Have you ever had someone ask you a simple question about how you are doing, and your mind immediately goes blank? All is quiet, and you genuinely have no words to describe your feelings. You try to reach for the emotion, but it’s just not there. Maybe all you can detect is mental static.[1]
If this happens to you, then you are not alone. Alexithymia is the name for this phenomenon. Translated roughly from its Greek origin, it means “no words for feelings.”
For many people, this difficulty accessing emotions is linked to a painful early childhood trauma experience. In fact, the link between this condition and trauma is well documented in scientific literature, helping us understand why many trauma survivors feel oddly flat long after the experience has happened.[2]
The encouraging part is that emotional awareness can be re-learnt. In this article, we examine trauma and alexithymia at length, including:
Alexithymia is not a mental condition. It is a trait that describes how someone processes emotion, and it presents with varied levels of severity. Experts describe it using three common features:
Some people with alexithymia describe the experience like reading their body in a foreign language; the signals are present, but the translation is missing.
In the general population, about 10% of people have traits of alexithymia, even though many don’t even know what it is called.[4] The experience can be strange for those with it. For instance, they might have a pounding heart, but feel unable to determine if it is due to sadness, anger, or exhaustion. They may simply know that something feels off. The body receives the emotion, but the mind lacks the vocabulary to describe it.
It is also important to understand what alexithymia is not: it is not shyness, and it is not the same as being introverted or private. In alexithymia, the feeling is lost in translation. Doctors first described this observation in the 1970s, and researchers have studied it since then.[1]
From the outside, a person with alexithymia may come across as cold or checked out. But in their inner state, the feelings are present – they are just too hard to describe. Having emotions and understanding your emotions are two completely different things, and alexithymia affects the former.[5]
So how does trauma fit into the experience of alexithymia? With trauma and alexithymia, the brain may be shutting out access to emotions as a form of coping mechanism. With time, this mechanism becomes routine, a pattern hardcoded into the mind. And this process does not happen by choice.[6]
There’s also a physical aspect to this. In the presence of a threat, the brain’s alarm system takes control, pulling energy from processes linked to noticing and sorting feelings and redirecting it to more urgent action.
This redirection makes logical sense in this case: survive first, and sort it out later. But if this constantly happens, or happens early in life, the later stage of “sorting” may not ever happen, and the first stage of “shutting down” becomes the default response to danger.[6]
Experts consider alexithymia in two variations:
Secondary alexithymia is considered to be the most treatable of the two.[6]
In a meta-analysis conducted across people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), researchers found traits of alexithymia more often than expected in trauma survivors compared to the general population.[2]
Below, we consider different types of trauma and their connection to alexithymia.
When kids learn language, they also learn how to describe their feelings by taking lessons from people they mirror. If something with this process goes wrong, or is accompanied by fear, the mental wiring for emotional awareness becomes underdeveloped.[6]
In a scientific study, it was found that emotional neglect and emotional abuse are more heavily linked to alexithymia compared with sexual or physical abuse. A child left ignored with overwhelming feelings can quietly slide into a state where their emotions are hard to describe, and this experience leaves a mark that can last.
This is where trauma and alexithymia connect.[7] If childhood emotional abuse and neglect are part of your story, support built for that specific wound exists.
Emotional numbness in complex trauma, a common form of PTSD, overlaps with alexithymia. You might feel far away from your own emotions, but this is the mind’s way of calming a once raging storm. And continuing trauma can worsen this situation.
For instance, if trauma continues over many years, it can negatively affect a person’s relationships, making it hard to express emotions or form real closeness. The ultimate result is a background detachment that feels almost like the weather and not like a mood.[8]
In the early stages, numbing might feel useful. For a neglected child, it might be the easiest way to get through the day. The catch is that this method of escaping reality could also keep them out of touch with those close to them, causing emotional distress into adulthood when the danger is long gone.[6]
In daily life, the signs of alexithymia can be subtle, making it hard for you to even notice. In response, people around you may label you as “too logical” or “too hard to read.”
Some of the trauma-related symptoms that can overlap with alexithymia include:
None of these symptoms suggest you’re “broken.” Instead, they point to an impairment in recognizing your own emotions and the way you understand and process emotions that are well-known.
