Alexithymia is an inability to express one’s feelings. It is a personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. The patients seem not to understand the feelings they obviously experience, and that they lack the words to describe these feelings to others.
Research suggests that approximately 8% of males and 2% of females experience alexithymia, and that it can come in mild, moderate and severe intensities.
Studies also show that alexithymia has two dimensions – a cognitive dimension, where a child or adult struggles to identify, interpret and verbalize feelings (the “thinking” part of our emotional experience). And an affective dimension, where difficulties arise in reacting, expressing, feeling and imagining (the “experiencing” part of our emotional experience). — The Emotional Blindness of Alexithymia by Deborah Serani
Alexithymia, coined by psychotherapist Peter Sifneos in 1973; from the Greek words λέξις (lexis, “speech”) and θυμός (thumos, “soul, as the seat of emotion, feeling, and thought”); literally, it means ”no words for emotions”.
We sang hosannahs when the mango trees groaned. We sang hosannahs in the hammocks of Italy. We sang hosannahs when the mousetrap whipped the lightbulb into stars of shattered glass. Singing our hosannahs we planted bombs in the mouths of children; land-mines for molar-caps and vests of Semtex like a fuzz on the tongue. After the explosion and the shipwreck we sat in the wigged crook of Defoe’s ear singing hosannahs for the Surrey of 1669. It’s our fault most castaways find their way home. It’s our fault more bodies aren’t found hanging in the mango trees or peaceful as driftwood on the rocks of Norway. We sing hosannahs for the peaks of the sea. We sing hosannahs for the green light deep. Burning hours and braincells we sing hosannahs. But save yourself the Pyrenees, says Jonah, the answer anyway is below sea-level. The trick is sinking and never getting up again. Or getting up so altered that the outcome is the same. To carry a terrible ocean on your sun-dried back; the sins of Nineveh picking like hungry crows through the flesh of your hosannahs.
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