what does it mean when its hard to feel emotions to other people?

© Derek Brahney for Mosaic. Source photograph from iStock

Stephen has been married twice. Two wedding days. Two "I practise"s. Notwithstanding Stephen has no happy memories from either — or, in fact, from the marriages or any of his relationships.

He met his beginning married woman on a pre-nursing class when he was but xvi. 6 years later, they were married. Three years afterward that, they got divorced; she was never really the correct one for him, he says. Most two decades on, in 2009, he met his second married woman through a dating site. He threw himself into the human relationship, and the post-obit year, with his father and her ii adult siblings present, they married at the registrar's office in Sheffield, England, where they both live.

He put on smiles for the nuptials photos because he recognized that they were expected, just, as he explains: "From an inner-feeling betoken of view, anything I do that requires an emotional response feels similar a fake. Most of my responses are learned responses. In an surroundings where everyone is being jolly and happy, it feels like I'm lying. Acting. Which I am. And then it is a lie."

Happiness isn't the only emotion that Stephen struggles with. Excitement, shame, disgust, anticipation, even beloved … he doesn't experience these, either. "I feel something, simply I'yard unable to distinguish in any existent way what that feeling is." The only emotions he is familiar with are fear and anger.

Such profound problems with emotion are sometimes associated with autism, which Stephen does not accept, or with psychopathy, which he doesn't accept, either. Last twelvemonth, at the age of 51, he finally learned what he does have: a fiddling-known status called alexithymia, a word made from Greek parts meaning, roughly, "no words for emotion."

Despite the name, the real problem for people with alexithymia isn't so much that they accept no words for their emotions, but that they lack the emotions themselves. Still, not everyone with the condition has the aforementioned experiences. Some take gaps and distortions in the typical emotional repertoire. Some realize they're feeling an emotion but don't know which, whereas others confuse signs of certain emotions for something else — mayhap interpreting collywobbles in the stomach as hunger pangs.

Surprisingly, given how by and large unrecognized it is, studies bear witness that about 1 in x people falls on the alexithymia spectrum. New research is revealing what's going wrong — and this work holds the promise not but of novel treatments for disorders of emotion, just of revealing but how the rest of united states experience anything at all.

Faking it:

Afterward working every bit a nurse for x years, Stephen decided he wanted to do something dissimilar. A 2-year Access to University course led to a degree in astronomy and physics, and and so to a task testing computer games. He congenital a successful career for himself, working for various companies in their reckoner-testing departments, managing teams, and traveling around the earth to speak at conferences. He had no problem conveying facts to colleagues. It was in the context of more personal relationships — or whatsoever other scenario that would typically involve expressions of emotion — that he felt things were "incorrect."

"At the beginning of a human relationship, I'thousand totally into who that person is," he explains. "I've been told I'm very good at maintaining a honeymoon flow for 'longer than expected.' But after a year, information technology takes a massive turn. Information technology all falls apart. I've put myself on a pedestal to be this person which I'm really non. I react more often than not cognitively, rather than it being emotions making me react. Plainly, that is not valid. It'southward not existent. It seems fake. Because information technology is false. And yous can merely pretend for so long."

He and his current wife stopped living together in 2012. He saw a general practitioner and was prescribed antidepressants. Though he was however in contact with his married woman, information technology was articulate that the relationship was no longer working. In June 2015, he attempted suicide. "I had actually been posting on Facebook and Twitter regarding killing myself, and someone — I've never constitute out who — contacted the law. I was taken to infirmary and treated."

A psychiatrist referred Stephen for a series of counseling sessions then a form of psychodynamic psychotherapy, a blazon of Freudian-based therapy that, in trying to uncover unconscious drivers of thoughts and behavior, is similar to psychoanalysis.

© Derek Brahney for Mosaic. Source photograph from iStock

It was in a book called "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt, which his therapist recommended, that he first came across the concept of alexithymia. "I brought it up in therapy, and that's when nosotros started talking about how I was very alexithymic. Obviously, I've got a vocabulary. I've got words for emotions. But whether they're the right words for the right emotion is a dissimilar point altogether … I but thought that I wasn't good at talking about how I feel and emotions and stuff similar that. Only later on a yr of therapy, it became apparent that when I talk about emotions, I don't really know what I'yard talking almost."

