone who has the condition:
- A person who sees a friend crying and acts as if nothing had happened, talking to them about anything.
- Knowing a person who doesn’t go to the movies or read books because they simply don’t understand them.
- A couple who has been together for 6 years and one of them has never said “I love you” to the other person.
Alexithymia and sexuality
As mentioned briefly above, people who suffer from alexithymia lack sexual desire. That does not mean that they do not feel sexual impulses, but rather that they cannot identify it as such and, therefore, cannot link it to sexuality.
The inability to recognize impulses at the time means that, if you have a relationship with someone and that person wants to establish a sexual relationship at a certain moment, you may find that the person affected by alexithymia is not aroused or seems impotent. .
These situations can lead to frustration. In these cases, it is important for the couple to recognize and be understanding of the alexithymic affectation, encouraging and promoting participation in treatment or looking for alternatives so that both can enjoy the relationship.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Krystal, H. (1979). Alexithymia and psychotherapy. American journal of psychotherapy, 33(1), 17-31.
- Lane, R.D., Ahern, G.L., Schwartz, G.E., & Kaszniak, A.W. (1997). Is alexithymia the emotional equivalent of blindsight?. Biological psychiatry.
- de la Serna, JM (2015). Alexithymia, a world without emotions. Xin Xii.
- Taylor, G.J. (2000). Recent developments in alexithymia theory and research. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 45(2), 134-142.