The level of alexithymia as an indicator of psychological stability of students of technical and humanitarian universities 1291

The essence of the term

Alexithymia is the inability to express emotions verbally, to find the necessary words to convey to the interlocutor the whole range of internal sensations. Psychologists say that this is not a disease. Most likely, alexithymia can be called an individual feature of the individual’s psyche, a certain syndrome or psychological problem that is in no way related to mental capabilities. A person can be wise, for example, a famous scientist or researcher, but he will never tell you how he feels while watching a tear-jerking melodrama.

Since the 70s of the last century, the famous specialist Peter Sifneos, observing patients with somatic disorders, was the first to use the term “alexithymia”.

o in psychology meant that the patient either does not know how to describe his emotions at all, or does it inaccurately, incorrectly, or in a laconic manner. Peter Sifneos argued that such people lack a rich imagination, sometimes they do not distinguish the line between bodily sensations and internal experiences, and are unable to understand the feelings of another person. The listed features appear simultaneously or one of them predominates.

Spreading

How many people are affected by alexithymia? This is a difficult question, the answer to which still does not exist, since individuals do not always turn to psychologists for help, considering their condition natural and natural. According to the latest statistics, the syndrome is observed in 5–25% of the world's population. The large discrepancy in numbers is also due to the fact that experts use different diagnostic methods to determine the presence of the disorder and the degree of its severity.

However, psychologists say that alexithymia is not synonymous with complete insensitivity. These people, like healthy people, worry, but they find it difficult to express their inner emotions verbally. Their lack of external manifestations results in bodily-vegetative reactions: feelings, finding no way out, are suppressed and transformed into psychosomatic diseases. If a person suffers from autism, the connection between intellect and sensations may be completely interrupted and impossible. Therefore, such patients think that the verbs “feel” and “think” are synonymous.

Terminology, disease concept

Alexithymia is a psychological personality trait in which it becomes difficult to identify one’s own and others’ emotional states, the ability for fantasy, imaginative thinking, symbolization and categorization is reduced, which complicates the process of communication with other people.
Fact: the name of alexithymia uses the syllable “ti”, from the word “thymus”, since it is believed that the possible causes of its development are in the pathology of this endocrine gland.

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Alexithymia is a term that was introduced in 1969 by the American, psychoanalyst P. Sifneos, as a factor provoking psychosomatic disorders. Literally translated as “lack of words to express feelings” and is characterized by a stable set of symptoms:

1. Replacement of emotions with bodily stimuli and sensations.
2. Incorrect recognition and incorrect description of experienced emotional states – both one’s own and someone else’s.
3. Poor development of reflection and self-awareness.
4. Low level of fantasy.

Forms

The study of alexithymia is an important task for modern psychologists. Until now, some aspects of the syndrome are unclear and unknown. Despite this, experts were able to identify two forms of the disorder: primary and secondary. Each of them has a different nature and external manifestation. Primary alexithymia can be acquired as a result of birth trauma. It also develops due to disturbances in intrauterine brain formation in the fetus. Appears at an early age. Having noticed that something is wrong, parents should seek the advice of a neurologist.

Secondary alexithymia is the result of psychological trauma, which is sometimes accompanied by brain dysfunction or neurological disorders. It can become a manifestation of post-traumatic disorder, increased anxiety or hidden depression. Development is affected primarily by improper upbringing: overprotection or, conversely, lack of basic attention from parents. The primary one is practically untreatable, but the secondary one can be dealt with.

Types and causes of occurrence

It is customary to distinguish two forms of alexithymia: primary and secondary; accordingly, the reasons that gave rise to each of these types will also differ.

Let's start with primary alexithymia or, as it can sometimes be called, congenital. Actually, everything becomes generally clear when looking at the definition itself. Indeed, primary alexithymia is caused by complications during pregnancy or childbirth, as well as diseases suffered in infancy. This form is extremely difficult to correct.