The term 'alexithymic' dates from a book published in 1972 and has its origins in Freudian psychodynamic literature. Freudian ideas are now out of favor with virtually bookish psychologists, equally Geoff Bird, acquaintance professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford explains. "Not to disrespect those traditions, but in the cognitive, neuro, experimental field, not so many people are actually very interested in annihilation associated with Freud anymore."

But when Bird read about alexithymia, he found the descriptions intriguing. "Actually, information technology's really quite amazing." For near people, "at a depression level of emotion, y'all might exist a bit unsure about exactly what you're feeling, but if yous have a strong emotion, you lot know what it is." And yet somehow, here were people who simply did not know.

Bird started his academic career studying autism, empathy and emotional sensation, which led to his interest in alexithymia. In one of his first studies in this field, he linked alexithymia, as measured with a 20-detail checklist developed at the Academy of Toronto, with a lack of empathy. If you lot can't feel your own emotions in the typical way, it makes sense that you lot can't identify with those of others, either.

Only what actually drew Bird into alexithymia research were his interactions with people with autism. "At that place has been this perception that people with autism don't have empathy. And that's rubbish. And you can see that immediately as soon every bit yous run across some autistic people."

In a series of studies, Bird has found that most half of people with autism take alexithymia — information technology'due south these people who struggle with emotion and empathy, whereas the residual practice not. In other words, emotion-related difficulties are intrinsic to alexithymia, not to autism.

Racing middle:

Bird is passionate about spreading this message. He talks with feeling most one particular autistic report volunteer who did non accept alexithymia: "A lovely guy with an IQ we couldn't measure, it's that adept. He couldn't hold down a job. Merely he volunteered to work at a care home because he wanted to practice something productive with his fourth dimension. They said, 'Oh because you've got a diagnosis of autism you tin can't do empathy, therefore yous can't wait after our elderly people.' Which is but ridiculous."

Bird has since run a series of studies exploring alexithymia exterior the context of autism. He has institute, for example, that people with the condition take no trouble recognizing faces or distinguishing between pictures of people smiling and frowning. "But for a few of our really alexithymic people, while they tin tell a smile and a frown apart, they have no idea what they are. That is actually quite strange."

Many of the people with the status whom Bird has met talk virtually being told by other people that they're different, though some do recognize information technology in themselves early. "I approximate it's a bit like not being able to see color, and everybody's always banging on near how red this is or how blue, and you come up to realize there's an aspect of human experience that you're just non participating in."

Equally well equally ameliorate characterizing alexithymia, Bird and his colleagues accept also dug into what explains it, taking what could seem to be a circular argument — Stephen has problems with emotion because he has alexithymia, which is characterized by issues with emotion — and blowing it right apart.

In situations that Stephen recognizes every bit being in theory highly emotional — such as telling someone "I dearest you" — he experiences changes within his body. "I feel my heart race and this rush of adrenaline, only to me that feeling is e'er scary. I don't know how to react. It makes me want to either run abroad or react verbally aggressively."

Fright and anger — and confusion — he understands. "Everything else just feels yet … it's this feeling of, 'Errrr, I'g non quite comfortable with this — information technology's non quite right.'"

© Derek Brahney for Mosaic. Source photo from iStock past Getty Images

For Rebecca Brewer, a former student of Bird'south and now lecturer in psychology at Regal Holloway, University of London, this makes sense. "With alexithymia, people often know that they are experiencing an emotion but don't know which emotion information technology is," she explains. "This means they could still experience depression, possibly because they struggle to differentiate between different negative emotions, and struggle to place [positive] emotions. Similarly with feet, it might exist that someone experiences an emotional response associated with a fast heartbeat — which might exist excitement — but they don't know how to interpret that, and they could panic well-nigh what'southward happening in their trunk."

The power to detect changes within the body — everything from a racing centre to a diversion of blood flow, from a full bladder to a distension of the lungs — is known equally interoception. It's your perception of your own internal land.

