Alexithymia: An experience in which a person is consistently unable to put words to their feelings, resulting in difficulty in every day activities. These people may be unaware of the physical bodily reactions emotions have, or just simply be unable to explain why they are currently upset. Another common factor of people with this condition is that they often come off as indecisive, since they can’t always pinpoint their feelings. Alexithymiacs also struggle not just in describing emotions, but also feeling and expressing. Sometimes having crying spells without understanding they were sad, or feeling “numb” or “detached” when the emotion they’re feeling is simply hard to grasp. It’s not entirely known what causes Alexithymia, but it seems to have a correlation to abusive childhood households, if a child felt emotional expression was unsafe, they would “turn it off” and bottle to avoid consequences. This lead to them being unable to develop emotional skills for later in life, resulting in them not understanding the emotions they were feeling all along. When these people go to therapy, they’re often described as “Patients with nothing to tell”.
