When people are overwhelmed with strong emotions, everyone experiences them differently. Impulsive natures often redirect their fiery potential, trying to drown out the emotional impulse with physical activity. Individuals prone to melancholy express their feelings through creativity. Reserved and secretive people prefer to control their feelings and maintain external equanimity. The weak in spirit seek solace in dubious sources of peace. This is what approximately 90% of the population of our planet does.
But there is another 10%, and imagine, they don’t experience anything. Perhaps someone will think that these unusual people are real lucky ones, because fate protected them from suffering and heartache. However, at the same time, such individuals are deprived of the pleasant experiences that love, new impressions, joyful surprises and other events that paint life with bright colors give. In psychology, the inability to experience a wide range of feelings is called “alexithymia.”
Psychological portrait of an alexithymic person
Alexithymia is a mental condition in which the potential for recognizing, feeling and adequately expressing emotions is very reduced. 10% of “cold” people is just an approximate figure that researcher Rebekah Brewer released after her sociological experiment.
This deviation is not a psychiatric diagnosis. It exists separately or appears as a concomitant symptom of depression, schizophrenia, PTSD, Asperger's syndrome, and other disorders. Not everyone with alexithymia is aware of its existence. If a “cold” person comes to psychotherapy, then most often the complaints are not related to emotional detachment. This quality is perceived by him as a character trait, nothing more. It is difficult for an alexithymic to build personal relationships and make friends. He is unlikely to be considered the life of the party, since he is incapable of empathy and identification with his interlocutor. This does not mean that he has no chance at all for family happiness. There will simply be no passion in the relationship between the spouses, and the children will feel the emotional lack of the parent. A “cold” person does not tolerate strong emotions from others. Especially when it comes to work, where it is important to demonstrate such qualities as sober thinking, composure, balance and logic.
Outwardly, the behavior of a “cold” person differs from others. Here are its main features:
- difficulty defining and articulating “how do I feel in situation X?” and “how does the other person feel in situation X?”;
- communication problems, loneliness;
- inability to empathize;
- absence of violent reactions, rash actions;
- complete or partial absence of dreams;
- inability to fantasize, weak desire for creativity;
- excess weight as a result of overeating;
- replacing feelings with bodily sensations.
The most interesting thing is the last point. Not endowed with the ability to identify their feelings and experience them, alexithymics define them as a physical ailment. For example, the ephemeral concept of “butterflies in the stomach” is interpreted by a “cold” person as hunger. Falling in love, accompanied by increased heartbeat, sweating, and discomfort, suggests thoughts of a disease that urgently needs to be treated. It is for this reason that “cold” people refuse love and break off relationships at the moment when its typical signs appear. For this reason, they are often called cynical and callous.
On the plus side. The emotional detachment and mental stability of “cold” people helps them more easily cope with losses, solve complex problems, make informed decisions, and realize themselves in professions that require endurance, perseverance, attentiveness, composure and prudence. Unburdened by unnecessary worries, they have every chance of success in their careers.
Hierarchy of human needs
Psychologist Maslow's pyramid shows that a person's physiological needs come first, and spiritual needs come last. But one who cannot realize himself in the spiritual sphere turns into a monkey.
This is the main problem of humanity. After all, people are forced to survive, and not read books. Hence the widespread, one might say, animalistic attitude towards each other, deception, fraud, and the desire to make money. A person’s aesthetic feelings cannot be formed on such a basis. Some “chosen ones” still manage to develop, earning their daily living. They are capable of experiencing real aesthetic feelings and developing in a creative or intellectual direction.
Aesthetic feelings (or aesthetic consciousness) are a complex of structures. The consciousness of an esthete includes the attitude to religion, to work, taste, judgment, contemplation, perception, evaluation, ideal, and values.
A person’s taste is his direct opinion about an object or phenomenon. If, for example, your boyfriend wears jeans with slits, which are now “in trend,” but you don’t like them, you prefer trousers without slits, then this is a subjective aesthetic feeling.
What does science say about alexithymia?
The term was first used by professor of psychiatry P. Sifneos in the 70s of the last century. He studied this feature of the human psyche inextricably with the physiological reactions of the body. The objects of the professor's research were patients of psychosomatic clinics. It was in them that the manifestations of alexithymia were expressed most clearly. Some of the patients could not formulate what they were feeling emotionally at the moment. Outwardly, these people looked tense, their facial expressions were poor, and in general they looked more like robots.
Another distinctive feature of alexithymic is excess weight and alcoholism against the background of depressive states. Aleximics are not soulless, they simply do not know how to distinguish between emotions and manage them. Dependence on food and alcohol is explained by the fact that for such a person food is almost the only voltage regulator. Soviet psychiatrist P. Gannushkin wrote about this in his book “Clinic of Psychopathy: Their Statics, Dynamics, Systematics.” Research by Polish sociologist M. Zalewski and his colleagues indicates that among their patients diagnosed with alcoholism, signs of alexithymia were detected in 48%.
