Other Alexithymia?? (struggle/difficulty with verbal communication)??

[Caroline01]

I recently came across the term Alexithymia while reading a book.... it is a Greek word that lierally translates to mean "no words for feelings."

The book then further explains that "people with alexithymia experience emotions but experience great difficult explaining to others how they are feeling. They are unable to give depth and detail to their accounts beyond a feeling of being upset or bothered....people struggling with this are unable to translate how they are feeling into words. As a consequence, they often experience their emotional states as physical problems- a fatigue, unwellness, neck pain & so on. Their ability to work through trauma is thus severely limited & they struggle when trying to elicit support from friends and family."

Does this resonate with anyone else??? It hugely does with me.... I imagine much of why would be the way I was silenced for a period of 3 years while in an abusive relationship. The verbal & emotional abuse was so severe and unpredictable where I truly had to completely stop having any expression of emotion/feeling, because if he were to perceive it as anything less than completely positive and agreeable, he would erupt into an horrific and explosive rage that would immediately trigger intense physical reaction that would leave me very noticeably shaking long after he was finished.

I am wondering if anyone else can relate to such a long-term emotional shutdown/internalizing/blocking of feelings?? Or if anyone knows more about this concept of Alexithymia. It terrifies me how much the information in my book would apply to me because of the last point they make in saying a person struggling with this has severely limited ability to work through trauma...

Any and all thoughts/insight/or any other form of response will be so incredibly appreciated! <3

 

[scout86]

My therapist has said that he thinks I probably qualify as having it. I don't know that there's enough known about it to make much of that. I bothered me at first, most from a "Good grief there's even MORE wrong with me!" standpoint. He says that none of this means much. That there's a bell shaped distribution of characteristics and I happen to be a bit farther out towards one end on a few of them. I guess I figure it is what is is, and it's the same with or without the label.

A friend told me that there are a bunch of message boards related to alexithymia. (I haven't looked.) She was surprised to find there are a lot of people who think it's great to have.

I'm not sure how much of this is learning and how much is inherited and how much is a combination. It's true that my feelings didn't matter, growing up, so I never had much reason to pay attention to them or to think that they were important. I can definitely see how that might be a factor. I'm not sure I'd take that "severely limited ability to work through trauma" real seriously. Could be a problem, but I don't experience it as a big problem. But then I don't have anything to compare it to either.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Caroline01]

@scout86 Thank you so much for such a thoughtful response!

Do you ever experience verbal communication issues....like difficulty when it comes to verbally communicating your emotion or emotionally charged thoughts? And by difficulty I mean a situation where you are speaking, but struggling or even unable to clearly articulate your intended statement to the person you're speaking to? Or possibly that person is misinterpreting/misunderstanding what you are actually saying? I'm not totally sure if that type of issue actually falls into the category with alexithymia....I am going to look into the message boards specifically designated for this topic, though. Thanks for that info!

 

[Chava]

I'm totally not into having more hard-to-pronounce labels for myself, but yes, I have a very hard time putting feelings into words. Or even having feelings or identifying them on any level sometimes. A big part, I assume, with trauma work is that so much of the language portion of the brain actually shuts down during traumatic experience. So when I get close to this in therapy there is also nothing I can say. I want to but it's like everything is stuck. Other times I become mute and detached even from my therapist. My therapist is good about not pushing me, but just helping me beyond these experiences, and sometimes I can put a few words to it later.

 

[scout86]

@Caroline01 what I experience is more like my T asks how I feel about something and I respond with "Feel? How do I FEEL? What do you mean, 'feel'?" I tend not to notice stuff like that. I don't have problems telling people how I feel because it doesn't occur to me to TRY to tell them how I feel. I'm not often really aware of "feeling". I tend to notice anger. LOL Fear, I usually recognize, although I tend to shoot right through fear to anger. When you get more complicated than that, generally someone else has to bring it up before it occurs to me to consider what I might be feeling. I've been trying to practice by stopping to ask myself if I know what I'm feeling at different times. Because I guess the feelings are there, I just don't have much of a connection with them. (Or so I'm told.) It might be a little like being color blind? There's some stuff that doesn't really register too clearly? Stuff tends to get sorted into "positive and negative" or "threat/ non-threat", if that makes any sense.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

I feel like this all the time. I struggle to define any of my interior states. But I also wonder if it's truly a disorder (for me) or me just internally avoiding knowing what is happening to me. Just a thought.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I think it may be a common trauma thing?

