Alexey Sviridov's acquaintances call him a cold person. He rationalizes everything and wants to find an explanation for everything. In 30 years, he had never been in a romantic relationship for longer than six months. And his friendships are based more on rituals and practical mutual assistance than on empathy.
“I don’t know what I feel when I like someone. I understand that a person is right for me when I see that he has a sense of humor, intelligence, hobbies similar to mine (anime, podcasts, computer games, boxing or art films) and he knows how to tell stories well,” says Alexey.
New partners often appear in his bed, whom he finds on Tinder.
With most of them, sex is ordinary, “like cottage cheese, which you don’t really want to eat every morning.”
But sometimes Alexey meets lovers who are “amazing, like a dessert you can’t get enough of.” It’s just that he quickly gets fed up with them, after which he goes in search of new ones.
The guy does not believe that he has any psychological problems, and only interaction with others makes him think that there is something wrong with him. When someone jokes, he smiles and says that he finds it funny. When someone cries, he can hug. But at the same time, Alexey does not feel how his mood changes depending on the situation. Essentially, he knows how to select masks with different emotions that match the context.
32-year-old Vera also memorized emotional reactions appropriate for different situations.
“I often express feelings that I don’t feel because it’s important for people to see feedback. I try to be friendly, empathetic, happy and sad, but I do it based on knowledge about it,” she explains.
Like Alexey Sviridov, the girl does not like any illogical things - for example, excessive emotionality in work processes. At the same time, Vera cannot describe how she feels if her colleagues react too violently: “I think “annoying” and “angry” are the right words.”
Before marriage, her personal life did not work out: her partners did not have enough response from her:
“I heard people say that I don’t know how to support. And once they told me that I was not expressing myself softly or politely enough. True, then the situation concerned a person who didn’t bother me, and I didn’t find it necessary to portray any emotion, but people often call directness rudeness.”
Zero state
Once Vera participated in a psychological study of women. Based on its results, the interviewer suggested that she may have alexithymia - a reduced ability to sense, recognize and express emotions. Later, a psychologist confirmed this guess with the help of special tests.
Alexithymia is not a psychiatric diagnosis, but a condition that can accompany Asperger's syndrome, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia and other mental disorders or exist separately. Many people do not even realize that they have this feature and do not seek help from a specialist, so it is difficult to determine how many people experience such difficulties. Despite this, British researcher Rebecca Brewer believes that every tenth person is alexithymic.
Psychiatrist Kirill Sychev says that he often encountered alexithymia in his patients. “But, as a rule, they came to me with other complaints, and perceived alexithymia more as a character trait; they simply could not imagine that it could be different,” he clarifies.
Vera describes her alexithymicity as a perfect balance, that is, a state of zero without pros and cons. And Alexey compares alexithymics with asexuals.
“Some have a sexual sphere of life, it is important and interesting for them. Others have no sexual desire, but it doesn't make them feel bad. It’s the same for me, only with emotions.”
Others may consider such people “crackers” because they cannot show what they feel through words, gestures and facial expressions. But in reality, only some of them experience no emotions at all. Kirill Sychev recalls that in his practice he has never met completely insensitive alexithymics: “A complete lack of empathy is closer to personality disorders.”
Most people with alexithymic traits are still able to feel, but they are not aware of their emotions or their nuances. A typical phrase for them is: “I feel something, but I don’t understand what.”
Alexey, for example, can accurately identify fear when he rises to a significant height. And at the same time, he doesn’t know what it means to worry about extra pounds or whether his boss will scold him when he meets.
What are such people called?
In everyday life, unemotional people are called callous, indifferent, thick-skinned, dry, soulless, cold, indifferent, insensitive, cynical.
From a scientific point of view, such individuals are considered alexithymic.
Alexithymia is a disorder in which a person is unable to express his or her own emotions in words.
Alexithymics are distinguished by their conflicting nature, poor resistance to stress, and poor imagination. They often encounter somatic diseases that are formed on human emotions.
Healthy individuals experience emotions intensely , are able to recognize and understand them, and therefore eliminate and calm them.
Since the alexithymic person is not aware of his experiences, he is unable to find a competent approach to eliminating them. Such people look at the world with hostility and do not know how to react normally to stress.
They have no motivation, no moral guidelines, no goals that appear under the influence of positive emotional stimuli.
Something strange in the chest
Let's be honest: many of us have a hard time processing certain experiences, such as mild irritation. But most people won't confuse this feeling with joy or grief. An alexithymic person may well do this or interpret the irritation as a physical sensation.