It is somewhat easier to deal with secondary alexithymia. Its signs become noticeable no longer at such an early age and most often are the result of injury or some kind of disorder, both physical and psychological. For example, alexithymia is observed in the vast majority of patients with autism. It is also not uncommon for it to accompany schizophrenia.

What exactly are the abnormalities in brain function that the symptoms of alexithymia indicate? Although it has not yet been possible to answer this question unambiguously, scientists are inclined to believe that the essence of the problem is the so-called interhemispheric conflict.

As you know, the human brain consists of the right and left hemispheres. The right hemisphere is responsible for processing non-verbal information, emotions, imagination, creativity, while the left hemisphere allows you to analyze facts, think logically, recognize numbers and mathematical symbols. The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres.

In a person with alexithymia, the left hemisphere dominates and suppresses the work of the right, and the reason for this, in all likelihood, is damage (even at the micro level) to the corpus callosum.

However, alexithymia can also develop as an acquired reaction, as a model of imitation of parental behavior learned by the child. Modern society discourages open expression of emotions, encouraging restraint. “Laughing loudly or crying in public is indecent,” this rule is instilled in us from childhood.

Men are especially vulnerable in such a situation, because while society still allows a woman to show her feelings, men, as we know, do not cry unless they want to look like weak-willed, weak-willed creatures. It is not surprising that cases of alexithymia are more common in men than in women.

In addition, many psychotherapists believe that alexithymia can be caused not only by a ban on the expression of emotions, but also by an incorrect attitude towards physical contact in the family, because mental experiences are inextricably linked with physical ones. A child may feel both a lack of parental affection and an excess of it, a violation of the boundaries of his personal space - both of these extremes are fraught with the appearance of psychological problems.

Causes

Alexithymia as a psychological problem has primary sources. They become the fertile soil on which the syndrome grows. Difficulties in accessing emotions to verbal expression have been explained by numerous researchers, who have identified three main reasons:

• Suppression of impulses directed by the limbic system, which is responsible for feelings, to the cerebral cortex.
• Disruption of communication between the left and right hemispheres: the first of them cannot recognize the signals of experiences that are produced in the second.
• Genetically transmitted defects of the central nervous system.

The concept of alexithymia, as already mentioned, assumes that the disorder also arises as a result of improper upbringing. A child may lose the ability to express emotions due to imposed stereotypes, for example, “men should not cry” or “it is indecent to express feelings in public.” Some scientists also admit that alexithymia can be the result of a head injury - damage to the corpus callosum, which is responsible for the relationship between the hemispheres.

Signs of alexithymia

There are no words for emotions - this is how the name of the pathology is literally translated. This is the inability to verbalize your own or others' emotions.

• Difficulty distinguishing between emotions and bodily sensations. A person with such a pathology tends to express feelings through somatic sensations. This is why he confuses them.
• External orientation. This type of thinking is called “mechanical.” I’m used to thinking the same way, which makes it difficult to fantasize. The external is more important than the internal.
• Utilitarian thinking. Logic above all, selfishness.
• Insulation. Alexithymic cannot maintain friendly relationships. He prefers privacy.
• Lack of dreams. The marriage of fantasy makes it difficult to see and remember dreams. If they arise, they are often “mundane” and “specific to the subject.”

Manifestations

Alexithymia is, in psychology, a violation of a person’s emotional functions. In this regard, the character of such individuals has some features:

1. Difficulties that arise with communication, during which people constantly verbally express their feelings, describe one or another state of mind.
2. Tendency to loneliness. Realizing that he is not like everyone else, a person often withdraws into himself and begins to avoid society.
3. Limited imagination. Such individuals rarely become artists, performers or designers. They completely lack the ability to be creative.
4. Inability to see vivid and colorful dreams.
5. Good logical thinking, a penchant for synthesis and analysis, and the ability to summarize.
6. Denial of intuition.

If you ask a person suffering from alexia how he feels at this moment, you can hear the following answers: “cold”, “painful” or “uncomfortable”. Such people always confuse emotions with bodily sensations.

