What Is Alexithymia?

Feelings and emotions are challenging for everyone, especially if we’re in a situation where telling someone how we’re feeling can’t be said because of what’s going on, but if you have alexithymia, it's a personality trait meaning you have no words for emotion. 

Not having the right words to express how you feel is hard. You don’t know what to say or what to do. The feelings that we have on a daily basis is frustrating because we don’t understand why it's happening. 

People with this trait have a hard time knowing, understanding, and telling others how they feel. It is not a mental illness or official disease. 

Key Signs

• Trouble naming basic feelings like sadness or anger.

• Confusing body signs (like a fast heartbeat) with actual emotions.

• Hard time reading or understanding feelings in other people.

• Preferring to talk about plain facts instead of personal feelings. 

Connections to Other Conditions

• Common in autistic people and those with ADHD.

• Linked to depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

• Can happen after a brain injury. 

Signs of alexithymia include difficulty identifying personal emotions, trouble describing feelings to others, and confusing bodily sensations with emotional responses. 

Interacting With Other People

• Reading faces: Struggling to notice or understand facial expressions or tones of voice in others.

• Showing less warmth: Seeming stiff, distant, or cold in social settings, even when you care inside.

• Avoiding conflict: Feeling uncomfortable when faced with strong emotional moments or arguments.

Alexithymia, sometimes called emotional blindness, is a trait that makes it hard to recognize, understand, and talk about emotions. There’s a lot that goes into it like drawing a blank when asked how you feel, or only using basic words like good or bad instead of specific ones like anxious or frustrated. 

Drawing a blank when asked how you feel, or only using basic words like "good" or "bad" instead of specific ones like "anxious" or "frustrated". Mixing up physical sensations, like a racing heart or tight chest with actual emotions, or struggling to tell the difference between hunger, stress, and physical illness.

Describing daily events or dramatic life moments in a completely flat, realistic, or hyper-logical way without showing emotional attachment. Finding it hard to notice or understand facial expressions, tones of voice, or emotional cues in other people.

Having little interest in daydreaming, fantasy, or abstract, creative concepts. Coming across to others as apathetic, humorless, or overly rigid because you do not express warmth in a typical way.

A lot of it sounds like autism, but it's not an official diagnosis. People with autism can learn what feelings and emotions are and can work in telling people how they feel, but with alexithymia, you don’t know if you're mad, happy, frustrated, etc. It can be mistaken for autism, but even people who have ADD/ADHD or a head injury can have alexithymia.

Even if you do know how you're feeling, you don’t know why you're feeling that way. You understand why you're mad, happy or sad. You ask yourself questions on why you're feeling that way and try to figure out the reason behind it.