You'll likely perceive butterflies in your stomach as excitement, while a person with alexithymia may think it's just hunger. The “lump in the throat” that we feel when we are very upset will be something really stuck in the throat for him.
The intense experiences that alexithymics feel in their body can be frustrating and frightening. For example, horror or falling in love, which are accompanied by a rapid pulse and sweating, can be interpreted by them as physical discomfort that needs to be gotten rid of quickly.
“I remember looking into the eyes of one girl I had been dating for a couple of months, and I felt something strange in my chest, as if something was shaking there. I understood that she was beautiful and we had good sex, in which we experimented freely. But I didn’t like the state that appeared next to her at that moment, so a little later I told her that I wanted to break up. She was shocked because she thought that I would confess my love to her. But what is love? Maybe it was her? - Alexey reasons.
Psychologists Beata Herbert, Olga Pollatos and Cornelia Herbert have found that the better we feel bodily changes, the better we understand our emotions. And with alexithymia, on the contrary, it is difficult for a person to focus on the internal processes of the body - this was the conclusion reached by Oxford professor Geoffrey Bird.
For the first time, alexithymia began to be studied in connection with the body. Psychiatry professor Peter Sifneos, who coined the term in the 1970s, studied the personality traits of patients in psychosomatic clinics. Some patients could not clearly formulate their emotional state and convey physical sensations in words. Their postures and movements were tense, their facial expressions were poor, and their actions resembled robots. But what was primary - manifestations in the body or alexithymia - was never determined.
Russian-Soviet psychiatrist Pyotr Gannushkin wrote in his book “Clinic of Psychopathy: Their Statics, Dynamics, Systematics” that alexithymia may be a factor predisposing to obesity in combination with depression.
For an alexithymic person, food is a regulator of internal tension. A person “eats” stress, partly because he has ignored and did not express his feelings for a long time.
The same goes for alcohol abuse. According to Polish sociologist Marek Zielkowski and his colleagues, 48% of male patients with alcohol dependence had alexithymia. And the American scientist Leonard Handelsman found that the level of alexithymia among alcoholics is higher than that of people without addiction.
Moreover, it is believed that alexithymia may be associated with coronary heart disease, diabetes mellitus, bronchial asthma, gastric and duodenal ulcers, Crohn's disease, malignant neoplasms and chronic pain.
“My emotional peculiarity is strongly connected with psychosomatics. Stressful situations have a strong impact on the body, and I quickly get tired of communicating with people,” shares Vera, who was recently diagnosed with abdominal pain.
This is pain in the abdominal cavity, the causes of which may be psychogenic. Gastroenterologist Emilia Yakovenko explains why chronic abdominal pain is closely related to depression - it’s due to insufficient serotonin synthesis. Therefore, antidepressants are good for both depression and abdominal pain.
An emotionless person - why is he like this?
An unemotional or low-emotional person - why is he like that?
Some consider alexithymia to be a disease, others believe that it is a personality trait . Alexithymia is conventionally divided into primary and secondary.
Primary is caused by congenital defects that occur during the development of the fetus, the birth of a child, and the passage of the first childhood diseases.
Secondary is due to reasons that can manifest themselves at a more conscious age:
- traumatic experiences;
- stressful situations;
- mental disorders.
Some experts see the causes of this disease in aspects related to public culture .
A person is not educated, he lacks a social culture, an elementary education in which he could study himself, his emotions and ways of expressing them.
Boring, unempathetic robots
Alexithymics find it difficult not only to identify sensations in their body, but also to understand the experiences of others. Research by Professor Geoff Bird has shown that such people can distinguish between a smile and a frown in a photo. However, some have no idea what these facial expressions mean.
Alexey recognizes the joy and sadness of his friends, but cannot truly empathize with them, since he does not experience such emotions.
“Some people suffer after a breakup, others are worried about the lack of money. I can tell them: “It must be hard for you right now” or “I’m happy for you.” But in reality I have no idea what all this means. I don't have such problems. That is, I also had breakups and difficulties with finances, but I didn’t care. I didn’t kill myself, but prescribed an action plan or told myself that there was nothing wrong with it,” explains the guy.
Vera also has no sympathy:
“I try to evaluate the person and the situation. There are those for whom it is enough to hear “Everything will be fine.” There are people who are only enraged by such words. Then I try to express understanding, say something positive, wish something, share advice.”
In addition, thanks to her peculiarity, it is easier for Vera to survive difficult situations.
