Maybe you have run into someone who says they feel nothing when witnessing vital moments that are supposed to generate emotions, such as the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the achievement of a job...
Or maybe it's you who doesn't feel anything, and you've thought you're heartless/or for not feeling what you should feel.
Well, what you experience has a name and it's called alexithymia .
What is alexithymia?
To give you an idea, it is a more common disorder than we imagine, which affects 1 in 7 The word "alexithymia" is a compound of the Greek roots to , lexis and juices (denial, word and emotion, respectively), what in grammatical terms would be like the "inability to read or express emotions or feelings ".Without a doubt, something very hard.
This disturbance is manifested primarily in 85% of those with autistic disorders, and although it has traditionally been thought to have a psychological character, neurologists have seen abnormalities in the brain area responsible for linking emotions with the area that knows them, identifies, analyzes and formulates .
It is then characterized by a poor mentalization of emotions, in the that the bodily sensations associated with them are scarce or null.It is so that their possible causes can be located, in some cases, in early childhood, when the child, who does not yet have hierarchized mental states associated with concepts or words, faces to the emotional world through his body.Feel the anger, the fear, the desire with somatic sensations, that is, corpo rales.
In the normal process, an age comes when you have to order that cluster of organic sensations and learn that others also feel similar things.That is when you need a common "code" to identify what sense, in itself and in others, and becomes a social and reflective being.
Here parents, the environment, the family, play a crucial role because will be through the words that physical sensations are channeled towards mentalization , achieving a kind of useful “labels” to identify and communicate them.
In an alexithmic process, there are no such linguistic exchanges or verbal signs, and who l They suffer a great aggressiveness towards their environment and even towards themselves because they cannot verbalize their feelings, or even recognize them, suffer the tendency to feel useless or to be anhedonic.
Emotional or not
Alexithymia was first described in 1972, and it was originally thought that it was defined by this linguistic deficiency.Scientists argued that there could be a communicational failure between the two cerebral hemispheres, which prevents emotional signals (from right side) reach the language zones (on the left side). Emotional transfer is needed to say what it feels like.
But what is becoming clearer is that There are many types of alexithymia .In some cases the person cannot express their emotions, but in others they are not aware of having them.That is, they have them but their brain does not recognize them.By not recognizing them, they cannot identify them and therefore or, he does not feel them and does not manifest them.
Richard Lane , from the University of Arizona, explains this neuronal damage with a fairly graphic image: compare alexithymia with what you It happens to those who have become blind after suffering damage to the visual cortex.although have healthy eyes, they cannot see .
"Maybe the emotion is activated, you even have a body response, but it happens without you being aware of the emotion."
Katharina Gorlich-Dobre , a researcher at the Department of Neurology at Aachen University Hospital in Germany, has identified a reduction in gray matter in areas of the cortex cingulate, which is an area of the brain that is responsible for controlling self-awareness , and that she believes can block the conscious representation of emotions.
It is as if the brains of these people will not register the feelings.There are those who describe alexithymia as a “disconnection of conscience,” that is, the more emotion they should feel, the more analytical they become, and that allows them to better manage certain events in their lives, without feeling fear or anxiety.
Dangerous relationships
This disease seems to be as idle to others, such as schizophrenia or eating disorders.And to autism, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, but only those who present social difficulties.It also seems frequent in those who have suffered abuse in childhood, where emotions have been repressed.
However, those who feel this way are not necessarily selfish or "heartless" people, or in the worst case, psychopaths; they are people who certainly suffer that impediment and wish they could feel emotions and express them.
The more we know the world, the more harmonious our relationships will be, and the less prejudices we will have towards what we don't understand.Do you agree?
Images: madamepsychosis , Julie Kertesz , Victor Nuno , BMcIvr , Marcelo Moltedo , ashley rose,
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