Models

When an individual is diagnosed with alexithymia, this means that psychosomatic disorders may develop in parallel. They refer to two patterns of behavior: denial and deficit. The first assumes a strong inhibition of affects, which allows for the possibility of reversibility of the syndrome. Although in many patients the disorders are irreversible and cannot be changed even with long-term therapy. Such people live without imagination and emotions. The deficit model is more adequate. People who choose it are not completely devoid of feelings, but only some of them, or they express their experiences, but in an incomplete form, not completely. Sometimes they are even able to imagine and create.

Psychologists have not finally decided whether alexithymia is a situational condition or whether it refers to a stable personality characteristic. Some experts believe that disturbances only appear during certain activities, for example, during communication with an opponent. Left alone, such a person is quite capable of expressing his feelings and emotions.

What to do?

If you think you have Alexithymia

and the symptoms characteristic of this disease, then doctors can help you: psychiatrist, psychologist, psychotherapist.

We wish everyone good health!

Diseases with similar symptoms

Mental disorder (overlapping symptoms: 1 of 9)

Mental disorder is a wide range of illnesses that are characterized by changes in the psyche that affect habits, performance, behavior and position in society. In the international classification of diseases, such pathologies have several meanings. ICD 10 code – F00 – F99.

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Complications

Alexithymia causes many problems at the physical level: peptic ulcers, dermatitis, gastritis, colitis, bronchial asthma, hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, allergies, migraines and so on. Unexpressed feelings accumulate inside the consciousness and gradually find their way out in bodily form: the individual’s hormonal levels are disrupted, a malfunction of organs and systems occurs, which becomes the cause of the above ailments.

Another consequence of alexithymia is extra pounds and even severe obesity. According to numerous studies, the inability to express feelings quickly transforms into overeating, irregular eating, and a change in gastronomic tastes in favor of low-quality and harmful products. At the same time, treating the syndrome against the background of excess weight often becomes a problem for doctors. Particularly difficult cases also include the development of alexithymia simultaneously with the individual’s addiction to alcoholism or drug addiction.

Diagnostics

Alexithymia is often confused with other psychological reactions: depression, cognitive retardation or schizophrenia. Therefore, the issue of accurate and professional diagnosis is very relevant in our time. The alexithymia scale developed by the American scientist Taylor helps determine the presence of the syndrome. The questionnaire was translated and adapted in St. Petersburg by specialists from the Vladimir Bekhterev Psychoneurological Institute. With its help, more than a hundred patients were examined, as a result of which it was found that patients with the right hemisphere type of brain asymmetry are more unfavorable in terms of treatment.

Diagnosis is also carried out using another scale - Schelling-Sifneos. Doctors use John Crystal questionnaires, as well as projective techniques, since such people have no imagination, so their answers are standard and of the same type. Despite this, the use of tests for clinical purposes can be difficult due to the lack of regulatory data. In addition, doctors do not have enough time to conduct experiments, as well as accurately interpret their results.

Treatment

As noted above, primary alexithymia is difficult to treat. At the same time, the secondary one, which is a consequence of childhood experiences, can be eliminated using modern methods of influencing the individual’s consciousness. When a person is diagnosed with alexithymia, treatment begins with conventional psychotherapy. Gestalt therapy, modified psychodynamic techniques, art therapy and hypnosis are also used. The main goal is to teach the patient to express his feelings and emotions.

Much attention is also paid to imagination, which helps to expand the range of emotional manifestations. As for medications, scientists have not come to a common conclusion: they help or not. Some psychologists note a good effect from the use of tranquilizers in the presence of psychopathological disorders such as panic attacks. In any case, doctors are confident that treatment should be comprehensive. At the same time, the patient’s close people also play a big role in it, who meet him halfway, help him open up to the inner world of his loved one, and throw out the flow of his suppressed and hidden experiences.

