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...
poster:Racer
thread:631881
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060408/msgs/631896.html