Sunday, March 07, 2010
Alexithymia
I periodically mention my difficulty in determining what emotions I'm experiencing. I'd never heard of anyone else having that problem, and you probably hadn't either. Thanks to Wikipedia, my research on Asperger syndrome (yes, I'm an Aspie, isn't it obvious?) led me to Alexithymia
"a state of deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia
The main points of the article are included below. As always with any categorization of people, I'm not exactly in synch with all of it; my imagination, dreams and fantasies are all intense and vivid, in sharp contrast to the standard Alexithymic, and I do have SOME clue as to the feelings of others, but the rest of it is dead on (asterisks are mine):
"Alexithymia is defined by:
difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
difficulty describing feelings to other people
constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a paucity of fantasies
a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style"
"Typical deficiencies may include problems identifying, describing, and working with one's own feelings, often marked by a lack of understanding of the feelings of others; difficulty distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal; confusion of physical sensations often associated with emotions; few dreams or fantasies due to restricted imagination; and ****** concrete, realistic, logical thinking, often to the exclusion of emotional responses to problems ******."
"A common misconception about alexithymia is that affected individuals are totally unable to express emotions verbally and that they may even fail to acknowledge that they experience emotions. Even before coining the term, Sifneos (1967) noted patients often mentioned things like anxiety or depression. The distinguishing factor was their inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings. The core issue is that alexithymics have poorly differentiated emotions limiting their ability to distinguish and describe them to others. This contributes to the sense of emotional detachment from themselves and difficulty connecting with others, making alexithymia negatively associated with life satisfaction even when depression and other confounding factors are controlled for."
Although I wouldn't wish for anyone else to struggle with this, it's good in a way to know that it's a recognized problem with a name. Sadly, there's nothing they can DO about it. Maybe God will fix it some day...
"a state of deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia
The main points of the article are included below. As always with any categorization of people, I'm not exactly in synch with all of it; my imagination, dreams and fantasies are all intense and vivid, in sharp contrast to the standard Alexithymic, and I do have SOME clue as to the feelings of others, but the rest of it is dead on (asterisks are mine):
"Alexithymia is defined by:
difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
difficulty describing feelings to other people
constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a paucity of fantasies
a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style"
"Typical deficiencies may include problems identifying, describing, and working with one's own feelings, often marked by a lack of understanding of the feelings of others; difficulty distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal; confusion of physical sensations often associated with emotions; few dreams or fantasies due to restricted imagination; and ****** concrete, realistic, logical thinking, often to the exclusion of emotional responses to problems ******."
"A common misconception about alexithymia is that affected individuals are totally unable to express emotions verbally and that they may even fail to acknowledge that they experience emotions. Even before coining the term, Sifneos (1967) noted patients often mentioned things like anxiety or depression. The distinguishing factor was their inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings. The core issue is that alexithymics have poorly differentiated emotions limiting their ability to distinguish and describe them to others. This contributes to the sense of emotional detachment from themselves and difficulty connecting with others, making alexithymia negatively associated with life satisfaction even when depression and other confounding factors are controlled for."
Although I wouldn't wish for anyone else to struggle with this, it's good in a way to know that it's a recognized problem with a name. Sadly, there's nothing they can DO about it. Maybe God will fix it some day...
