Some people genuinely do not feel emotions, or at least cannot express emotions. They have no story to tell. The diagnostic term is alexithymia, meaning no words (lexis) for emotions (thymos). It affects approximately 10% of the population, and is more common in men than women.
There is no one cause for alexithymia. Some of it might be just depressed nervous system arousal. People on the autism spectrum have this. Sometimes people with brain injury have this. All mammals have an emotional core that responds to threats – the flight or fight response. And there is a range of response thresholds. An analogy would be a hose where water comes out in various strengths. If the source is very low not much water can come out.
In addition to frank diminished arousal, sometimes alexithymia can be the result of psychological processes. The urge is there but it doesn’t get translated into words by the higher brain systems. In this case the hose has a kink in it that diminishes the flow. The feelings are repressed and remain out of awareness. Causes could be trauma, depression, lack of encouragement to recognize and express feelings in earlier development, or diminished capacity to recognize and identify somatic body experiences.
There are no standard treatments for alexithymia. Any process that helps the person focus on their feelings and sensations, both somatic and cognitive, helps. In talk therapy having the person discuss examples of “not feeling anything” can trigger associations that in turn allow the person to learn to identify a feeling. Meditation and mindfulness interventions also help – the person passively “watches” the thoughts that come to him or her. And paying attention to bodily sensations can lead to identifying and acknowledging emotional arousal that is working its way through the body by other means. Attending to somatic experiences (such as stomach cramps, or muscle pain) provides an opportunity to focus on the causes.
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