What does the term alexithymia mean?
In 1972, Peter Sifneos introduced to psychiatry the term alexithymia, which (derived from the Greek) literally means having no words for emotions (a=lack, lexis=word, thymos=emotions).
What is alexithymia related to?
Alexithymia is related to poor social competence in autistic and nonautistic children. Autism Res. 2021 Jun;14(6):1252-1259.
What do you call a person with alexithymia?
Means to push away emotions, feelings. Nonmedical terms describing similar conditions include emotionless and impassive. People with the condition are called alexithymics or alexithymiacs.
What can cause alexithymia?
Alexithymia and Mental Health
- Depression.
- Eating disorders.
- Substance abuse.
- Certain brain injuries.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Is alexithymia the same as psychopath?
The prototypical person with alexithymia (i.e., traits that stand out) is anxious, overcontrolled, submissive, boring, ethically consistent, and socially conforming, whereas the prototypical individual with psychopathy is anxiety-free, undercontrolled, dominant, charming, deceitful, and nonconforming.
Can you make yourself fall in love?
YES: “You can make yourself deliberately fall in love with someone you presently like but do not really love, but not easily. But if you work hard at convincing yourself that another person has uniquely outstanding traits and will lead you to certain bliss, you may fall in love with him or her.
What is alexithymia in psychology?
Alexithymia is a subclinical phenomenon involving a lack of emotional awareness or, more specifically, difficulty in identifying and describing feelings and in distinguishing feelings from the bodily sensations of emotional arousal (Nemiah et al., 1976).
Is emotionless a disorder?
What is Schizoid Personality Disorder? Schizoid personality disorder is one of many personality disorders. It can cause individuals to seem distant and emotionless, rarely engaging in social situations or pursuing relationships with other people.
What’s the opposite of alexithymia?
The opposite of alexithymia is emotional literacy. Again, with some people, emotional literacy develops naturally.
What does alexithymia feel like?
People who do have alexithymia may describe themselves as having difficulties with expressing emotions that are deemed socially appropriate, such as happiness on a joyous occasion. Others may furthermore have trouble identifying their emotions. Such individuals don’t necessarily have apathy.
Do people with alexithymia have empathy?
In a series of studies, Bird has found that about half of people with autism have alexithymia — it’s these people who struggle with emotion and empathy, whereas the rest do not. In other words, emotion-related difficulties are intrinsic to alexithymia, not to autism.
What is the difference between alexithymia and a sociopath?
The prototypic person with alexithymia, however, is anxious, overcontrolled, submissive, boring, ethically consistent, and socially conforming, whereas the prototypic individual with psychopathy is anxiety-free, undercontrolled, dominant, charming, deceitful, and nonconforming.
Alexithymia literally means “no words for feelings.” The concept refers to a hypothesized communicative function of somatic symptoms. Its key features are a relative constriction of emotional functioning, poverty of fantasy life, and inability to find appropriate words to describe one’s emotions (Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1991 ).
What does alexalexithymia mean?
ALEXITHYMIA. Alexithymia (literally ‘no words for feelings’) refers to a person’s inability to identify or verbally describe his or her feelings. The psychiatric syndrome is prevalent in patients with psychosomatic problems, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders, but alexithymic symptoms occur along a continuum.
What are the four components of alexithymia?
Traditionally, alexithymia has been conceptually defined by four components: 1 difficulty identifying feelings (DIF) 2 difficulty describing feelings to other people (DDF) 3 a stimulus-bound, externally oriented thinking style (EOT) 4 constricted imaginal processes (IMP)
What is alexithymic response style?
Alexithymia refers to a difficulty in verbalizing emotions, literally, to a lack of a lexicon for describing feelings. Early investigations of psychosomatic patients1011 linked an alexithymic response style with diminished dream recall and an impoverished imaginal life more generally. An absence of affect in dreams was also frequently noted.