Different emotions are associated with unlike concrete changes. In anger, for example, the heart rate rises, claret rushes to the face up and fists clench. In fearfulness, the heart rate also rises, but claret drains from the face. It's generally idea that these changes are not entirely specific to individual emotions, and and so context is likewise important: if you feel your heart racing and you lot're looking at a spider, you lot know it'south fright that y'all're feeling, not sexual arousal.

Trauma and neglect:

What Bird, Brewer and others have found in people with alexithymia is a reduced power, sometimes a complete disability, to produce, detect or interpret these internal bodily changes. People with the condition have normal-range intelligence quotients. They can understand also as anyone else that they're seeing a spider rather than an attractive potential partner. But either their brains aren't triggering the physical changes that it seems are needed for the feel of an emotion, or other regions of their brains aren't reading these signals properly.

In 2016, Bird and Brewer, forth with Richard Melt at City Academy in London, published a enquiry newspaper that characterized alexithymia as a "generalized deficit of interoception." Here, and then, was an explanation for these people'due south problems with emotion — just besides, in issue, a manifesto stating that the perception of a range of actual signals is important for the experience of emotion in the rest of united states of america.

Information technology's an thought that nosotros already express in everyday language: in English language, for an apology to mean annihilation, it has to exist 'heartfelt.' If you truly dearest someone, it's with 'all your middle.' When you're actually angry, your 'blood boils.' Instead of saying that y'all're anxious, you might talk about having 'butterflies in your stomach' (thought to be caused by a diversion of blood menstruation abroad from the digestive organisation).

As a child, Stephen suffered extreme emotional neglect. When he was half dozen, his female parent intentionally ready burn down to their home in Nottingham while she, Stephen, his younger blood brother and even younger sister were all inside. Fortunately, the children's father, who had left for work, realized he'd forgotten his packed lunch and came home.

Looking dorsum, Stephen says it's clear his mother was suffering from postpartum depression. But she received no treatment, "and all I knew was anxiety and being worried." After the burn, his mother went to prison. His male parent was a steelworker who worked all kinds of shifts. "A neighbour contacted social services and Dad was told to sort information technology out or they'd take us away. None of my dad's brothers or sisters wanted me or my brother considering we were trivial shits. We were ever in problem. Robbing shops. All kinds of stuff. So we went into intendance."

For the residual of his childhood, Stephen was in and out of care homes. The only emotions he remembers feeling, fifty-fifty then, are fear, acrimony and confusion. "Christmas, birthdays, people out of the bluish at care homes being nice to me … I never really got used to it. I always felt uncomfortable. At that place's merely a mess of feelings inside me that I don't interpret properly or reply to properly."

Alexithymia is often associated with trauma and fail from a immature historic period, Geoff Bird explains. Twin studies have suggested a genetic component, too. And it's also linked to sure types of brain damage, specially to the insula, the region that receives interoceptive signals.

As Rebecca Brewer notes, the kind of feet that Stephen experiences is mutual in people with poor interoception. At the University of Sussex, Hugo Critchley and Sarah Garfinkel, who have expertise in psychiatry and neuroscience, are looking at ways to alter interoception, to bring feet down.

Garfinkel has put forrard a iii-D model of interoception that has been well received by others in the field. First, objective accuracy at perceiving interoceptive signals — how practiced you lot are at counting heartbeats, for case. Second, subjective written report — how proficient you think you lot are. And third, metacognitive accurateness — how good you lot are at knowing how good yous actually are.

The third dimension is of import considering various studies accept found that the gap between how good someone thinks they are at counting heartbeats, for case, and how skilful they actually are predicts their levels of anxiety. Lisa Quadt, a research swain with the Sussex group, is now running a clinical trial with the aim of testing whether decreasing this gap for people with autism can lower their anxiety.

Decreasing anxiety:

In a airplane pilot study, Critchley, Garfinkel and graduate student Abigail McLanachan recruited a grouping of students who came into the lab for half-dozen training sessions. In each session, they first did the heartbeat-counting task. The volunteer sat at rest, with a loose rubber pulse oximeter on their forefingers, and reported how many beats they'd counted. So McLanachan told them how they'd done then that they got a better sense of how authentic they were.

