ALEXITIMIA: What is it, Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

There are people who are not capable of knowing what joy, sadness is and they do not know love either. They seem cold and distant, the world passes in front of 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 with alexithymia. In this article from Psychology-Online: Alexithymia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment It will be explained what happens inside the people who have this affectation.

Index

1. What is alexithymia?
2. Alexithymia: symptoms
3. Alexithymia: causes
4. Alexithymia: treatment
5. Alexithymia: examples
6. Alexithymia and sexuality

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 -" (sin) 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 own emotions and, therefore, makes incapable of emotional expression of the affected person, making it appear that 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 people in their social circle. For example, a person with alexithymia could not show condolences or sadness for the loss of a being loved one of a friend or family member, or would be unable to show joy at the promotion of a colleague to the job. In the eyes of others, an alexithymic seems a person with a lack of feelings, emotionally insensitive, cold, calculating and pragmatic.
• Emotional distress Are they really emotionless people? Alexithymia does not imply an absence of emotions, as an alexithymic still preserves them. Unable to recognize or define the bustle of emotions they feel, they are unable to regulate their feelings. This leads to them being easily overwhelmed by sensations they don't understand and that they cannot control, generating a high level of emotional suffering. As might be expected, it implies a significant deterioration in the quality of life of a person with alexithymia.

Who gets 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, schizoaffective disorder or in patients with Parkinson's disease.

There is a high incidence of alexithyma cases in people who present autism spectrum disorders, being present approximately 85% of the time. There are more cases of alexithymia that are not covered in the previous explanation. More on the subject later.

People with alexithymia are unable to recognize their own emotions and express them. Therefore, alexithymics will show certain characteristics of these deficiencies in their way of acting and communicating. What are the symptoms of alexithymia? We'll see now how are people with alexithymia:

• Lack of empathy for 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 unable to appreciate art or symbolism.
• Cold and distant appearance.
• Poor verbal communication: they speak little.
• Limited non-verbal communication. They seem very stiff.
• It is difficult to maintain interpersonal relationships.
• Absence of sexual desire.
• They mistake emotions for bodily sensations that they cannot locate.

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 has 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 alexithymia

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 limbic system, which is involved in managing 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; isolating 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 it shows up in early childhood, or it appears after a neurological diseasesuch as Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. There are also cases of alexithymia due to stroke, brain tumors or trauma.

2. Secondary alexithymia

The cause is psychological and its severity is variable.

• This type of alexithyma may be due to the experience of traumatic experiences on the part of the person, whether it has been in childhood or in adulthood. Many of these people also tend to suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (TEP).
• It can appear in various psychopathological disorders such as depression, addictions or by eating disorders.
• It can occur in cases of emotional learning disorder due to a emotional rudeness.

ICD10 code of alexithymia In most cases, patients with alexithymia are not the ones who make the first step in order 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 great part of alexithymia cases that come to consultation is due to the insistence on the part of third parties. Since it is not voluntary, most of the time, treating alexithymia is difficult If there is no motivation on the part of the patient and social support will be vital for the success of the therapy.

What is the treatment for alexithymia? The treatment for alexithymia is reduced in working the development of capacities and abilities of the emotional intelligence. The objective will be to help the patient to recognize emotions, name them and then work on the emotional self-regulation.

The origin of alexithymia will have to be taken into account, since in the treatment of primary alexithymia there will be a pharmacological treatment at the same time. While the psychotherapeutic treatment will be more affective with people who present a secondary alexithymia.

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 affectation:

• A person who sees a friend cry and acts as if nothing had happened, talking about anything.
• Meeting a person who doesn't go to the movies or read books because she just doesn't understand them.
• A couple who have been together for 6 years and one of them has never said "I love you" to the other person.

As briefly mentioned above, people with alexithymia lack sexual desire. That does not mean that they do not feel sexual urges, but that they cannot identify it as such and, therefore, cannot link them with sexuality.

The inability to recognize the impulses at the time causes that, in the case that you maintain a relationship with someone and that person wishes establish a sexual relationship at a certain time, you may find that the person affected by alexithymia is not aroused or seems powerless.

These situations can lead to frustration and relationship problems. In these cases, it is important that the couple recognize and be understandable with the alexithymic affectation, encouraging and promoting the participation to a treatment or looking for alternatives so that the two can enjoy the relationship.

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 Alexithymia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

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