Alexithymia is considered a deficit related to emotional communication; this does not mean that people who have it lack emotions, as is often believed. Rather, they do not have the ability to recognize, differentiate and express them, as well as to identify the physiological symptoms that are associated with them, such as accelerated heart rate or sweating.
People with alexithymia tend to present a way of thinking based on logic, leaving aside the emotional part that they are not able to contemplate and analyze. Therefore, it is common that, when faced with the somatization of certain emotions, they associate these changes in the state of their body with an illness, instead of the manifestation of a state of sadness or anger, for example. This entails a series of consequences in their daily lives, especially when communicating with other people, since they are incapable of expressing themselves.
Francisco Alonso Fernández, professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid, specifies a series of traits that characterize people who present alexithymia. One way to identify this type of case, although the diagnosis must always be made by specialized personnel who confirm or not a case of alexithymia.
In short, people with alexithymia are unable to differentiate the emotions they experience and find it very difficult to describe them and express themselves to others about them. Furthermore, they tend to be people perceived by others as serious, boring, rigid and lacking in expressiveness. They are not imaginative, they are monotonous and distant. All of this causes them to have problems when relating to other people, since they do not align with conventional ways of interacting with others.