Other ailments associated with this disorder include coronary heart disease, duodenal and gastric ulcers, diabetes mellitus, Chron's disease, and malignant tumors. Pain and ailments of the abdominal cavity are the result of a deficiency of serotonin (the hormone of happiness) and prolonged depression that occurs in the absence of joyful experiences.
Psychologists B. Harbert, O. Pollatos and K. Herbert found a direct relationship between emotions and changes in the body. The more conscious the emotion, the brighter the bodily response.
For “cold” people, the opposite is true: it is difficult for them to focus on the internal processes occurring in the body. This fact is confirmed by the research of Oxford professor J. Burt. His subjects could easily distinguish a smile from a sad expression in a photo, but did not understand what both emotions meant. In communication and everyday life, “cold” people react in a similar way. They see that their loved one is laughing or crying, but they are unable to rejoice with him or sympathize with him. As an adaptive reaction, aleximitics artificially create the appearance of empathy, which does not always work out convincingly.
The second stage of falling in love is sympathy
This is love, also based on basic needs. The feeling of love for one's neighbor is still poorly developed and cannot be fully realized. The manifestation of sympathy is limited to coquetry and flirtation. If the object of love does not reciprocate, it quickly passes, since attachment to him has not yet formed. It's like children's aesthetic senses.
The second stage of love has no creative basis. If a person in love failed on the personal front, did not get what he wanted, then he can become angry with the opposite sex, become a misogynist or a man-hater and devote his entire life to a cat or dog. This individual can easily pass by human grief, use someone, and he also has a desire to take revenge.
Causes of alexithymia
There are several theories about the formation of emotional anesthesia. Each of them describes one of three factors that occur, both individually and in combination.
Biological factor
The cause is considered primary and directly depends on the development of the brain in the womb and dysfunction in the right hemisphere. At the same time, the biological factor can be either congenital or acquired as a result of surgical interventions. Experiments conducted by psychophysiologist V. Rotenberg and candidate of psychological sciences I. Korosteleva confirmed that the identification of emotional experiences is disrupted due to improper interaction of the two hemispheres of the brain. Thus, a side effect appeared in patients who underwent surgery to transect the area of the corpus callosum. After this procedure, patients lost the ability to imagine, fantasize, and stopped dreaming.
Psychological factor
Alexithymia is often associated with mental trauma. The scarcity of emotional range as a psychological factor can be formed in childhood by significant adults. There are often cases when a future aleximitic is raised by the same parents, taking over the baton from them. Other reasons include parental overprotection, a ban on emotions, devaluation of children's feelings, intimidation (the world is dangerous, trust is dangerous, attachment is a source of pain). Thus, the child’s range of emotions is narrowed to a few that are allowed, while the rest are simply repressed. Even when the parent ceases to exert direct influence, the fixed habit remains and guides the person’s behavior in adulthood.
Sociological factor
Emotional detachment in this direction often becomes a derivative of the previous factor. But, besides this, social and cultural characteristics push people to “cold” behavior. Statistics show that in modern society men are more susceptible to alexithymia.
In this regard, psychologist R. Levant unveiled a theory about the so-called “normative alexithymia” among men.
In his opinion, the limited emotional spectrum is influenced by national and cultural traditions through which masculinity is passed through in a particular sociological environment. How often in our society do we hear the phrases “A man (boy) shouldn’t cry”, “Be patient, you’re a man”, etc. If educational measures aimed at suppressing emotions were accompanied by physical violence, the subconscious mind develops a mechanism such as dissociation as a defense. A person becomes disidentified with his experiences and becomes an outside observer of his life. Dissociation has an analgesic effect as if what is happening is happening to someone else rather than to him.
Aesthetic feelings are knowledge
One wise man said that knowledge is a valuable cargo that does not interfere. You never know what information you will need today or tomorrow. Therefore, there is no such thing as unnecessary knowledge.
How to invest knowledge in yourself?
- Read every day. By giving preference not to the tabloid press, but to psychological books or educational literature, a person invests in himself.
- Chat with new people. You shouldn't hang out in a cafe all day long to make new acquaintances. Even on social networks there are people who can give advice on this or that matter and recommend good literature.
- To take risks. From time to time it is worth leaving your “comfort zone” and trying yourself in some new business. This is how a person develops.
The third stage of development of love - physiology
A person in the third stage of falling in love is also attracted by physical characteristics (pleasant voice, appearance), but he experiences feelings for a person more deeply and fully than in the second stage. The formation of aesthetic feelings is based on understanding the object of passion. He not only wants reciprocity with his partner, but also respects his surroundings and tries to decorate his life as much as possible. At this stage, a person is already learning to understand psychology, reading thematic literature, and trying to understand the situation. The individual wants not only to take, but also to give.
An attachment to the object of love is formed, which is difficult to get rid of.
