Alexithymia: The Broken Emotional Signal

Alexithymia is an inability to understand our feelings. While true, most resources define it as emotional blindness, and I do agree. I’m alexithymic, myself. But what I’ve found most helpful on understanding my condition is associating emotional awareness with radio signals. Some come in faint, some are staticky, or we pick up nothing at all. And then others come in too clearly and shockingly loud. Then there’s the urge to lower the volume immediately.

The faint or low signals are what I refer to as “I feel okay” and nothing more. Next is the medium signal, which is supposed to bring emotional awareness. We feel more than “just okay” in the medium range. However, with alexithymia, both low and medium signals feel exactly the same. And that’s how the high signals tend to catch us off guard. It’s shockingly loud and hard for us to put into words what we are feeling. That’s because it’s not just trouble sensing our emotions. It’s also lacking the language for describing how we feel.

Alexithymics understand the basic emotions: happy, sad, and angry and what it means when they feel happy, sad, or angry. The problem is, the emotions have to hit an almost fever pitch (high signal) for it to register that they are feeling one of the three. And it tends to be only one of the basic emotions. It doesn’t occur to them that they could be feeling both sad and angry at the same time. Much less, feeling angry and scared, or happy and at ease. The alexithymic’s emotional awareness is not unlike the art student who understands primary colors (red, yellow, blue) but hasn’t quite grasped how they blend to create purple, orange, and green.

Alexithymics’ Emotions are More Obvious to Outside Observers Than to Themselves

We show people how we feel through our facial expressions and body language. When we’re close to someone and they look sad or irritated, we may ask them, “What’s wrong?” Then the person may or may not choose to share. Either way, the person has confirmed that there is something wrong. But ask an alexithymic who looks sad or irritated that same question. They will respond with complete bafflement and swear that nothing is wrong because they feel okay. Alexithymics don’t engage with their emotions, even when their bodies are expressing them. Nowhere is this more obvious than when they cry. I call it the Lexi-cry (Alexithymia) and if you’ve ever seen it, you aren’t likely to forget.

The Lexi-Cry: “My eyes are leaking.”

When we are sad, our eyes well up with tears until they roll down our cheeks. The same happens in alexithymia but with one marked difference. There is zero engagement with their tears and they will continue doing whatever it is they were doing completely unfazed. “Hmm,” says the alexithymic, wiping away tears, “my eyes are leaking,” without giving it another thought. In alexithymia, the body can react to sadness by crying while the person is unaware of the emotion.

In my pre-diagnosis days, there were times when I felt the same type of sinus pressure that one only gets from a hard cry. And yet I hadn’t cried at all. Nor could I think of any reason my sinuses behaved as though they had just finished doing exactly that. Having never been allergic to anything in my life, I was more than a little confused. In alexithymia, we are fully capable of feeling physical sensations. It’s the emotional body sensations that are cut off.

Ask an alexithymic where they feel physical pain and they can point and tell you where. But ask them where they feel an emotion in their body and they will respond, “I don’t know what you mean.” They simply don’t feel the emotions in their bodies.

What Causes Alexithymia?

Studies have been slow on this condition because let’s face it. When we truly believe we feel “okay” the vast majority of the time, where is the motivation to seek therapy?

But here is what we do know. There is no ONE set cause for alexithymia. In fact, we know of four possible causes:

• Autism and neurodivergent conditions. In other words, born this way.
• Society’s cultural “norms.” For example, Real men don’t show emotions, or Women should be submissive. Both are ways we “learn” that to be socially acceptable, we must disregard our emotional needs.
• Adverse childhood programming. Very much like society’s cultural norms except the parents have taught the child that their needs don’t matter. So, the child learns that the key to survival is disregarding their emotions. And unfortunately, so does their biological science. It deactivates key pieces in the midline of the brain that signal emotional body sensations and awareness. (More on that later.)
• Depersonalization and not fully recovering from it. This happened to me at age twenty-two. After spending a year trapped in the brain fog of depersonalization, I yanked myself out of it by getting active and staying busy. And yet, there always was that sense that I never fully recovered. There was a mysterious numbness about me but I couldn’t quite place my finger on what it was. The only thing I could identify was that I had lost my ability to grieve. I had developed alexithymia and I wouldn’t know it until age forty-five.

It’s the Next Rung Up from Depersonalization

Alexithymia is the next rung up from depersonalization? How so? Well, check this out:

1. Depersonalization is an emotional flatline. We feel more like a ghost than a live person.
   Alexithymia is emotional numbness. We feel “okay” most of the time because we are unable to sense when our emotions are building up.
   