Alexithymia is a psychological state of personality in which a person, having lost the ability to identify and express his own emotions, is forced to try to look normal in the eyes of others. Psychiatrist Saito Satoru talks about this disorder using examples from his own practice, as well as the characters in the story “Convenience Store Man” (Kombini Ningen, by Murata Sayaka), which was awarded the 2020 Akutagawa Prize.

In psychiatry there is a term “alexithymia”.

consists of a negative prefix “ἀ” and two stems: “λέξις” (word) and “θυμός” (feelings, emotions). This term describes a psychological state when a person is unable to evaluate and describe his own emotions. In order to have a holistic view of his own life, an individual must be aware and discern what he feels. However, there are people who are incapable of this - they do not understand in what situations they experience this or that emotion. The characteristics of alexithymia appear in such people in those moments when they are overcome by anger, sadness or any other strong feeling that they are unable to define and express.

In fact, with the exception of babies, there are practically no people in modern society who cry or scream completely uncontrollably. The implication is that an adult member of society should control himself and not outwardly display such primitive emotions. And if he is unable to restrain himself, then he needs treatment.

Young people, striving to conform to the concept of “normality,” learn from the older generation to suppress the expression of emotions. Over time, some of them lose the ability to recognize their own feelings. Suppressed anger and sadness become the cause of psychosomatic diseases and hypochondriacal disorder. Hypochondriacs are characterized by a clear manifestation of somatic symptoms in the absence of any significant pathological abnormalities. Due to an anxious attitude and constant concern about health, the functions of the heart, gastrointestinal tract and other autonomically innervated systems may be disrupted. And this, in turn, leads to the development of arterial hypertension, peptic ulcers, etc. This is why hypochondria is considered a psychosomatic disease.

However, with alexithymia, not only negative emotions are blurred, but also positive ones - a person is not able to experience feelings such as joy or inspiration. The loss of the ability to experience pleasure is called anhedonia. This disorder is characterized by a loss of motivation to engage in activities that the individual previously enjoyed. The development of anhedonia is an important indicator in the diagnosis of pathological depression.

Under the guise of normality

I have my own psychiatry practice in Tokyo, and in my daily work I encounter people suffering from depression and hypochondriacal disorder. During the first meeting, most of them do not show any signs of suffering or despair. And I must remove from them the mask of normality, under which they hide their illness that needs treatment.

I thought about this when I read the novella “Convenience Store Man,” for which Murata Sayaka recently won the Akutagawa Prize. After all, this story is about a person suffering from alexithymia. The heroine, a woman named Kokura Keiko, worked for 18 years as a saleswoman in the same minimarket (convenience store) - it is from her perspective that the story is told.

but I made it a rule to never show my feelings or express judgments. Instead, she has created a "patchwork personality", copying the behavior and adopting the habits and manners of the women around her (mostly her work colleagues) whom she considers correct and admires for their style. This effective and convenient strategy allows her to adapt to her own environment. At the moment when, having arrived at work shortly before the start of her shift, she changes into her work uniform, Keiko turns into a function, into a “minimarket person.” Now all that is required of her is to perform the prescribed duties within the appointed time, using the skills she has learned and the judgment she has borrowed as appropriate to the occasion. The heroine's school years were spent under endless complaints from her parents, dissatisfied with her individualistic daughter, and constant pressure from school teachers. As an adult, she is grateful for the opportunity to hide her individuality under a faceless uniform.

However, when Keiko suddenly realizes that people around her feel sorry for her - a single woman who has worked as a saleswoman in a minimarket for 18 years in a row - she becomes extremely worried. At this moment, she meets a new minimarket employee, a man who is the exact opposite of her. He is convinced that society has turned its back on him and that everyone is bullying and persecuting him. So he doesn't even try to seem normal, and very soon he gets fired from the convenience store. Keiko invites him to stay with her. At first glance, it seems that they are a very harmonious couple, but their connection is built on cold calculation. For the workaholic Keiko, this is an opportunity to create the appearance of a romantic relationship; for a lazy man, life with Keiko is an excellent shelter from the injustice of a cruel world. But their life together disrupts the fragile mental balance that Keiko has maintained and strengthened in herself throughout these eighteen years.