I went to Sheppard Pratt twice and while there we were all given "feelings" lists and charts so that at any given moment of the day we could identify what we were feeling. Some of us had to write down our feelings every 15 minutes. (I got to stop because I was always writing down the same feeling---Anxious!)

So I don't think you're alone in being unable to identify or speak about what you are feeling. I think that many of us are "taught" to suppress whatever it is that we are feeling, either through an abusive childhood where expressing emotion was a bad thing that could possibly lead to more abuse, or as an adult who is expected to keep it all in check. Heck, even society implicitly states that we are to keep certain feelings to ourselves, which leads to repression of those feelings because others don't see them as "appropriate!"

 

[Caroline01]

@itsKismet I very much appreciate your input!! Especially because you make many really great points & really speak to how incredibly confusing this aspect of trauma recovery is for me...which, I now am understanding that sort of confusion is not abnormal
What you say at the end about society...you don't want to get me started, honestly, but YES....certain circumstances/instances in regard to the relationship between society & certain traumatic events have, in my case, left me deeply disturbed...but I won't go too into that so as to not end up on my 'soap box.' ;) I will just say that having endured my multiple incidents of trauma in 'the south' (GA), and the trauma including quite controversial issues- assault with a gun, abusive relationships, unplanned pregnancy & abortion...finding unbiased support (or positive/beneficial support at all, sometimes) has been an immense challenge & has ABSOLUTELY and hugely contributed to the fact that I ended up spending a period of about 4 years with unmanaged/untreated/undiagnosed PTSD, without ever even having the slightest clue that I was that badly affected by past trauma & basically being re-traumatized on a daily basis by the fact that I was too broken to see how badly my boyfriends alcoholism was, completely silenced by the abuse, in addition to constantly being exposed to guns bc the need to protect "his woman" (ugh) by far supersedes my intense nightmare & flashback reactions that the simple sight of a weapon causes for me.

See...I meant it when I said you don't want to get me started. :)

 

[joeylittle]

@Caroline01, I took out your trigger alert, as we don't use them here. No need to worry about triggering others.

we were all given "feelings" lists and charts

We did this in PHP, too. I think actually its common to many people - naming our own feelings isn't something we do regularly, beyond 'sad', 'angry', 'afraid', 'happy'....just the basics. So, when you need that word for 'I'm the kind of sad you get when you feel like a lonely rainy day', seeing a piece of paper listing 'melancholy' can help - especially if your brain is PTSD'd and fuzzy.

 

[meltot]

I absolutely had trouble speaking and articulating what I was meaning to say. I had no idea why it was there, only that I talked to myself a lot at home as kind of a "rehearsal" so that if I needed to work out and express a thought, I could do so when time came. I remember talking to my pdoc and every few sentences just stuttering or sighing while waving my hand in the air like, "um, um, hang on, lemme think" but she was super patient and wonderful about it. Not sure what the deal is behind it, I'm seeing my pdoc again this week and need to ask her anyway. Great question/topic.

 

[Kefira]

I absolutely relate. I think it probably is pretty common just from what I've seen on here and other places. I know I was conditioned that any expression of negative emotions was going to end poorly. And since I was always depressed or anxious there weren't a ton of happy emotions either most of the time. I spent a lot of time dissociated and numb and I'm not sure I ever learned to identify feelings, particularly gradients of feelings.

I find it really helpful to sit down with a list or with one of those charts with the faces on it. That way I can go from very general- happy vs sad, anxious vs calm sort of territory and narrow it down a bit more. I also think if I know WHY I'm feeling it helps me sometimes to logically figure out what I might be feeling. Seems a little backwards but if I can't figure it out the source will offer clues sometimes.