How does a person with alexithymia act?

Alexithymia is not a condition in its own right, but rather an inability to identify and describe emotions. People with alexithymia have difficulties recognizing and communicating their own emotions, and they also struggle to recognize and respond to emotions in others.

How do people with alexithymia behave?

Alexithymia refers to an inability to express or identify emotions. People with alexithymia feel the usual range of emotions, but they are less aware of their own emotions and the emotions of others. If your partner has alexithymia, there's a good chance they're unaware of their condition.

What triggers alexithymia?

Trait alexithymia is believed to be a characteristic inherent in a person's personality. Trait alexithymia may be, 'inborn,' or caused by events that happen in a person's early childhood such as neglect or abuse from a primary caregiver.

What is an example of alexithymia?

Here are a few examples those with alexithymia experience: Difficulty identifying different types of feelings. Limited understanding of what causes feelings. Difficulty expressing feelings.

Do people with alexithymia have emotions?

Despite the name, the real problem for people with alexithymia isn't so much that they have no words for their emotions, but that they lack the emotions themselves. Still, not everyone with the condition has the same experiences. Some have gaps and distortions in the typical emotional repertoire.

What if I Can't Tell What I'm Feeling? (Alexithymia)

What is alexithymia like?

Summary. Alexithymia is not a condition in its own right, but rather an inability to identify and describe emotions. People with alexithymia have difficulties recognizing and communicating their own emotions, and they also struggle to recognize and respond to emotions in others.

How do you know if you have alexithymia?

Some Inner Signs of Alexithymia:

You are out of touch with your feelings. When you try to feel into your heart, you feel blocked. Most of the time, you don't get emotional nuances. You can only tell if you are feeling 'good' or 'bad', 'happy' or 'unhappy', and not much more beyond that.

What are alexithymic personality traits?

Alexithymia, or “no words for feelings”, is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in emotion regulation, difficulties in identifying, describing and communicating feelings, difficulties in differentiating feelings from bodily sensations and diminished affect-related fantasy [1], [2].

Is alexithymia a trauma response?

Traumatization has often been investigated as an environmental factor for alexithymia. To date, traumatization, occurring both in childhood and in adulthood, has been identified as the most important known risk factor for developing alexithymia.

Does alexithymia cause lack of empathy?

In the multivariate analysis, highly alexithymic individuals appeared to report subjective deficits in emotion recognition and regulation as well as increased impulsivity; however, their empathy skills were intact, and even the proneness to experiencing empathic distress with others' suffering was increased among ...

Is alexithymia psychopathic?

The prototypic person with alexithymia, however, is anxious, overcontrolled, submissive, boring, ethically consistent, and socially conforming, whereas the prototypic individual with psychopathy is anxiety-free, undercontrolled, dominant, charming, deceitful, and nonconforming.

How does alexithymia affect relationships?

The effect on relationships

Alexithymia is linked with poor quality marital relations and high rates of divorce, with partners typically becoming angry, sad, lonely, and desperate when continually denied emotional validation and support.

What is a person with alexithymia called?

Means to push away emotions, feelings. Nonmedical terms describing similar conditions include emotionless and impassive. People with the condition are called alexithymics or alexithymiacs.

How do you love someone with alexithymia?

Help your partner work through their own feelings, if needed. Sometimes, people with alexithymia may face big emotions that they don't understand or know how to handle. If your partner is dealing with this, you can help by validating their feelings and helping them label and work through their emotions.

Can people with alexithymia be empathetic?

Alexithymia is the inability to empathize and relate to others.

What are the effects of alexithymia?

Individuals with trait alexithymia (AL) display poor cognitive assimilation of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. This may result in the persistence of stress, anxiety, and depressive disorders.

Is alexithymia a symptom of PTSD?

An important feature of PTSD is persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event. Avoidance may be associated with alexithymia [9–12]. It is a personality trait that reflects deficits in the cognitive processing and regulation of emotions.

Can people with alexithymia have anxiety?

There are two main reasons why Alexithymia can contribute to anxiety: Alexithymia can mean that autistic people can struggle to sense physical symptoms of anxiety such as changes in heart rate or a rush of adrenaline. It can mean that these symptoms are confusing and unpredictable and make anxiety feel much worse.

Can emotional abuse cause alexithymia?

Emotional abuse, which was positively associated with difficulty describing feelings, was the only child maltreatment type significantly associated with this dimension of alexithymia.

Can alexithymia patients feel pain?

Alexithymia has been shown to be associated with pain in patients with chronic myofascial pain [25], temporomandibular disorder [11], rheumatoid arthritis [24], migraine headaches [24], systemic lupus erythematosus [24], low back pain [28], fibromyalgia [15], and cancer pain [30].

Do narcissists have alexithymia?

Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by grandiosity, self-admiration needs, and empathy deficits (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). An emerging body of work suggests that narcissism is particularly associated with an alexithymia subtype (i.e., difficulties identifying feelings).

What is alexithymia in simple words?

Alexithymia refers to a difficulty in verbalizing emotions, literally, to a lack of a lexicon for describing feelings.

Is there a test for alexithymia?

The TAS-20 assesses three facets of alexithymia: difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, and externally oriented thinking. Although alexithymia scores are continuous, this measure has an empirically-derived cut score that identifies people who are alexithymic.

Is alexithymia a mental illness?

Alexithymia is not a diagnosis, but a construct useful for characterizing patients who seem not to understand the feelings they obviously experience, patients who seem to lack the words to describe these feelings to others.

Is alexithymia a symptom of ADHD?

Alexithymia incidence was 41.5% in the ADHD group. The increase in the levels of impulsiveness, depression and anxiety correlated with the severity of ADHD symptoms; and impulsiveness predicted alexithymia in the ADHD group. Conclusion: Alexithymia incidence was higher in the ADHD group.