The caustic remarks of her roommate expose her spiritual emptiness, the gaping emptiness of her personal space, which Keiko refused to notice for so many years. Refusal, denial is a primitive psychological defense mechanism, a subconscious attempt to ignore a problem, the existence of which is obvious to any outside observer. And the one who denies the obvious looks infantile and eccentric in the eyes of others.

Realizing the hopelessness of her situation, Keiko quits her job and ceases to be a “minimarket man.” She has no choice but to lie all day long under a blanket, on a futon that she has laid out inside the closet. I call this phase “bed addiction” and believe that it is the starting point for the development of other types of addiction: from drug or alcohol addiction to sexual addiction. In fact, both addictive behavior and “indicative normality” are desperate attempts to get out of the quicksand of an emotional vacuum.

This story has a happy ending in a sense - Keiko starts working at the convenience store again. But I don’t think this will make many readers laugh too much, since they notice the connection between the heroine’s excessive focus on work and the meaninglessness of the heroine’s personal space.

Refusal to feel

“Bed addiction” is essentially a regression to the so-called “primary sleep” - a sleep-like state characteristic of infants. This is exactly the state that heroin addicts so passionately desire to achieve. Hermit hikikomori also experience a similar process of regression. Every day this quagmire sucks in hikikomori more and more, and getting them out of it is not an easy task.

It is important to pay attention to one point here. A baby who falls asleep during feeding and wakes up to find that he has been weaned from his mother's breast will feel anxious, angry, flushed and cry.

Older babies (one to one and a half years old) also live in a world of basic emotions, such as anger, anxiety, depression or sadness. But adult hikikomori are deaf to these emotions. At first, they themselves refuse to feel anything, and then they simply lose this ability and fall into a state of alexithymia.

Free yourself from the spell of “normality”

Such people sometimes come to my clinic for help, mistaking their condition for depression. For example, a housewife came to me and told me that after graduating from university she immediately got a job at a company, but only worked for a year because office work seemed boring to her. She then found a part-time job at a sadomasochistic (SM) club, a place she liked so much that she worked there for four years. Shortly before she turned thirty, she quit the club, figuring that sooner or later she would have to do it anyway. Some time later, after actively searching for a suitable match (konkatsu), she got married, gave birth to a child and began to lead a “normal” life as a housewife. And then she suddenly discovered that she spent most of the day in bed or in a place nearby.

Her husband, a typical mama's boy, also suffering from atopic dermatitis, quickly realized that his wife would not care for him to the same extent as her mother did, and divorced her. At the time of her visit to me, about a month had passed since the divorce.

I think some of my colleagues would diagnose this patient with depression or adjustment disorder and prescribe her antidepressants. But I noticed how strong her desire was to be, or at least appear normal. It was this that forced her to suppress her individuality and doom herself to life in a world that caused her nothing but boredom.

Everyday work in the SM club was fraught with danger, but at the same time it excited her - the thought that she was working in a “non-standard”, “abnormal” job served as a strong source of emotional excitement. Thus, “normality” is just an illusion, an ideal that can be different for different people.

My patient says that she is already thirty-five, her figure is no longer the same, and that “you can’t undo what happened in the past.” I don't dispute this point of view. But regardless of whether she returns to work at the SM Club or not, I believe that she needs to remember and rethink the strong, exciting feelings that she experienced while working at the job she loved. My task is to restore this woman's ability to feel strong emotions, restoring her connection with her own eroticism. I have to convince her that she doesn't need to hide behind a mask of normality.

What is Alexithymia?

What is Alexithymia? Translated from Greek, alexithymia is a disorder in which an individual is unable to recognize his own feelings and verbally describe them. That is why such individuals often do not understand what is happening to them and cannot sympathize with other people who are experiencing certain feelings.

