Do your emotions seems strange to you? Do you see yourself as detached from them? Are you totally not interested in sex?
People with Alexithymia have difficulties in perceiving, describing and understanding individual’s as well as others’ emotions. It has also been described as ‘an emotional blindness’ They are unable to match, distinguish facial expressions with certain emotions. A person might be born as alexithymic but mostly it results from a traumatic event or some negative experience. Below we are going to explain it in details, let’s see if you see yourself among the signs of an individual with Alexithymia:
There are either positive or negative emotions for them.
People with Alexithymia cannot define or understand their exact emotions. To the, there are only positive or negative feelings. They do not know what is happiness, sadness, fear or anger. For instance, a person will Alexithymia may have fear of dogs, may start shaking when he come across with a dog; but if you ask them about it, he will say he is not afraid of dogs. Some alexythimic people who have recognized their problem can categorize their emotions as positive or negative, however, there are still most of the alexythimic people who cannot even divide their emotions as positive and negative.
Alexythimia can be a problem in relationships.
Alexythimic people may seem as emotionless, a person who lacks empathy by their partners. Although some alexythimic people really can be emotionless, most of them are not. Alexythimic people do experience emotions, but they just cannot put them into words and have difficulties with realizing their emotions. For example, a person with alexythimia may actually be in love with their partner and he might be happy being by her side; but if you ask them, they will deny it.
They have no interest in sex.
These people may engage in sexual relationships but without experiencing any emotions. Some of them even say that ‘they have no desire for sexuality’ or ‘they have almost no sex drive’. They cannot associate sex with emotions so this activity seems meaningless to them because for the sex to actually be good there needs to be some sort of emotional exchange happening.
They lack empathy.
Another problem happening in relationships of an Alexythimic person is because they lack empathy. As alexythimic people have difficulties in understanding their emotions, automatically, they also lack understanding others’ feelings and emotions. As a result, they usually face with problems in maintaining social and interpersonal relationships.
They cannot match pictures with feelings.
One of the tests to diagnose alexythimia by the therapist is done by showing the person a collection of pictures of different emotionally expressed faces or events. Later they are asked to match the pictures with appropriate feelings –such as happiness, sadness, anger etc. – Someone who has alexythimia would fail on this test, although they might be aware of some connections logically, they are going to have difficulties in matching the pictures with putting in words certain emotions.
It is usually associated with other psychological disorders.
Alexythimia is mostly associated with other mental disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, depersonalization disorder, or autism. In other words, people who has been diagnosed with such disorders is more likely to have alexythimic characteristics. We probably have realized people who are in depression – that is the most popular among other mental disorders- tend to be emotionally distant, having no desire to engage in sexual relationship and the other symptoms above. A study also found a connection between Alexithymia and depression. It is also the same for schizophrenia and depersonalization disorder. These mental illnesses also bring up alexythimia by themselves so we have to be aware that early disagnosis is very important.
Copyright: Dream Humanity
