You are meeting someone or you have a friend who seems to have never told you about her feelings or it is very difficult for you to imagine what is going through her head that she does not seem to process emotions. You have always classified that person as cold and distant and have asked yourself more than once: Does he feel anything? Are you ashamed and do not look confident to express your emotions? Are you unable to feel something? In this Psychology-Online article we will explain how to treat a person who does not express their feelings.
The lack of feelings and emotions can derive from different situations, and its severity can be variable. Here are some examples that can cause this fault:
Traumatic events
Having been the victim of a traumatic eventEither in childhood, adolescence or adulthood, it can lead the person to have difficulties when it comes to expressing their emotions and feelings.
Psychopathological disorders
Suffering from certain psychological disorders can make emotional expression difficult, such as:
Neurological diseases
Certain neurological diseases can also lead to difficult expression of emotions, some of them are: Parkinson's, having suffered a stroke, brain tumors or multiple sclerosis.
Lack of emotional education
We are in a society where we increasingly give more importance to emotional education. Even so, for a long time people have classified different emotions as "good" or "bad" depending on what each one of them caused in us. Those considered bad, such as sadness or anger, have tended to want to repress them with phrases such as: “don't cry about that” or “nothing happens”. Comments like these make it difficult for people to really express what they really feel and tend to inhibit it. Living in a society where they are repressed according to what emotions can lead to problems both when 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 day to day and we must be able to express them to manage them.
There are people who have a lot of difficulties expressing their feelings because they also it is difficult for them to identify them, both in themselves and in other people. It seems then that the person is cold, distant and superficial but on many occasions it may be that the person suffers alexithymia. 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 the 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 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 helping someone express their feelings is to make them aware that they are presenting difficulties in this area and that this is a problem both for the person who suffers it and also for their environment. For this it is good to use a assertive communication, despite their difficulties to connect with affection, but it is good that we do not use the same cold and distant communication that the other person uses.
- Example: "I do not know if you have noticed that sometimes we fight a lot because I feel that you do not understand me and it is difficult for you even though I clearly explain what is wrong with me, that you understand. I have noticed that this affects you too and that it affects both of us at the same time, I think you should seek help. I will be present throughout the process. "
2. Recognize emotions
The first step in expressing emotions and feelings is identifying 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 the different emotional expressions and who must recognize them.
- 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 is not worth telling us why I like it, but to go a little further, wait for answers such as: it gives me peace and tranquility and then take 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 be good with themselves, try to act in accordance with their thoughts and feelings. For example, if you don't like horror movies at all because you're very scared, the most logical thing would be that you don't 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 expose a situation and have to say how you think about the situation, how you feel and how 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 all over the world but each person can feel the same emotion in a different way, there are those who In the face of sadness, for example, it takes shelter, there are those who cry or there are those who do not want to feel it directly, so hides. Knowing the emotions and naming them for the first time can be overwhelming, so certain techniques can be used to help us, such as the ones we will see below.
5. The breathing
Sometimes when something disturbs us, breathing quickens, that causes 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. The fact of paying attention to the breath can help us return to our base state and be able to face the emotion in a calmer way. Here you can see breathing exercises.
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 arguing or that you don't feel good about yourself - you can go out for a walk, listen to music, read, or do an activity that simply relax.
7. Give emotional feedback
One of the things we can do when a person does not express emotions is to be us 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 happens to us. There are different emotions and feelings that are described that can be located in our body and expressed in a physiological way. For example: when we are nervous there are those who sweat more, there are those who have a sore tummy and go to the bathroom more often or who have palpitations. Knowing how to detect body signals can help us connect with our emotions.
9. Start an emotion diary
Carrying out 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 carried out and then how it has made us feel. Encouraging him to do so is another way to help a person who does not express his feelings.
10. Draw
Perhaps, there are people who feel more comfortable expressing what they feel through the art of drawing, if you see someone It is difficult for him to open up but he has a hand with painting, you can always start there, expressing what you feel with it He drew.
11. Work empathy
In order to work empathy (the ability to understand the emotional life of another person) if we see that it can be an effort for the other person we can start with cards or images that represent different situations and that the person explained what is happening and how it can feel, later it can be done with the person from at side.
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 day to day. Once the person has imagined it, we can create a small conflict and ask how it would unfold in it.
13. Positive reinforcement
To help someone talk about her feelings, it is important that the person's environment validates and reinforcing the small advances that the person makes to maintain motivation and value the effort.
14. Not judge
Most of us tend to be quick to judge certain attitudes or 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 change process, we need people by our side to encourage us to continue with it. If we don't have it, our motivation for it can be greatly diminished.
- What do you think triggered the conflict?
- What implication do you have in this?
- What do you think about the conflict?
- What do you think the other person might be thinking?
- Are there any commonalities?
- How will you express what you think?
- Can you reach an agreement?
This article is merely informative, in 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.
If you want to read more articles similar to How to treat a person who does not express their feelings, we recommend that you enter our category of Emotions.