People who suffer from alexithymia exhibit the following general characteristics:

• Conflict.
• Low stress resistance.
• Lack of development of imagination.
• Difficulty in describing your emotions.

Psychologists note an increased risk of developing somatic diseases that are formed on a person’s emotions. Because a person experiences certain emotions acutely, by recognizing and understanding them, he is able to eliminate them or calm them down over time. When a person does not understand his own experiences, then he loses the opportunity to find the right approach to eliminate them.

An important part of an emotional experience is a life lesson. Each person draws certain conclusions for himself based on the emotions he experiences. If the emotions are positive, he concludes that he did everything right. If the feelings are negative, then the person analyzes his actions that led to a negative result. A life lesson has been passed if a person has corrected his actions, which last time led to a negative result, and now give a positive consequence.

A person with alexithymia is not able to draw conclusions based on the lessons that life teaches him, since he cannot understand what feelings he is experiencing.

Alexithymia deprives a person of understanding the difference between mental and physical feelings. Also, the individual does not perceive the world in all its manifestations and does not teach him how to react adequately to stressful and conflict situations. Such a person has neither motivation, nor values, nor goals that appear under the influence of positive emotional stimuli.

Symptoms

How to recognize alexithymia? The most important symptom of its manifestation is a person’s inability to verbally express how he feels. Against the background of emotional “illiteracy,” a person is often intellectually developed.

Since the individual is unable to understand emotions, he is absolutely not prone to empathy. At times he seems insensitive or selfish. In fact, he is ready to empathize, he just doesn’t know how to do it. Therefore, in such a situation, he often solves the problem with a familiar phrase.

Misunderstandings and conflicts between a person and others become frequent. Since he does not understand their experiences, he is not able to change his behavior and approach to them in a timely manner.

The most striking symptom is pragmatism against the background of a complete lack of creativity. The tendency to creativity can only develop in people who vividly experience and understand their emotions. With alexithymia, a person is not able to understand his own experiences, so he thinks pragmatically and logically.

However, outbursts of emotions that a person splashes out on others, without understanding what is happening to him, are not uncommon.

Difficulties arise with adequate reflection on the world around us. Since a person does not feel emotions with conscious understanding, he does not have time to react in time to the manifestations of others and change quickly. As for self-regulation, there are no particular problems here. If necessary, people with alexithymia are quickly able to change both on the external and internal levels, completely adapting to new living conditions.

Signs

The most obvious sign of alexithymia is a person's loneliness. This is due to the fact that he does not know how to maintain contacts with others, which are built on the level of emotions. He feels emotions, but does not understand them. He is not able to express what he is experiencing in words so that people understand what is happening to him. He is also unable to adequately express his own emotions, which can lead to misunderstandings. The result of the combination of these factors is loneliness.

They cannot perform activities that are associated with creativity, creation, and development. Anything new is scary and confusing. A person cannot fantasize or imagine, which limits his abilities.

Such individuals may have no dreams at all. And if you dream about something, it’s only about everyday life.

Their problems cannot be based on emotional impulses. If we talk about intuition, they completely reject it.

When describing their experiences, such individuals often use words that describe bodily sensations. They cannot separate and see the difference between pain and suffering, joy and warmth.

The very life of such people becomes boring due to the lack of emotions, and the social sphere becomes unsettled. Since a person is not able to understand the feelings of a partner, it seems to him that he is making up problems. The inability to understand guilt or conscience leads to shifting responsibility to other people. And this does not contribute to building strong relationships.

Other signs of alexithymia are:

1. Negative perception of the world.
2. Tendency to depression.
3. Fear of new things.
4. Visual-effective thinking.

From the outside, a person seems insensitive, selfish, pragmatic and logical. On the one hand, he attracts with his sober view of the world. On the other hand, such a concept as intimacy, which is formed between people at the level of feelings, is alien to him.

