Alexithymia

Last reviewed Saturday, October 24, 2026

Alexithymia means having trouble recognising your own feelings and putting them into words. You might notice a racing heart or a knot in your stomach without knowing whether it’s fear, anger or sadness, and you may prefer to talk about facts rather than feelings. It’s a personality trait, not a diagnosis, and people have it to different degrees.

Also called: difficulty identifying and describing feelings. The word comes from Greek for “no words for emotions”.

Signs and symptoms

Researchers describe three main parts:

Difficulty identifying feelings: mixing up emotions with body sensations, or just feeling “bad” or “off” without knowing why.
Difficulty describing feelings to other people, even close ones.
An outward focus: thinking mainly about events, tasks and practical problems rather than inner experience.

Other people may find the person calm, distant or hard to read, and relationships can suffer. Body symptoms such as headaches, tiredness or stomach trouble are more common in people with alexithymia, even after allowing for illness, depression and anxiety.

Causes

The causes aren’t fully understood. Alexithymia is usually seen as a personality trait, and upbringing seems to matter: children learn to name feelings partly from how their families respond to emotion, and studies link those early patterns to alexithymia later.

It’s fairly common. In a Finnish population study of more than 5,000 adults, about 1 in 10 had alexithymia. It was more common in men, in older people, in people with less schooling or poorer health, and in people with depression. It’s also common in autism: about half of autistic people in studies had it, against about 1 in 20 of the people they were compared with.

Coping and treatment

Alexithymia isn’t an illness to cure, but emotional awareness can grow with practice:

Pause a few times a day and ask what you’re feeling, and where in your body you feel it.
Use a list of feeling words to find a closer match than “fine” or “stressed”.
When you notice a body sensation, think back to what happened just before it. That often points to the feeling.

Mindfulness-based programmes reduced alexithymia in a small group of trials, and DBT-based skills training shows early promise. A therapist who understands alexithymia can go at your pace, using body sensations and concrete situations as a way in. Tell your therapist if you think it applies to you, because it can affect how some treatments work.

In Nigeria

We found no Nigerian research on alexithymia. Distress here is often described through the body first, as heat, aches or tiredness. WHO’s diagnostic manual notes this pattern in many cultures, and it isn’t alexithymia in itself.

Culture also shapes the scores. A study in China found that the “outward focus” part of alexithymia questionnaires tracks cultural values, so tests can overstate alexithymia where a practical, outward style is valued. And if you can name what you feel but choose to keep it private, that’s privacy, not alexithymia.

Alexithymia vs autism and anhedonia

Autism: alexithymia often comes with autism, but it isn’t part of autism itself. About half of autistic people in studies don’t have it.
Anhedonia: anhedonia is the loss of pleasure. In alexithymia, feelings are there but hard to read.

Alexithymia doesn’t mean feeling nothing. Some people with it react strongly; they just struggle to make sense of the reaction.

When to get help

Consider talking to someone if not knowing what you feel is straining your relationships or work, if doctors have checked your body symptoms and can’t explain them, or if you also feel low or anxious much of the time. You can book a licensed therapist on Mytherapist.ng who works with self-esteem and emotional skills. If low mood is part of it, our depression guide can help you decide what to do next.

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