The lack of feelings and emotions can arise from different situations, and its severity can vary. Below we will see some examples that can cause this lack:
Traumatic events
Having been a victim of a crime, whether in childhood, adolescence or adulthood, can lead the person to have difficulties when expressing their emotions and feelings.
Psychopathological disorders
Suffering from certain psychological disorders can make emotional expression difficult, such as: the , the , the , the , the and the
Neurological diseases
Certain neurological diseases can also make it difficult to express emotions, some of them are: having suffered a stroke, brain tumors or multiple sclerosis.
Lack of emotional education
We find ourselves in a society where we give more and more importance to emotional education. Even so, for a long time people have classified different emotions as “good” or “bad” based on what each of them caused in us. Those considered bad, such as sadness or anger, have tended to want to repress them with phrases like: “don’t cry about that” or “it’s okay.” Comments like these make it difficult for people to truly express what they truly feel and tend to inhibit it. Living in a society where emotions are repressed depending on what emotions can lead to problems both when it comes to feeling it and expressing it. We need an education that helps us understand that all emotions are part of our life, they are necessary for our daily lives and we must be able to express them to manage them.
There are people who have many difficulties expressing their feelings because they also it’s hard to identify them, both in themselves and in other people. It seems then that the person is cold, distant and superficial but in many cases it may be that the person suffers from . The person with alexithymia is unable to express emotions and recognize them in other people, which leads to a lack of empathy. Their communication is usually very simple and concrete. They establish relationships based on common benefit and not on affection, feelings and emotions. It may seem that they believe they are superior due to their behavior and attitude that makes them seem distant to others, all of this is a consequence of this inability to know what they feel and what the person next to you feels.
1. Become aware
The first step in being able to help someone express their feelings is to make them aware that they have difficulties in this area and that this represents a problem both for the person who suffers from it and also for those around them. For this it is good to use one, despite its difficulties in connecting with affection, but it is good that we do not use the same cold and distant communication that the other person uses.
- Example: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed that sometimes we fight a lot because I feel like you don’t understand me and it’s hard for you, even though I clearly explain what’s happening to me, for you to understand it. I’ve noticed that this affects you too and that “At the same time it affects both of us, I think you should seek help. I will be present throughout the entire process.”
2. Recognize emotions
The first step to expressing emotions and feelings is to identify them. Recognizing emotions allows us to create a more elaborate image of ourselves, for this it can be useful:
- Books that talk about emotions.
- Images with different emotional expressions and that must be recognized.
- Color associations with emotion, such as red with anger or joy with yellow. We can ask the person to choose a color and then tell us the reason for this color. It’s not worth telling us why I like it, but rather going a little further, waiting for answers like: it gives me peace and tranquility and then taking the opportunity to ask: is this how you feel?
- Emotional games.
3. Psychoeducation
Once the person recognizes the emotions, it is important to explain that people, in order to feel good about themselves, try to act in congruence with their thoughts and feelings. For example, if you don’t like horror movies at all because you feel very scared, the most logical thing would be for you not to buy a movie ticket to go see a scary movie. In this way, we are acting in congruence with what we think and feel. It may be helpful for the person who does not recognize her emotions to present a situation and have to say how you think about the situation, how you feel and how I would act.
4. Emotional self-regulation
If we are not aware of the emotions we feel, once we identify them it can also be difficult for us to manage them. Emotions are common throughout the world but each person can feel the same emotion in a different way, there are those who, when faced with sadness, for example, take shelter, there are those who cry or there are those who do not directly want to feel it so they hide it. Knowing emotions and naming them for the first time can be overwhelming, which is why certain techniques can be used to help us, such as the ones we will see below.
5. Breathing
Sometimes when something upsets us, breathing speeds up, which means that our ability to return to our balance is also impaired. It is important that when we see that something is overwhelming us we can take a couple of minutes to inhale and exhale air and notice how it enters and leaves. Paying attention to breathing can help us return to our base state and be able to face the emotion in a calmer way. Here you can see.
6. Time out
Another technique that can be useful when we see an emotion that overwhelms us and can also harm another person or yourself – you see that you are going to argue or that you do not feel good about yourself – you can go out for a step, listen to music, read or do an activity that simply relaxes you.
7. Give emotional feedback
One of the things we can do when a person does not express emotions is to be the ones who, when expressing ourselves, use language with emotions, “I feel” or “this makes me feel.” In this way the person becomes familiar with the emotions in others and that can serve as a mirror for oneself.
8. Locate emotions in the body
It is important to know our body well to know what is happening to us. There are different emotions and feelings that are described that can be located in our body and expressed physiologically. For example: when we are nervous, there are those who sweat more, there are those whose stomach hurts and go to the bathroom more often, or those who have palpitations. Knowing how to detect body signals can help us connect with our emotions.
9. Start an emotions diary
Keeping an emotional diary can be a good task to show in writing what we have felt during the day. If we see that emotions are difficult for us, we can start by explaining the activity we have done and then how it made us feel. Encouraging them to do so is another way to help a person who does not express their feelings.
10. Draw
Perhaps there are people who feel more comfortable expressing what they feel through the art of drawing. If you see that someone has a hard time opening up but has a way with painting, you can always start there, expressing what you feel with the drawing.
11. Work on empathy
For (the ability to understand the emotional life of another person) if we see that it may be an effort for the other person we can start with cards or images that represent different situations and have the person explain what is happening and how they may feel, later It can be done with the person next to you.
12. Social skills
To help a person with alexithymia, once we have done all the previous steps, we can consider how to deal with everyday situations. It is about putting a situation in which we can find ourselves when we interact in our daily lives. Once the person has imagined it, we can create a small conflict and ask them how they would handle it.
13. Positive reinforcement
To help someone talk about their feelings, it is important that the person’s environment validates and reinforces the small advances that the person makes to maintain motivation and value the effort.
14. Don’t judge
Most people tend to quickly judge certain attitudes or certain behaviors. It is important that when we detect that a person has an inability to express what he truly feels, far from judging him, we extend our hand to help him.
15. Offer support
Social support is one of the most important things during a process of change, we need people by our side who encourage us to continue with it. If we do not have it, our motivation for this can be greatly diminished.
- What do you think has triggered the conflict?
- What involvement do you have in this?
- What do you think about the conflict?
- What do you think the other person may be thinking?
- Are there common points?
- How will you express what you think?
- Can you reach an agreement?