6 Signs of Alexithymia, and What to Do About Them

“Adam, you absolutely must talk with your wife about this,” I said. “You absolutely must tell her you’re planning to move out. You have to let her know and give her an opportunity to respond.”

“I will. I really will. I’ll do it this week. I promise,” he insisted.

But as I sat across from Adam in my therapy office, listening to his earnest declarations while synthesizing them with his body language and history, I knew that he would not.

You may be wondering what kind of man plans to leave his wife but does not tell her. Is Adam a narcissist? A cheater? An addict? Or a sociopath?

Not at all. Adam is none of those things. In fact, he is a devoted family man who has never cheated on his wife. He’s not hiding anything from her. He’s not secretive or deceptive or uncaring. Adam’s primary issue is that he has a severe case of alexithymia.

Alexithymia is a term many people have never come across, but it’s a useful one. It refers to the inability to identify and describe your own emotions.

6 Signs of Alexithymia

• Do you find it easier to communicate by mutual understanding than with words?
• Do you get tongue-tied when you’re upset?
• Does it feel almost impossible to tell someone what you’re feeling?
• Do you avoid conflict?
• Is it a struggle to tell someone you're angry with them or even that you love them?
• Does strong emotion make you acutely uncomfortable, even if it’s coming from someone else?

Alexithymia may seem like a relatively mild problem in comparison to some others, like depression, anxiety, or a personality disorder. Some people find ways to work around it in their lives, just as Adam had.

But, truth be told, I have seen marriages lost, sibling relationships damaged, and children estranged by nothing other than this malady. It is, indeed, a thoroughly devastating problem to go through life with.

A study by Ditzer et al., 2023, found that abusive households are more likely to have an alexithymic parent. Another study, by Putica et al., 2023, found that people higher in alexithymia are more likely to leave treatment prematurely. I have seen both of these findings borne out in my psychology practice.

What Causes Alexithymia?

Over time, scientists have worked to identify the factors that cause some people to suffer from this problem so much more than others. Childhood abuse, neurological deficits, and genetics have all been researched and named, but the scientific community clearly states that no one true cause has been identified.

However, I have seen in my psychology practice specializing in childhood emotional neglect a remarkably high correlation between those who struggle with alexithymia and a childhood marked by a shortage of parental attention paid to their emotions. When parents do not respond to their children's emotions enough, which is the very definition of childhood emotional neglect, the children do not have the opportunity to learn the emotion skills. They miss the opportunity to learn how to identify what they’re feeling, understand their emotions, put their feelings into words, and manage them.

This is the reason I believe a common cause of alexithymia is childhood emotional neglect. Not to say that abuse, neurology, and genetics are uninvolved, especially since we now know that these three factors interact with each other in far more complex ways than we ever before realized.

But it is human nature to get caught up in things that happen (child abuse, in this case) and the physical world (neurology and genetics) to explain things. Whereas often the best answer is the simplest one:

Sometimes, our parents just don’t teach us things.

What to Do About Alexithymia

1. Stop blaming yourself. There is, most likely, nothing wrong with your brain. And it’s very possible that your genes are just fine. Your problem is simple and fixable, and you did not choose it or cause it. All you have to do is be willing to overcome it, and we will talk about that next.
2. Stop struggling in secret. Own this problem for what it is, a skill deficit. Accept that blame and shame have no place in this picture and tell someone about it. Talk with your spouse, a close family member, or a trained therapist. It’s time to start learning what you missed.
3. Learn everything you can about childhood emotional neglect. Understanding how it happened in your upbringing, how it’s affected you, and the role it plays in how you treat your emotions in your current life is a helpful springboard toward changing.
4. Begin to learn the emotion skills you missed. As a child, you may have walled off your emotions because of the emotional neglect you experienced. If so, you may be living your adult life unaware of your feelings or struggling to accept and express them. I assure you that your emotions are there, and you can access them. Whether they are walled off or not, you can learn how to feel, identify, tolerate, manage, and express your emotions.
5. Accept help. As someone who grew up with childhood emotional neglect, I suspect that you might be quite self-sufficient and self-contained. But learning the emotion skills you missed is far easier with someone guiding and teaching you. A licensed therapist skilled at teaching how to identify and express emotions can walk you through the learning process.

Child Development Essential Reads

Mama: The Name That Started It All

Conventional Language Motivates Imitation, to an Extent

Sadly, it was too late to save Adam's marriage. If only he could have realized years ago that his secret struggle was the product of childhood emotional neglect. If only he had known that it was not a flaw or a defect, as he had always feared. Perhaps he could have learned the skills he missed and opened up to his wife about what he was feeling and why. Perhaps he could have talked, and felt, and communicated, and kept alive the love and closeness that he and his wife once shared.

© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.

Facebook image: Alexandra/peopleimages com/Adobe Stock

LinkedIn image: PRPicturesProduction/Shutterstock