Greater awareness seems desirable. But I doubt it “severely affects” 1 in 10 people. My impression is that when it’s correlated with severe problems, the problems are mostly caused by something like trauma, and alexithymia is more a symptom than a cause of the severe problems.
Author of the manifesto and Animi here. I was also doubtful initially when I was researching alexithymia to improve my condition. But that was gradually changing the more papers I read and the more people I talked with. There are 50+ years of research on the topic, and some papers show more than 10% of the general population with alexithymia score in the “clinical” range where it is correlated with all the associated problems. 1 in 10 actually makes a lot of sense given how prevalent and comorbid it is with mental disorders or i.e. neurodiversity - ~50% of those people are also alexithymic.
It is not always caused by trauma, though obviously, it is one of the possible factors influencing it. And even if it was caused by trauma, I don’t find that line of thinking very satisfying, because it isn’t actionable. The next step would be going to therapy to work on that trauma. But for people with alexithymia, therapy is much less effective since psychotherapy relies on being able to speak the language of emotions. And most therapists aren’t trained to work with alexithymics.
I don’t disagree that it can show as a symptom of other severe problems, but calling it a symptom is in my opinion insufficient, because without addressing the symptom it is significantly harder to address the initial severe problem, and research actually shows it exacerbates severity of mental disorder symptoms. So it’s more of a risk and mediator / moderator factor that severely influences the symptom severity and treatment outcomes, along with a host of other problems, and hence saying it “severely affects” is justified.
Sources for the claims I’m making are all in the manifesto (100+ studies linked), happy for constructive feedback and open to talking more—it is possible that I’m tunnel-visioned and somewhat biased since I’m working on a solution for it, but I’m not the only one who is thinking this way—you can read this article which makes a similar point—https://www.bhcsmt.com/blog/alexithymia-one-of-the-most-impactful-health-conditions-youve-never-heard-of
Yes, the mechanism is likely not alexithymia directly causing undesirable states like trauma but rather diminishing one’s ability to get unstack given that traumatic events happened.
Yes, and then there are also undesirable states and outcomes in which alexithymia plays a direct mechanistic role, for example somatization—people not interpreting the physical symptoms of emotional states as emotions, leading to somatosensory amplification (focusing on them and therefore amplifying them), which then leads directly to somatization (for example going to ER thinking you have a heart attack while it’s actually strong anxiety). This process also plays role in the formation or amplification of some forms of chronic pain.
Also there’s a large longitudinal Finnish study on over 2000 men. It followed them for 20 years and has shown there’s a 1.2% increase in cardiovascular disease death risk for each 1-point increase in alexithymia score. That’s adjusted for age and several behavioral (smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity), physiological (low- and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, history of CVD), and psychosocial (marital status, education, depression) factors. This means that severe alexithymia alone (i.e. score 100+) is basically comparable to smoking, cardiovascular death risk-wise.
I have alexithymia.
Greater awareness seems desirable. But I doubt it “severely affects” 1 in 10 people. My impression is that when it’s correlated with severe problems, the problems are mostly caused by something like trauma, and alexithymia is more a symptom than a cause of the severe problems.
Author of the manifesto and Animi here. I was also doubtful initially when I was researching alexithymia to improve my condition. But that was gradually changing the more papers I read and the more people I talked with. There are 50+ years of research on the topic, and some papers show more than 10% of the general population with alexithymia score in the “clinical” range where it is correlated with all the associated problems. 1 in 10 actually makes a lot of sense given how prevalent and comorbid it is with mental disorders or i.e. neurodiversity - ~50% of those people are also alexithymic.
It is not always caused by trauma, though obviously, it is one of the possible factors influencing it. And even if it was caused by trauma, I don’t find that line of thinking very satisfying, because it isn’t actionable. The next step would be going to therapy to work on that trauma. But for people with alexithymia, therapy is much less effective since psychotherapy relies on being able to speak the language of emotions. And most therapists aren’t trained to work with alexithymics.
I don’t disagree that it can show as a symptom of other severe problems, but calling it a symptom is in my opinion insufficient, because without addressing the symptom it is significantly harder to address the initial severe problem, and research actually shows it exacerbates severity of mental disorder symptoms. So it’s more of a risk and mediator / moderator factor that severely influences the symptom severity and treatment outcomes, along with a host of other problems, and hence saying it “severely affects” is justified.
Sources for the claims I’m making are all in the manifesto (100+ studies linked), happy for constructive feedback and open to talking more—it is possible that I’m tunnel-visioned and somewhat biased since I’m working on a solution for it, but I’m not the only one who is thinking this way—you can read this article which makes a similar point—https://www.bhcsmt.com/blog/alexithymia-one-of-the-most-impactful-health-conditions-youve-never-heard-of
Yes, the mechanism is likely not alexithymia directly causing undesirable states like trauma but rather diminishing one’s ability to get unstack given that traumatic events happened.
Yes, and then there are also undesirable states and outcomes in which alexithymia plays a direct mechanistic role, for example somatization—people not interpreting the physical symptoms of emotional states as emotions, leading to somatosensory amplification (focusing on them and therefore amplifying them), which then leads directly to somatization (for example going to ER thinking you have a heart attack while it’s actually strong anxiety). This process also plays role in the formation or amplification of some forms of chronic pain.
Also there’s a large longitudinal Finnish study on over 2000 men. It followed them for 20 years and has shown there’s a 1.2% increase in cardiovascular disease death risk for each 1-point increase in alexithymia score. That’s adjusted for age and several behavioral (smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity), physiological (low- and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, history of CVD), and psychosocial (marital status, education, depression) factors. This means that severe alexithymia alone (i.e. score 100+) is basically comparable to smoking, cardiovascular death risk-wise.