Problems with empathy are not the only thing alexithymics have to put up with. Candidate of Biological Sciences Anna Iskusnykh writes that they also have a reduced ability to imagine and create, and their thinking is concrete and mechanistic. Jason Thompson, author of Emotionally Mute: An Overview of Alexithymia, describes their communication style as coherent and logical, but "without any poetic undertones."
It may seem that alexithymics are boring and will discuss Excel files and plans for tomorrow with you. But that's not true. Alexey is a rather erudite man. He can talk about DNA and RNA in such a way that you will immediately understand the essence, even if someone erased all your knowledge of biology. Or retell in detail the biography of serial killer Ted Bundy so vividly that you will dream about all the horrors of his bloody crimes. Plus he jokes a lot. But if you think it's not comme il faut to trump other people's stand-up jokes, you won't like his humor.
But Alexey’s profession seems to confirm Anna Iskusnykh’s description: he works as a financial analyst in a large IT company. There is not much creativity in profit reports, but Sviridov is sure that finding cause-and-effect relationships is real creativity.
This love of reporting, as well as the psychological stability and resilience where others become stressed and panicked, makes him a valuable asset.
Vera, on the contrary, is a very creative person. She is an artist, draws comics and illustrations for fairy tales:
“Alexithymia is not a disease with a strict set of symptoms. I have no problems with fantasy. On the contrary, imaginative thinking sometimes helps me describe a feeling that I cannot identify and call in one word.”
What is the reason?
There are three theories about why some people are not friendly with their emotions.
Theory #1 is biological. She considers the primary
alexithymia, the causes of which are genes, defects or features of brain development.
“There is scientific evidence that dysfunction of the anterior cingulate cortex and disorders in the right hemisphere can lead to alexithymia. The reason may also be a reduction in the corpus callosum: in this case, emotional information that is formed in the right hemisphere is less transmitted to the left,” comments psychiatrist Kirill Sychev.
Experiments by candidate of psychological sciences Irina Korosteleva and psychophysiologist Vadim Rotenberg confirm that people do not recognize emotional experiences when the interaction of their left and right hemispheres is disrupted. It turned out that patients who underwent transection at the level of the corpus callosum had a decreased ability to symbolize and fantasize, and they dreamed less often.
Theory No. 2 is psychological. She associates alexithymia with psychotrauma and views it as a defense mechanism. An important sign of this condition is a deficiency of reflection, one of the mechanisms of self-regulation. For some reason, alexithymics have not developed the need for regulation. For example, if in childhood the parents decided everything for the child, as was the case with Alexey.
Sviridov Sr. died of a heroin overdose when Lesha was one and a half years old. Fearing that her son might follow his father’s path, his mother planned his life in advance: the best school at any cost, clubs, sports clubs, university. Alexey was always surrounded by care, stifling any sensory manifestations. He couldn't be angry with his mother for not allowing him to play with the boys in the yard. He was forbidden to talk about liking girls because “it distracted from his studies.” His emotional range was very poor and, apparently, remained so to this day.
Theory No. 3 is sociological. She attributes alexithymia to social and cultural factors. Firstly, the reason may be a specific educational approach in the family.
An alexithymic personality can be formed if parents devalued the child’s feelings, punished them for expressing them too violently, used psychological and physical violence, or simply did not pay attention to him.
Vera assumes that her mom and dad are also alexithymic, because she notices behavior patterns similar to hers - which means it was the family atmosphere (and genetics) that made her “like that.” If a parent does not react empathetically to the child’s emotions, does not mirror them, calling surprise surprise and anger anger, the child never learns to understand his experiences.
On the other hand, cultural characteristics can also squeeze out the emotional component. Perhaps for this reason, alexithymia is more common and more pronounced in men.
Psychologist Ronald Levant even hypothesized “normative male alexithymia”—a restricted emotionality influenced by traditional representations of masculinity. The more severe the boy's gender socialization, the more alexithymic the adult male will become. If a boy was simply told that he should not cry “because only girls do that,” then in the future he may suppress the emotions that cause tears. And if he was hit with a belt or something heavier for crying, then later he may develop dissociation.
Dissociation
- a mechanism of psychological defense against intolerable emotions, as a result of which a person begins to perceive what is happening to him as if it were happening not to him, but to someone else.
Techniques to help you distance yourself from feelings for another person
If the relationship with a person has ended, and feelings have not yet cooled down, then the question arises: how to distance yourself from feelings that bring emotional pain and disappointment.