YOUR LEVEL OF ALEXITHYMIA

Data processing.
Scoring is carried out as follows: 1) the answer “totally disagree” is scored as 1 point, “rather agree” – 2, “neither one nor the other” – 3, “rather agree” – 4, “completely

I agree” – 5. This scoring system is valid for scale points 2, 3, 4, 7,8,10,14,16,17,18,19,20,22,23,25,26;

2) the scale points have a negative code: 1, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21, 24. To get the final score in points, you should give the opposite score for these points (that is, score 1 gets 5 points ; 2-4; 3-3; 4-2; 5-1);

3) the sum of points on all points is the final indicator of “alexithymicity”.

The theoretical distribution of results is possible from 26 to 130 points. According to the authors of the methodology, the “alexithymic” personality type receives 74 points and above. The “non-alixithymic” personality type scores 62 points or lower. Scientists of the Psychoneurological Institute named after. V. M. Bekhtereva, who adapted the technique, revealed average values ​​of alexithymia in several groups: control group of healthy people -59.3±1.3; group of patients with psychosomatic disorders -72.09±0.82; group of patients with neuroses – 70.1 ± 1.3 (Alexithymia and methods for its determination in borderline and psychosomatic disorders. Methodological manual. St. Petersburg, 1994).

EMOTIONAL BURNOUT SYNDROME

The concept of “emotional burnout” appeared in psychology relatively recently, about 20 years ago. Recently, it has been widely used in scientific texts and the vocabulary of psychiatrists, medical and social psychologists, heard on television screens and flashed on the pages of popular publications. The fact is that representatives of many professions whose activities involve communication are susceptible to symptoms of gradual emotional fatigue and devastation. First of all, this applies to doctors, teachers, educators, trade and service workers. If we add to this group of representatives of mass professions leaders, managers and commanders, police officers, prosecutors and courts, railway and aeroflot service personnel, all kinds of instructors, guides and translators, interviewers, librarians and artists, then it turns out that every second person is exposed to danger emotional burnout.

In light of the above, it is clear why, for example, in the USA there was suddenly a commotion in connection with another national socio-psychological scourge. With their characteristic expression, Americans discuss the problem of “burnout” in scientific literature and journalism. It seems to Americans that the majority of the nation has become emotionally callous and formally reacts to various social phenomena and events in their personal lives. Observing individual Americans from the outside, this cannot be said about them, although inside the country, many things may be seen differently.

To put it bluntly, the term “emotional burnout” is not strictly scientific. Perhaps that is why the phenomenon itself is illuminated somewhat

simplified and populist in both foreign and domestic literature. In fact, behind it are very serious psychological and psychophysiological realities, which have their own causes, forms of manifestation and communicative consequences.

First of all, we note that emotional burnout (we will use this concept, since it exists) is acquired in human life. This “burnout” differs from various forms of emotional rigidity, which, we remind the reader, is determined by organic reasons - the properties of the nervous system, the degree of mobility of emotions, psychosomatic disorders.

Emotional burnout is a psychological defense mechanism developed by an individual in the form of a complete or partial exclusion of emotions (a decrease in their energy) in response to selected psychotraumatic influences.

Emotional burnout is an acquired stereotype of emotional, most often professional, behavior. “Burnout” is partly a functional stereotype, since it allows a person to dose and use energy resources sparingly. At the same time, its dysfunctional consequences may arise when “burnout” negatively affects the performance of professional activities and relationships with partners.

Causes

Some people tend to believe that alexithymia is a disease. Others prefer to call this phenomenon only a human property. Alexithymia is conventionally divided into primary and secondary. Primary alexithymia is provoked by congenital defects that appear during the development of the fetus, the birth of a person, and the passage of the first diseases in infancy. Secondary alexithymia is caused by the following reasons, which may occur in adulthood:

• Stress.
• Traumatic experiences.
• Mental disorders, etc.

