Alexitimia is ... Alexitimia as a psychological problem

Think about how it is sometimes difficult for even the most healthy person to describe his emotions when he looks at the sunset, inhales the scent of spring flowers, hears the sound of rain on the roof. What can I say about a patient with alexithymia, which is absolutely incapable of giving verbal form to his feelings and experiences.

The essence of the term

Alexitimia is the inability to express emotions verbally, to pick up the necessary words to convey to the interlocutor the whole gamut of inner sensations. Psychologists say that this is not a disease. Most likely, alexithymia can be called an individual characteristic of the psyche of an individual, a syndrome or a psychological problem that has nothing to do with mental abilities. A person can be wise, for example, a famous scientist or researcher, but at the same time he will never tell you what he feels while watching a tearful melodrama.

Since the 70s of the last century, a well-known specialist Peter Sifneos, observing patients with somatic disorders, was the first to use the term "alexithymia". This in psychology meant that the patient either does not know how to describe his emotions at all, or whether he does it inaccurately, incorrectly, little. Peter Sifneos argued that such people are devoid of imaginative imagination, sometimes they do not distinguish the line between bodily sensations and inner feelings, they can not understand the feelings of another person. The listed features are manifested simultaneously or one of them prevails.

Spread

How many people were affected by alexithymia? This is a difficult question, the answer to which still does not exist, because not always individuals turn to psychologists for help, considering their condition to be natural and natural. According to the latest statistics, the syndrome is observed in 5-25% of the world's population. A strong discrepancy in the figures is also due to the fact that specialists use various diagnostic methods to determine the presence of the disorder and the degree of its severity.

At the same time, psychologists say that alexithymia is not synonymous with complete insensitivity. These people, like the healthy ones, are experiencing, but they are only at a loss to express their inner emotions verbally. Deficiency of external manifestations in them translates into bodily-vegetative reactions: feelings, not finding an outlet, are suppressed, transformed into psychosomatic diseases. If, however, a person suffers from autism, the connection between the intellect and the senses can be completely interrupted and impossible. Therefore, such patients think that the verbs "feel" and "think" are synonyms.

Forms

The study of alexithymia is an important task for modern psychologists. Until now, some aspects of the syndrome are incomprehensible and unexplored. Despite this, specialists were able to identify two forms of violation: primary and secondary. Each of them has a different nature and appearance. Primary alexithymia can be obtained as a result of birth trauma. It also develops due to violations of the intrauterine formation of the brain in the fetus. Appears at an early age. Noticing the wrong, parents should seek the advice of a neurologist.

Secondary alexithymia is the result of a psychological trauma, which is sometimes accompanied by brain dysfunction or neurologic disorders. It can become a manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder, increased anxiety or latent depression. Development is influenced, in the first place, by incorrect education: a hyperopeak or, on the contrary, the lack of elementary attention on the part of parents. Primary is practically not treated, with the secondary one can cope.

Causes

Alexitimia as a psychological problem has primary sources. They become the fertile soil on which the syndrome grows. Difficulties in accessing emotions for verbal expression were explained by numerous researchers who identified three main reasons:

• Suppression of impulses directed by the limbic system, which is responsible for the senses, to the cortex of the brain.
• Disruption of communication between the left and right hemispheres: the first of them can not recognize the signals of experiences that are produced in the second.
• Genetically transmitted defects of the central nervous system.

The concept of alexithymia, as already mentioned, suggests that the violation also arises from incorrect education. A child may lose the ability to express emotions because of imposed stereotypes, for example, "men should not cry" or "expressing feelings in public is indecent." Some scientists also admit: alexithymia can result from a head injury - damage to the corpus callosum, which is responsible for the relationship between the hemispheres.

