subject: What Is Alexithymia And What Can You Do About It? [print this page] Alexithymia is not a disease or a disorder, it's defined by difficulties regarding identification, distinction and description of feelings.
Sometimes the patient does also suffer from a very limited imaginary fantasy.
If you have difficulties describing, distinguishing and identifying your feelings you may be one of million people on our planet Earth who have the same symptoms. As alexithymia is not a disease or a disorder there are not many people trying to deal with it.
Some think alexithymia is the same as a depression but that's nonsense. If you're suffering from alexithymia it simply means that you have a few difficulties regarding the expression of your feelings.
Many people fit into that description and most of them are not alexithymic. As long as you don't visit a psychological counselor nobody will call you alexithymic since the term is also not very well-known.
So, what can you do to deal with alexithymia?
First: stop seeing your situation as being a big issue. You don't have to be able to identify or describe your feelings. You're okay as you are. The problem is that you'll encounter a lot of other issues if you don't do something about your 'condition'.
The fastest way to some kind of recovery is that you learn how other people think and feel and what they do when they want to identify and describe their feelings.
You should make excessive use of the so-called role model technique. Just pick somebody and adopt his behavior regarding his feelings. How does he feel? What situation leads to which emotion? How does he look like when he's feeling specific emotions? Fear, happiness, anger, boredom - try to imagine as many emotions and their respective (facial) expressions as possible.
Alexithymic people are not sick, they don't necessarily need any kind of treatment. But you can make your life easier by adopting a new (emotionally balanced) lifestyle and ADAPT abilities that you don't have yet in order to blend in with the crowd.
Study your role model thoroughly and then put into action what you've learned.
Try out extended body language, train your facial expressions, train the muscles that other people use to laugh, cry, shout, smile, etc.
Augment your vocabulary regarding emotions. Life is not just black and white. And even if you think so it's wise to learn a lot of words that will help you identify and describe your emotions later in the process.
Many psychological doctors believe that alexithymic people simply didn't learn to feel the full variety of emotions, so that they have to catch up to it. This can take some time, at least a few months. The duration of your learning process heavily depends on your own effort and the time your invest.
Try to be patient. With yourself and especially with others. They have a hard time to figure you out when you don't respond like they anticipate.
It's very important that you remain relaxed. You're not ill, alexithymia is really not a disease. If you want to do something about it you have to move on and accept that you're 'behind' other people regarding emotional freedom.
That's okay and over time you'll learn how to deal with your alexithymic symptoms. Eventually you'll become more and more like 'normal' people.