   
2. Depersonalization is caused by decreased activation in over two-thirds of the brain. That’s why we get so much brain fog and feel disconnected from the Self and the body.
   Alexithymia is caused by one or two key pieces of the brain’s midline that have been deactivated. They are the insula and the anterior cingulate. The insula is responsible for connecting our emotions with our body sensations. The anterior cingulate relies on information from the insula so that it connects the emotions with thoughts and language.

So, as per not fully recovering from depersonalization being one possible cause of alexithymia, what does the above tell you? As someone who yanked my own self out of depersonalization by getting active and staying busy, I successfully got my brain to function normally again. But those two little pieces in its midline remained offline. All thinking and doing and rarely feeling ensured that it stayed that way.

Last week, we talked about depersonalization and what it is. It’s a special kind of hell due to all the brain fog and feeling disconnected from our thoughts and feelings, and feeling like an outside observer of our own bodies. We also talked about what causes it (overwhelming stress) and the biological science behind it so that we know how to make a better recovery than the one I made.

Depersonalization is not the only thing that causes alexithymia. But just in case it’s giving you some lightbulbs, that article is here.

The Challenge for Alexithymia

Alexithymics despise big (high signal) emotions. They prefer thinking or doing over feeling because it numbs the pain. It helps them avoid the threat of “feeling too much.” But take it from an alexithymic who spent twenty-eight years at a job I despise. Without our emotions, there’s no motivation to make positive changes. Also, when we numb our emotions, we lose our sense of feeling fully alive.

Alexithymics also tend to have the Avoidant attachment style. Do you know what the number one hang-up is in an Avoidant partner? Being neglectful. I was once (briefly) in a support group for partners of alexithymics and guess what the most talked about problem was. An overwhelming number of them felt neglected by their alexithymic partners. We are not Cluster B disorders (Trauma Glossary 1), so I know we can do better by those we love.

Half of the known causes of alexithymia are from being programmed to invalidate our emotions. We know this as our cognitive programming. But a little-known fact is that our biological science responds to that same programming. How else can we explain the knocked-out parts of the brain that block us from emotional awareness? The good news is, we can get them back online, but it won’t happen overnight. It takes setting a daily intention to check in with ourselves and reflect on each day while using our tools.

In fact, I have a companion article for you this week. My personal experience with alexithymia, how I was diagnosed, but more importantly, how my daily commitment to challenging it finally brought my insula back online. Consider it “everything you ever wanted to know about an alexithymic but they were too emotionally unaware to answer.” My story is here.

Tools for Alexithymia

Tools for Alexithymia and other ongoing problems we may have are listed in Master Toolbox 1. The emotion wheel is the most popular. I have yet to meet an alexithymic who didn’t swear by using it in their daily life. Events trigger emotions. So, what you want to do when reflecting on your day is think of at least three events and then look to your emotion wheel to figure out how each one made you feel. Dare to find more than one emotional word per event.

There are many emotion wheels just a keyword search away. But my favorite one is the Marshall Rosenberg because it recognizes intrigued as an emotion. The emotion wheel I use is here.

I also recommend using the cognition sheet in conjunction with the emotion wheel. It was originally designed for EMDR and there are slight variants, but each has the same format: a two-column sheet for positive thoughts and beliefs and the other column is for the negative ones. Our thoughts drive our emotions and certain beliefs are causing us to dismiss our emotions in real time. So, the cognition sheet helps us gain insights into what’s going on behind those numbed emotions. Just keyword search “cognition sheet EMDR” if you don’t like the one I use, which is here.

Be present when you Lexi-cry! Dare to check in because something triggered the “leaking eyes”. It could have been a mere memory or intrusive thought (Trauma Glossary 2). Validate it because remember this. It may not seem like it’s worth crying over to you. But your body is saying otherwise.

Further Reading

In my healing journey, I have found multiple uses for the cognition sheet. I wrote an article on how to get the most out of using it. It includes step-by-step instructions depending on in what way we need it. And yes, it includes how to use it with our emotion wheel when working through our alexithymia. That article is here.

The emotion wheel gives us words for what we’re feeling. So, what’s next? Well, our uncomfortable emotions are telling us that we have an unmet need and they are asking us to do something about it. 14 visual aids in a single article that translate the emotional language of: anger, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, and dread. What do these emotions want and how do we navigate it? Find out here.

Last is one of my science articles. The midline of our brain is also known as the mohawk of self-awareness. If you’re curious about the insula and anterior cingulate and how they impact the overall chain of command, that article is here.