Some experts identify the causes of alexithymia in sociocultural aspects. A person does not have a good education and culture of communication; he is at a lower social level, that is, there is no upbringing in which he would study himself, his feelings and ways of expressing his emotions.

From the point of view of psychoanalysis, alexithymia can be called emotional dullness, which develops as a defense mechanism to a specific stressful situation. A person is constantly affected by certain negative factors. If an individual cannot cope with them, then he begins to emotionally get used to them. The protective mechanism of the psyche is emotional non-reaction to what is happening.

Certain educational concepts that a person went through as a child can cause alexithymia. For example, “men don’t cry” or “it is indecent to express emotions in public” can lead to the development in a person of the ability to suppress his own feelings.

It cannot be ruled out that emotions are punished or ridiculed. As a child, parents punish a person who cries or laughs too loudly. Friends mock the child's love feelings. The negative experience of such experiences forces you not to show your feelings and not even pay attention to them.

The problem of alexithymia

Modern science is still searching for an answer as to whether alexithymia can be distinguished as an independent pathological phenomenon or as a symptom complex accompanying other conditions, which any healthy person can encounter in destructive circumstances. Alexithymia is a phenomenon so ambiguous that it is interpreted as:

• A form of defense mechanism.
• Delayed or reverse developmental changes (cognitive and emotional).
• Sociocultural phenomenon.
• Neurophysiological pathology.

Treatment

Unclear causes of occurrence lead to the lack of comprehensive treatment for alexithymia. If we talk about primary alexithymia, then it becomes difficult to prescribe treatment. At some point, a deviation occurred that becomes impossible to recognize.

Usually, various therapeutic work is carried out to eliminate alexithymia. They become effective when it comes to secondary alexithymia and other factors of its occurrence.

Knowing the causes of emotional lack of expression, you can direct the therapist’s work to eliminate it. Techniques used here include:

• Art therapy.
• Suggestion.
• Hypnotechnique.
• Psychodynamic psychotherapy.
• Gestalt therapy.

Please be patient while troubleshooting the problem. The results will not appear immediately. Techniques where a person must show creativity become effective, because it is associated with the manifestation of emotions. The more vibrant and large-scale human creations become, the better.

The work is first aimed at expressing one’s emotions, then at understanding and recognizing them. The person must describe how he feels using various materials and words known to him. Observing other people’s emotions also becomes important here: how they manifest themselves and how they are recognized from the outside.

Drug treatment is used only in situations of depressive disorders and psychosomatic illnesses. They are aimed at suppressing negative experiences and eliminating physiological symptoms. However, therapeutic work at this stage is not excluded, since thoughts and conscious experiences remain the main ones. It also uses a balanced diet, which helps in establishing a connection between a person’s condition and his emotions.

Treatment of the disease

If we talk about the congenital form of the disease, then in this case a complete cure is impossible. By carrying out the necessary therapeutic measures, you can only reduce the severity of symptoms.

The secondary form of the disorder responds relatively well to treatment, but the process is quite lengthy. In both the first and second cases, treatment will only be conservative.

The medicinal part of therapy includes the following drugs:

• antidepressants;
• nootropic;
• sedatives;
• tranquilizers;
• neuroleptics.

It should be noted that with such a disorder, taking medications will only be aimed at eliminating the symptoms, and not treating the problem itself.

The course of therapy will necessarily include psychocorrection, which is carried out both individually and in a group. Family psychotherapy also takes place.

In addition, it should be understood that basic therapy will primarily be aimed at eliminating the underlying cause. Regardless of what exactly is the etiological cause, treatment should be comprehensive - medication combined with psychotherapy.

The prognosis is entirely individual, since the outcome of therapeutic measures will largely depend on the form of alexithymia, the patient’s general health indicators and his age.

There are no specific methods of prevention. The only advisable solution is to follow the rules of a healthy lifestyle: eliminate bad habits, eat right, and prevent diseases. At the first symptoms, you should consult a doctor rather than carry out therapy yourself.