Lucas Derks' Social Panorama Method
The essence of this method is to present pictures-images of those people who are part of a person’s social circle. Thus, a loved one will be presented at arm's length, the image will be clear and bright, and the emotions during visualization will be pleasant. A person for whom there are no special feelings, for example, a salesperson in a store, will be located far away and the image will be gray, blurry and incomprehensible.
Then the image of the person for whom you need to get rid of feelings should be placed in the place of the indifferent person. This distance is usually 20 m or more.
Next, you need to imagine a sheet of paper in front of you, on which you should “write” in golden letters all the qualities that were valuable in this person. For example, he is caring, he shows a sense of humor, he can support you in difficult times, and so on.
Then thousands of copies are mentally made from this sheet, which fly into the future, towards those people who will meet along the path of life. Thus, a program is laid down for your brain so that it pays attention and finds exactly those people who can satisfy a person’s specific values.
Simple technique for independent work
To get rid of a highly charged emotion towards a person, you need to remember all the positive or negative situations associated with this person. To do this, you need to speak out loud all the bright episodes, starting with the acquaintance. It is necessary to talk through these episodes until they lose their emotional significance.
What to do if “everything is complicated” with feelings
Psychoanalyst John Nemiah proposed the concept of “mental production of emotions.” Every person has a deficiency to varying degrees, not just alexithymics. It is difficult for some to express in words at least some experiences - while others, using metaphors, will talk about the vivid feelings that they experienced while standing in front of an expressionist painting, but at the same time they will not be able to convey what they feel in relation to a specific person.
Over the course of life, we all learn to say and show what we feel, including in the therapist’s office. A specialist helps to work through affect, that is, to translate bodily experience into images and words. As a result, a person can express in words feelings that he did not even suspect existed before. This may help him get rid of compulsive behaviors (such as overeating) that were his only way to suppress unconscious sensations.
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When working with alexithymics, cognitive-behavioral methods specially developed for them are usually used. They also use the psychodynamic approach and the mentalization method. All of them are aimed at teaching the brain to identify emotions,” comments Kirill Sychev.
Improving the mental production of emotions is useful not only for people with alexithymia, but also for any person, because it affects intellectual growth, health and quality of life in general.
To get started, you can read Paul Ekman’s book “The Psychology of Emotions. I Know How You Feel,” in which he talks about various emotions and their connection with physical sensations. You can work on the connection between the body and feelings by regularly focusing on what is happening in the body. Breathing practices and meditation are suitable for this. Try group therapy where you can see other people talking about their emotions. And in order not to forget about what feelings there are, and to highlight them in yourself, hang a huge poster on the wall with the spectrum of all emotions.
Possible complications and treatment
Next, we will consider in order what the consequences of this disease can turn out to be and how to overcome it.
Complications
Remember the phrase: “all diseases come from nerves”? This is exactly the case. Complications of alexithymia can include a wide variety of diseases associated with improper production of hormones, malfunctions of the autonomic nervous system (vascular spasms, improper functioning of organs), “unhealthy” diet and lifestyle. Often the deviation is accompanied by allergies, migraines, disturbances in the gastrointestinal tract, atherosclerosis, obesity and a whole bunch of other ailments.
In addition, those suffering from alexithymia can “suppress” emotions with the help of alcohol or drugs. Or try to fill the “gaping hole” in the soul in this way, because they feel not quite alive. Some of them overload themselves with work so that there is no time left for feelings or, on the contrary, they look for activities rich in emotions, where they can throw out the accumulated “load,” for example, they engage in extreme sports.
Treatment
Treatment of alexithymia is possible, although it is not easy and must be initiated by the strong desire of the “patient”. This is not about taking medications. The basis of treatment is encouraging the expression of emotions. The process is long and difficult. Gelstalt therapy, art therapy (self-expression through creativity), sand therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, support from loved ones who encourage the expression of not only positive but also negative feelings (if you are sad, cry, etc.) provide tangible assistance. .
Why do people drive themselves into emotionlessness? They are usually driven by the desire to stop feeling negative emotions - mental pain, fear and shame, sadness and disappointment, anger and irritation. And this is understandable, but it is impossible to specifically remove “unwanted” feelings; emotionality is completely blocked. Life becomes gray and uninteresting, turns into a painful and routine process. Sometimes such conditions are called midlife crises, but in fact it is progressive alexithymia, which is not a solution. Emotions are needed to feel the taste of life, and sadness is traditionally followed by joy. Therefore, do not be afraid of emotions, do not push them into the far corner of your soul, but learn to worry and let go. That's all. Goodbye.