Manifestations

Alexitimia is a violation of human emotional functions in psychology. In this regard, the nature of such individuals has some features:

1. The emerging difficulties with communication, in the process of which people constantly verbally express their feelings, describe a particular state of mind.
2. Propensity to loneliness. Realizing that he is not like everyone else, a person often becomes isolated in himself, begins to avoid society.
3. Limited fantasy. Such individuals rarely become artists, artists or designers. They completely lack the capacity for creative activity.
4. Inability to see bright and colored dreams.
5. The presence of good logical thinking, the propensity to synthesis and analysis, the ability to summarize.
6. Denial of intuition.

If a person suffering from aleximia, to ask what he feels at this moment, you can hear such answers: "cold," "painful," or "uncomfortable." Such people always confuse emotions with bodily sensations.

Models

When an individual is diagnosed with alexithymia, this means that psychosomatic disorders can be formed in parallel . They refer to two patterns of behavior: denial and deficit. The first involves a strong inhibition of affects, which allows the possibility of reversibility of the syndrome. Although many patients are irreversible and can not be altered even by prolonged therapy. Such people live without imagination and emotion. The deficit model is more adequate. People who choose it are not without feelings, but only some of them, or they express their experiences, but in incomplete form, not completely. Sometimes they are even able to imagine and create.

Psychologists have not finally decided whether alexithymia is a situational state or whether it refers to a stable personal characteristic. Some experts believe that violations occur only during certain activities, for example, in the process of communicating with an opponent. Left alone, this person is quite capable of expressing his feelings and emotions.

Complications

A lot of problems on the physical level are caused by alexithymia: peptic ulcer, dermatitis, gastritis, colitis, bronchial asthma, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, allergies, migraine and so on. Unexpressed feelings are accumulated inside the consciousness and gradually find an outlet outward in bodily form: the individual has a hormonal background that breaks down , a failure occurs in the work of organs and systems, which causes the aforementioned ailments.

Another consequence of alexithymia is extra pounds and even severe obesity. According to numerous studies, the inability to express feelings quickly transforms into overeating, irregular eating, changing gastronomic flavors in favor of poor-quality and harmful products. At the same time, treatment of the syndrome with obesity is often a problem for doctors. Especially complex cases include the development of alexithymia simultaneously with the addiction of the individual to alcoholism or drug addiction.

Diagnostics

Often alexithymia is confused with other psychological reactions: depression, cognitive underdevelopment or schizophrenia. Therefore, the question of accurate and professional diagnosis is very relevant in our time. Determine the presence of the syndrome is helped by the scale of alexithymia, developed by the American scientist Taylor. The questionnaire was translated and adapted in St. Petersburg by specialists from the Psychoneurological Institute named after Vladimir Bekhterev. With its help, more than a hundred patients were examined, as a result of which it was established: patients with a right hemispheric type of brain asymmetry are more unfavorable in terms of treatment.

Diagnostics is also carried out using another scale - Schelling-Sifneos. Doctors use John Kristal's questionnaires, as well as projective techniques, since such people do not have imagination, so their answers are standard and of the same type. Despite this, the use of tests for clinical purposes is difficult, since there are no regulatory data. In addition, physicians do not have enough time to conduct experiments, as well as an unmistakable interpretation of their results.

Treatment

As noted above, it is difficult to treat primary alexithymia. At the same time, the secondary, which is a consequence of childhood experiences, can be eliminated with the help of modern methods of influencing the individual's consciousness. When a person is diagnosed with alexithymia, treatment begins with conventional psychotherapy. Also apply Gestalt therapy, psychodynamic modified techniques, art therapy and hypnosis. The main goal is to teach the patient to express their feelings and emotions.

Much attention is paid to the imagination, which contributes to the expansion of the spectrum of emotional manifestations. As for medicines, the scientists did not come to a single conclusion: whether they help or not. Some psychologists note a good effect from the use of tranquilizers in the presence of psychopathological disorders, such as panic attacks. In any case, doctors are sure that treatment should be comprehensive. In this case, a big role in it is played by the patient's close people who meet him, help to open up the inner world of the native person, throw out the stream of his suppressed and hidden experiences.