Shown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by yeahyeah_ on April 11, 2006, at 18:14:10
Does anyone have information about alexithymia? Like what I could do to solve mine, etc. There isn't a great variety of information on the internet. Mine is from anxiety, I think. Infact I'm not even sure I have it since there were times in the time period I was supposed to have it in when I could tell why I felt the emotions I did and where it came from. But my doctor thought I might have it, so ;p
Posted by Racer on April 11, 2006, at 18:57:51
In reply to alexithymia?, posted by yeahyeah_ on April 11, 2006, at 18:14:10
Alexythymia: A means without, Lex is word, Thymia is emotion. So, that means not really having the ability to talk about your emotions. (And I have this strong urge to say something like, "It's all Greek to me..." :^P)
It's something I've had some experience with, but I don't know if I can really tell you anything that will help much. During the worst times for me, I could tell you something like, "That makes me sad" or even "that makes me sad because" but I wouldn't entirely feel it. At one point, my old T and I would go through and just try to use the symptoms to figure out what I was feeling. I knew I was feeling something, and often I was feeling it quite strongly, and I could often tell you why I was feeling it or what triggered it -- but I really didn't know what I was really feeling. Sometimes, for instance, I would say I was sad, but figure out that I was actually angry. Or I'd say that I was angry, but really be sad.
It's something that you can deal with through therapy, if you have a therapist you trust. And I think it's pretty important to do so, too. Alexithymia isn't such a serious thing that it has to be treated for its own sake, so much as a symptom of other things that pretty much do have to be treated. It's very common in eating disorders, for instance, and treating the ED successfully usually includes treating the alexithymia.
If that helped, good, otherwise, let me know and I'll try again. Also, this is likely to be redirected to the Psychology board...
Posted by Declan on April 11, 2006, at 21:15:24
In reply to alexithymia?, posted by yeahyeah_ on April 11, 2006, at 18:14:10
Autistic people have difficulty describing their emotions. If you ask an autistic person the reason for a preferance, you put them on the spot, in my experience. Of course this most probably has nothing to do with you......I just find it interesting.
Declan
Posted by Phillipa on April 11, 2006, at 22:54:01
In reply to Re: alexithymia?, posted by Declan on April 11, 2006, at 21:15:24
Declan Autism? Love Phillipa
Posted by Caedmon on April 11, 2006, at 23:24:54
In reply to Re: alexithymia? » Declan, posted by Phillipa on April 11, 2006, at 22:54:01
Therapy, journaling, mindfulness meditation, more therapy. Best of luck.
- C
Posted by zazenduck on April 12, 2006, at 9:02:42
In reply to alexithymia?, posted by yeahyeah_ on April 11, 2006, at 18:14:10
http://www.alexithymia.supanet.com/faq.html
This says it better than I can!
I would ask my doc what definition he is using. I think the term was originally meant to indicate an organic brain condition in which emotion can not be recognized rather than emotional repression in which the emotion is able to be recognized but that recognition is supressed.
Emotional suppression might respond to psychological intervention.
Posted by gardenergirl on April 12, 2006, at 15:36:21
In reply to Re: alexithymia?, posted by zazenduck on April 12, 2006, at 9:02:42
I've used the term before to refer to when someone doesn't seem to have the "language" to discuss their emotions. By that I mean that they aren't able to differentiate different emotions from each other and label them.
It's sort of like how there are 30(?) or more words for snow in the native Alaskan languages (at least I think I've read that), but there are many fewer in parts of the world which don't get snow.
So someone who only knows "I feel bad" or "I feel good" is not able to identify and label if they feel sad, depressed, melancholy, devastated, sorrowful, grief, down, blue, out of sorts, low, etc. They just don't have the accompanying experience of matching a feeling with the word. If you've had many experiences with seeing and trying to describe different kinds of snow, you develop a language for the different kinds. And then using this language with someone who understands it helps to consolidate the terms in your vocabulary. Same with emotions. It's important to have people in your life who "mirror" your emotions accurately in order to learn about them.
Unless it's organic, I think it is amenable to psychotherapy. There are some DBT exercises in the Emotion Regulation section of the "Skills Training Manual" which help a person think through the process of identifying an emotion in a structured manner, looking at all the data and putting it together to determine the best fit for the emotion word. As clients get more skilled at that and become more familiar with the many words for different emotions, they gain useful information about their emotions and related thoughts and behavior.
gg
Posted by zazenduck on April 12, 2006, at 16:21:51
In reply to Re: alexithymia?--a bit long, posted by gardenergirl on April 12, 2006, at 15:36:21
I guess I never let not knowing what I'm talking about stop me from posting :-/
How is emotional repression different from what you describe? Wouldn't anorexia be more a case of emotional repression than failure to recognize the emotion? I always thought the high from ketones or whatever from starving was at least psychologically addicting because it did suppress emotions. Or do you think not being able to recognize emotions from physical sensations is what causes some of the anorexics problems with food since so many of them go from severely underweight to overweight and don't seem to ever be able to eat normally in response to bodily hunger? If a person was unable to recognize emotions from physical messages I suppose the same thing is going on with hunger sensations?
And I don't understand the Aspergers connection? Is it the same as Asperger's? Isn't that organic?Can someone with Aspergers actually learn to recognize emotions or just to act as if he did? wo
I agree with you the DBT skills manual is the best!
Posted by zazenduck on April 12, 2006, at 16:38:01
In reply to what is emotional repression? ANA trigger » gardenergirl, posted by zazenduck on April 12, 2006, at 16:21:51
of course people could repress emotions that were unpleasant whether they recognized them or not.
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> And I don't understand the Aspergers connection? Is it the same as Asperger's? Isn't that organic?Can someone with Aspergers actually learn to recognize emotions or just to act as if he d
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> I agree with you the DBT skills manual is the best!
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Posted by gardenergirl on April 15, 2006, at 21:07:59
In reply to what is emotional repression? ANA trigger » gardenergirl, posted by zazenduck on April 12, 2006, at 16:21:51
Hey, I think you bring up good points. I don't know about the Aspergers thing, but Racer just sent me an interesting article on Aspergers and eating disorders.
I'm not really all that knowledgeable about the physiological mechanisms related to emotional supression/repression, but what you wrote makes sense to me. I tend to view alexithymia as more of a failure to learn thing, perhaps based on inadequate experiences early in life, perhaps based on a biological issue.
So, could be both? How'd ya like that hedging?
gg
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