On my healing journey, I discover new things every day. And when I learned I had Alexithymia, after the initial feeling of “great, another thing to contend with” because of my trauma, it actually helped me better understand what it was I was experiencing, how to better navigate emotions, and importantly, that I wasn’t an unemotional robot.

What is Alexithymia?

According to Medical News Today, Alexithymia is not a mental disorder. It’s important to recognize that Alexithymia is a personality trait, although it can co-occur with various conditions. It has links to cPTSD as well as various other disorders. It is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions and is more common in males than females.

People with alexithymia have:

• problems with introspection, or observing their own mental and emotional processes
• experience confusion around bodily sensations connected to emotions
• struggle to communicate their emotions to others

Discovering and Coping With Conditions

I learned I had this condition when my therapist would ask me to tell him where I was experiencing emotions in my body. After all, feelings are in the body and not our thoughts. I was confused by that question because I didn’t feel them; I just knew that I was feeling a certain way. It was uncomfortable to be put on the spot like that and at first I would respond with a “I’m fine”. I simply was unable to communicate what I felt at any given time.

For most of my life, I thought not feeling any emotions was normal, when in fact it wasn’t. It was a defense mechanism that I subconsciously would fall into.

It took time and my willingness to work on my healing even when I felt uncomfortable. I was asked to start making notes whenever I noticed any new sensation. Soon I quickly realized that whenever my body was showing any sensation, it meant I was in fact feeling a certain emotion. I learned that the tightness and tingling in my right calf and left arm were not just my body’s way of telling me I was feeling anxious; it was showing me.

After what felt like a momentous break through, my therapy sessions would begin with being asked how I was feeling. Some time was spent during the hour-long sessions to describe, sit with, and feel sensations. To give shapes, colors and even a name to the foreign entity within my body. In doing that, it helped me get to know these emotions and to feel them in a healthy way.

Having a breakthrough brought relief

To understand what it is I was experiencing and working on allowing myself to feel them at a healthy level consistently instead of suppressing them and being numbed out and dissociated, they didn’t feel so overwhelming when they hit all at once. And let me tell you, when the faucet was turned on, they began free-flowing, and for the first time in my life, I felt normal. That there wasn’t something fundamentally wrong with me. That I wasn’t broken. I had spent years of living in survival mode with no room for introspection, and it was coming to an end.

As the weeks progressed and more work was put in to helping me cope with all these new found feelings and emotions. I started to work on expressing myself and communicating. To discover that it wasn’t that I didn’t feel anything; I actually felt too much, and it was my body’s way of shutting down to protect myself. Becoming more in tune with our emotions and learning how to react to them is a huge part of recovery.

I still have my moments when I don’t put what I have learned into practice and I can easily numb out, but I just as quickly recognize what it is I am doing and correct myself. I make a conscious effort to communicate, even if it takes a minute, and I need time to sit with my thoughts. It’s why I am a big advocate for communication because I know if I don’t have it, I will feed off what the other person is giving me and I will shut down.

Finding the right therapist is key

People with childhood trauma often favor survival over authenticity in order to survive as children; at least that was true for me, and it took 4 attempts to find a therapist I could trust and feel I could be open and honest with. I was just about to give up when I found the therapist I am with today. He was the game changer.

I was taught that repressing/fighting and creating a narrative around feelings is what keeps them feeling heavy for so long. Working on your breathing and focusing on your grounding tool helps fight off the urge to swallow up all and any emotion. Of course, it is easier said than done and takes lots of practice.

I’ve gained emotional competence by sitting with my feelings and exploring them. I now see that all emotions are messages from our body telling us that something needs to be addressed.

It’s not always easy to understand how any of us relate to the world, but with self-compassion, patience, and understanding, we can heal in ways that can give us true happiness, and that’s really what any of us are looking for. And like the old saying goes, the best time to start is yesterday; the second best time to start is today. Just don’t remain stagnant and know that healing is a gift and a wonderful thing.