Alexithymia and childhood trauma
Friday, December 22, 2023. This is for all the children in the Levant. Our thoughts and prayers are with you…
Right now, at this perilous inflection point in the dubious human experiment, 25% of children worldwide are maltreated…
Breaking 2023 research tells us that humans who’ve experienced maltreatment as children are more likely to develop the personality trait of alexithymia.
Alexithymia, which literally translates as ‘no words for emotions’, is a difficulty some humans have identifying and describing their emotions.
We now know from this research that humans with developmental trauma from childhood abuse are more likely to grow up lacking positive examples of how to behave in dealing with adversity, or express their emotions in a healthy fashion to another human.
Lacking that vital example, some of these children will tend to react aggressively, perhaps even violently to negative events. Or just might simply shut down with utterly flat emotional affect, which is the trait of alexithymia.
Dr. Anat Talmon, study co-author, said:
“These children might say, ‘I don’t care. I’m just surviving.’
They don’t know what they want because they don’t know what their inside voice is, and what their true will is.”
Here is a crucial distinction; not all childhood maltreatment worldwide is necessarily intentional.
Some humans are unable to offer sufficient support to their children due to compelling issues, such as chronic ill health or psychiatric problems.
Humans with alexithymia also find it hard to recognise or understand the feelings of others and are likely to miss social cues. This is the alexithymia I’m most used to seeing in neurodiverse couples therapy.
How the study was conducted
The researchers examined nearly 80 ( ok, 78) separate studies which included over 36,000 humans. This was a huge study of studies.
Dr. Talmon continued:
“We can say now with more confidence that these phenomena—child maltreatment and alexithymia—are related to each other to a great extent.”
The results showed that emotional abuse and physical and emotional neglect were the strongest predictors of alexithymia.
Dr. Talmon explained:
“When someone is sexually or physically abused, he or she often knows, to a certain extent, that something is wrong.
Emotional neglect and emotional abuse are extremely devastating experiences for a child.
No one is fulfilling your emotional needs, but you lack the ability to identify and recognize your emotions on your own, which increases the likelihood of developing alexithymia.”
How prevalent is alexithymia?
This new super-literature review suggests that About 10% of humanity displays alexithymia.
The gender breakout is interesting; about 7% of women, and about 13% for men, nearly double, obviously.
As I mentioned earlier, alexithymia is also correlated with other mental health concerns, such as depression, Neurodiversity, autism, as well as schizophrenia.
Professor James Gross, study co-author, said:
“It is increasingly clear that both alexithymia and child maltreatment are transdiagnostic risk factors, meaning that their presence puts a person at higher risk for developing a wide range of mental disorders.
However, what is not yet clear is how these two risk factors are related to one another, and why they often co-occur.”
Can alexithymia be treated in therapy?
Therapy for alexithymia obviously involves helping those humans with this trait get in touch with their emotions, as they choose to do so. As much as I appreciate the sheer weight of this huge study of studies, I find myself asking… what have we actually learned here?
I bristle at the suggestion that alexithymic characteristics are inherently a sign of poor mental health.
Dr. Talmon explained:
“Before you can work on regulating your feeling, you first need to understand and recognize your feeling.”
From a neurotypical perspective, failing to Identify and express your feelings is a real problem for humans with alexithymia. However, many of the neurodiverse men I’ve met with alexithymic traits would not necessarily agree.
Ms Julia Ditzer, the study’s first author, said:
“They are not trying to be difficult. They just really struggle with this.”
Final thoughts
I guess what makes this research so frustrating is the sheer complexity of the topic. Most humans are neurotypical. They live in emotionally driven narratives, and feel most close to their loved ones when they can see a display of revelatory emotion.
My concern is that these researchers suggest that alexithymia is a key transdiagnostic risk factor. However, even though they believe alexithymia is a risk to mental health, how it gets organized into a human nervous system is, for the most part, a mystery.
I have no doubt that childhood adversity can dull and deaden your emotional responsiveness. But is alexithymia a protective adaptation to a world that is, as Camus put it, absurd in its silence to pain and suffering of innocents?
In other words, I guess I’m asking, if Camus felt that the only rational question in response to an uncaring universe is on the merits of suicide, alexithymia looks like a pretty healthy adaptation to a cold and unfeeling universe… bless your heart…
In which case, is the insistence that alexithymia, as a human trait, must be subject to…treatment driven by the client’s desire to change their relationship to emotion?… Or are they merely trying to fit in with neurotypical norms?
How will the generational remnant in the Levant, that emerges from the rubble of war, describe their experience?
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself —
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
That’s a question that keeps me up at night.
Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Ditzer, J., Wong, E. Y., Modi, R. N., Behnke, M., Gross, J. J., & Talmon, A. (2023). Child maltreatment and alexithymia: A meta-analytic review.Psychological Bulletin, 149(5-6), 311–329. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000391