AMFM is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
The link between trauma and alexithymia starts with emotional regulation and emotional processing. Alexithymia muddles up the initial stage when a person would notice they have an emotion. It jams the gate and makes it hard for you to understand or describe your feelings.[3]
The personal cost can be big, often impacting relationships first. A partner who has been told “I don’t know” multiple times may become frustrated and read this response as indifference. A gap develops, and closeness becomes hard.
All this happens when a person cannot adequately share how they feel inside with the outside world, not out of choice, but because it is simply hard to accomplish.
Further, at work, you might find it hard to read the room and may burn out easily as stress wears you down. However, these unexpressed feelings don’t just disappear; the mind often reroutes them outside through other physical channels, forming symptoms like:
Low self-esteem and shame can also follow. If you can’t explain why you react in a certain way, others may be quick to judge you harshly and suggest that something may be wrong with you. The self-blame that follows is predictable despite the fact that you are simply experiencing an emotional expression difficulty and not a character defect.
If left unattended, alexithymia can lead to depression and anxiety, making the road to recovery from trauma feel even harder and lonelier. Knowing how to name emotions is a step in the right direction. With the right support, mental health treatment can help you address the real problem rather than just treating the surface symptoms.
There is a bright side to the story for trauma and alexithymia: emotional awareness is a skill you can always learn at any stage of your life, even after years of prolonged emotional numbing. In particular, secondary alexithymia linked to trauma is very responsive to treatment options. But anyone can overcome the phenomenon.
Potent treatment options always work on two fronts:
Below, we discuss some evidence-based treatment options.
Psychotherapy, also known as talking therapy, is the main component of trauma therapy and trauma recovery. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you trace the connections between your reactions, thoughts, and the situation you are responding to. This therapy helps you slowly unmask your hidden feelings.
For trauma, management options like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) could also help you walk through your painful memories to make sure they do not interfere with your present life anymore. When you resolve a painful past, it is easier to live optimally in the present.
Building emotional awareness skills is the key to long-lasting recovery. Some methods for achieving this help you recognize your feelings and name them accurately. For instance, dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) teaches you how to sit with intense feelings and describe them without ignoring them.
This is genuinely useful if you are already high on the emotional numbness scale. Mindfulness is another approach that helps. It turns your attention inward, helping you pay attention to your bodily signals that translate to emotional meanings.
Naming your feelings is a skill that can be learned by those dealing with trauma and alexithymia. And with practice, this skill grows. Habits like jotting down what your body feels at different times and guessing the emotions powering this reaction can also help.
Sometimes weekly outpatient sessions aren’t enough, and that’s okay. When trauma symptoms make daily life hard to manage, residential treatment offers structure, support around the clock, and distance from everyday stressors.
A setting like that gives people room to do deeper healing at a pace that feels safe. Days built around therapy, rest, and a steady routine take a lot of the guesswork out of recovery.
A Mission For Michael (AMFM) provides treatment for adults experiencing various conditions. Trauma support is a phone call away – call 866-478-4383 to learn about our current treatment options.
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Reconnecting with your emotions after trauma is possible. It takes time, and it usually takes support, but that flat, faraway feeling doesn’t have to be the rest of your story.
At AMFM (A Mission For Michael) Mental Health Treatment, we help adults work through trauma in a setting built for real healing. The goal isn’t to erase hard emotions. It’s to help you feel them without going under, and to put words to an inner life that trauma once made unreachable. Our treatment programs give you a safe place to do exactly that, at a pace that fits you.
We provide the full spectrum of care, including residential treatment and multiple levels of outpatient treatment programs. Our team of expert clinicians believes in treatment persistence and will personalize your treatment plan so you can achieve lasting, life-changing outcomes.
Our locations in California, Minnesota, and Virginia accept insurance and are in-network with most major providers. To check your insurance coverage for mental health care, simply complete our confidential online verification form or call us at 866-478-4383.
If you’re ready to feel more like yourself again, reach out to us. Our compassionate team is available 24/7 to help you start the admissions process or offer guidance. We’ll walk the road of recovery alongside you, one step at a time.
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