Find a therapist specializing in alexithymia near me.

I have worked with many clients who identify, or have been identified, as "alexithymic." I find this a somewhat forbidding diagnostic term, so I like to take some time to share what exactly alexithymia is and why, and when, it is something to be addressed in therapy.

To begin, the formal definition: "alexithymia" is literally a failure of being unable ("a-" for lack) to understand certain words (that's the "lexi") for emotions ("-thymia" being a general psychological suffix being used in this context to denote emotion or affect). Put in these terms, alexithymia is a certain kind of aspect of verbal processing. When the term was introduced in the 1970s, it was meant to recall "dyslexia," another term used to describe a certain kind of atypical relationship to words and language.

The first thing to note is that alexithymia is not a psychiatric disorder of the kind enumerated in a diagnostic manual like the the DSM. Your psychiatrist or therapist cannot diagnose you as alexithymic, as she can diagnose you with Major Depressive Disorder or Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Alexithymia is, at most, a symptom, or perhaps a certain way of framing a certain constellation of symptoms—although it is not even included as a symptom in many diagnostic manuals. It is correlated with certain recognized disorders, notably Autism Spectrum Disorder, but it is not itself a diagnosis.

I emphasize these points because there is a widespread tendency to reify alexithymia and make it perhaps something........

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