Alexithymia is a time period chances are you’ll not have heard earlier than. However it describes one thing many individuals expertise: difficulties in figuring out, distinguishing and expressing feelings.
It impacts how folks have interaction with their feelings at work, in relationships and even inside themselves. It could additionally change how an individual analyses their environment and the way they work together with the world.
It is not straightforward to inform if somebody has alexithymia. Usually, an individual could not even realise they’ve it themself. It is very a lot an inner phenomenon that an individual experiences.
The time period “alexithymia” was first described in analysis within the Seventies and there’s no medical prognosis. It’s thought to have an effect on roughly 10% of the overall inhabitants, although.
The phrase itself is taken from Greek roots – “a” (not), “lexis” (phrases), and “thymia” (soul or feelings) – and interprets, roughly, as “no words for emotions”.
Alexithymia is carefully associated to 1’s sense of interoception, which is the flexibility to interpret and label one’s inner states. Individuals with decreased interoception, additionally known as “alexisomia”, cannot simply inform if they’re hungry, thirsty, drained, aroused or in ache.
It is necessary to level out that alexithymia is not a one-size-fits-all expertise. It differs from individual to individual. Autistic folks, as an example, expertise it at a better fee – between 33% and 66% in comparison with the overall inhabitants.
It is also extra frequent amongst folks with obsessive compulsive dysfunction, premenstrual dysphoric dysfunction, post-traumatic stress dysfunction, anxiousness and despair. Some folks have all the time had alexithymia whereas others purchase it via trauma.
If an individual is not capable of establish what they’re feeling, they could be extra more likely to suppress or ignore these bodily sensations, and fewer more likely to mitigate any issues. On this means it’s tougher for them to manage themselves emotionally and so they could expertise feeling overwhelmed extra typically.
One attribute of alexithymia is an externally oriented considering model. That is the place folks deal with what’s occurring round them quite than their very own emotional processes for info.
Somebody with alexithymia could must look again at an occasion to grasp what they had been feeling at that specific second via contextual clues. They typically adapt their actions to deal with this in future conditions.
For autistic folks particularly, alexithymia could make it difficult to interpret social cues resembling facial expressions. This may occasionally develop into overwhelming and lead an individual to expertise meltdowns.
Individuals with alexithymia may reply in a different way to occasions that usually provoke communal feelings, such because the loss of life of a celeb or a marriage announcement. Reactions which will appear misplaced to others can result in misunderstandings and frustration for these concerned.
Emotional consciousness
Alexithymia impacts how an individual experiences and interprets feelings, from noticing bodily sensations within the physique, to figuring out them as particular emotions and deciding methods to reply.
Understanding at which level somebody struggles on this course of can assist decide the type of help they could want.
Whereas alexithymia can have an effect on an individual’s connection to their feelings, emotional consciousness is a talent that may be developed in maturity and improved over time.
Practising naming feelings and bodily sensations is one technique that may assist folks with alexithymia higher perceive themselves. One other is studying to establish how these are represented within the physique.
Rebecca Ellis, Assistant researcher in Public Well being, Swansea College
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.