McLanachan so got them to exercise a few minutes of jumping jacks or walking fast up the steep colina outside the building — whatever was necessary to enhance their heart charge per unit, to make information technology easier to find. ("Because some people really tin can't feel their heartbeat at all. I can't," Quadt explains.) Then they went back into the lab, did the tasks again and, as before, were given feedback each time.

This was just a airplane pilot study on a full general student population. Simply after three weeks, not only had the students' accuracy improved on all three dimensions of interoception, but they besides reported a decrease in feet of around x percent.

For the main trial, volunteers diagnosed with autism will complete the same tasks as in the airplane pilot, but once at the start and one time at the end they'll do them inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. This will permit the team to monitor action in the insula, which receives centre-charge per unit data, and look at how changes in that activity may represent to connections between the amygdala, which detects threats, and the prefrontal cortex, which can work out whether a potential threat really is or is not dangerous and so whether anxiety is warranted. The hope, Critchley explains, is to meet improved connectivity between these ii regions, which previous studies take linked to decreased feet.

In Oxford, meanwhile, Geoff Bird wants to expect at the idea that there are two different types of alexithymia. People with ane type don't produce enough of the actual signals necessary for the experience of an emotion, so they would be unlikely to benefit from the Sussex group's kind of training. People with the other type produce all kinds of actual sensations, merely their brains don't process these signals in the typical way. This second group, which includes Stephen, might benefit more.

Bird stresses that, although people with alexithymia struggle to sympathize emotion, that doesn't mean they don't care most other people. "For the well-nigh function, individuals with alexithymia can recognize that others are in a negative state, and this makes them distressed. The problem is that they can't piece of work out what the other person is feeling, and what they are feeling, and therefore how to make the other person feel better or how to reduce their own distress. I call back that's important because alexithymia is different from psychopathy in that respect."

Stephen says that for him, this is certainly true. And in theory, an emotional-training technique is something he would welcome. "I've got several books about emotions and feelings, and they don't make a jot of difference because they're not talking specifically enough about what you actually feel inside your torso is which emotion."

Feeling empowered:

For now, given the absence of available treatments for alexithymia, Stephen plans to utilise his newfound agreement of himself, gained through therapy, to try to move forward. At first, he says, he hoped that therapy would fix everything. "I thought every day would be perfect, brilliant … and I've come up to realize that's not going to happen. I'm always going to accept bug, always going to have issues."

He'southward learned valuable lessons, he says. Though he and his wife are still separated, they talk regularly and now he tries not to turn down her views on his anxiety. "Rather than go, 'No,' I will listen. I think, 'Well, you know what emotions are about and I don't, so I'm going to mind to you and I'll either accept it on lath or I'll find a way to deal with it.'" He's also thinking about moving to piece of work with people who are struggling with substance abuse, because he'd similar to be dorsum in a career where he tin can help people.

Nearly of all, he's determined to employ his diagnosis of alexithymia. "For me, it empowers me — now I know near it, I tin read most it. I tin can observe out more about it. And I can develop certain tools that enable me to combat information technology."

People without alexithymia could probably utilize such tools equally well. Bird has led work showing that people who are more aware of their own heartbeat are amend able to recognize others' emotions, a crucial first step in being empathetic. He's planning studies to investigate whether heartbeat preparation might therefore increase empathy.

Those who desire to lower feelings of stress and anxiety in daily life, but who either can't or don't want to change the sources of stress, could focus on changing the signals coming from their bodies instead. Regular physical exercise should dampen down the kinds of bodily signals (from the heart and apportionment, for example) that the brain could interpret as existence anxious — and so it should dampen down feelings of feet, too.

Knowing that signals from our bodies underpin our emotions could be empowering for all of us. At present, how does that make you lot experience?

This story originally appeared on Mosaic. It has been edited to reflect Spectrum'southward fashion.

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Source: https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/people-alexithymia-emotions-mystery/

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