Trauma can dramatically change not only our life, but the way our brain actually operates. As a result, often times overcoming trauma relies on addressing these cognitive and emotional changes, because only by doing that can you move forward towards a better future.
An example of this is “Alexithymia.” It’s a condition that doesn’t happen to everyone, and is not always caused by trauma, but when it does occur in someone with PTSD it becomes important to address it.
What is Alexithymia?
Alexithymia is a psychological condition characterized by difficulty identifying, expressing, and understanding emotions. Individuals with alexithymia often struggle to describe their feelings, differentiate between emotions and physical sensations, and engage in emotional introspection.
While alexithymia can occur in the general population, research suggests a strong correlation between trauma and the development of alexithymic traits.
Alexithymia is not classified as a mental disorder but rather as a trait or condition that affects emotional processing. It manifests in ways such as:
Difficulty Identifying Emotions – Individuals may struggle to recognize their own emotional states or describe how they feel.
Limited Emotional Expression – They may appear emotionally distant, struggle with verbalizing feelings, or display a restricted range of facial expressions.
Confusion Between Physical and Emotional States – Bodily sensations, such as muscle tension or an upset stomach, may be misinterpreted as purely physical discomfort rather than an emotional response.
Externally Oriented Thinking – A tendency to focus on external events rather than introspecting about emotional experiences.
Trauma, particularly chronic or severe trauma, can play a significant role in the development of alexithymia. This is especially true in cases of childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The connection between trauma and alexithymia is rooted in both neurological and psychological factors.
Neurological Impact of Trauma on Emotional Processing
Trauma affects brain structures involved in emotion regulation, including:
The Amygdala – Responsible for processing emotions, the amygdala may become hyperactive in response to trauma, leading to heightened fear responses while impairing emotional awareness.
The Prefrontal Cortex – Critical for emotional regulation and self-reflection, this area may be underactive in those with trauma, making it harder to process and articulate emotions.
The Corpus Callosum – Trauma, especially in early development, can impact the communication between the brain’s hemispheres, limiting the ability to integrate emotions with rational thought.
When a person experiences severe trauma, the brain may no longer be able to process emotions effectively, and the result is poor emotional processing.
Emotional Suppression as a Coping Mechanism
For individuals who have experienced trauma, particularly childhood emotional neglect or abuse, suppressing emotions may become a learned survival strategy. If emotional expression was met with punishment, rejection, or indifference, the brain adapts by disconnecting from emotional experiences to reduce psychological distress.
Avoidance of Emotional Triggers – Trauma survivors may unconsciously disconnect from their emotions to avoid pain, leading to emotional numbness.
Dissociation – Chronic trauma may result in dissociative tendencies, making it difficult to access emotional states and recognize them as personal experiences.
Hyperarousal and Emotional Overwhelm – Some trauma survivors experience emotions so intensely that they develop a shutdown response, numbing emotions as a form of self-protection.
Some of these issues may also be related to the type of trauma and the age it occurred. Individuals who grow up in environments lacking emotional support may develop alexithymia as a result of insecure attachment styles. When caregivers fail to model emotional recognition or discourage emotional expression, children may struggle to develop emotional awareness in adulthood.
For example, if the person experienced neglect, without consistent emotional validation, individuals may not learn how to recognize or describe their emotions. If they struggled with abuse, fear-driven relationships can create emotional dysregulation, leading to avoidance or suppression of emotions.
Alexithymia and PTSD
Alexithymia is frequently observed in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies indicate that trauma survivors with PTSD often exhibit alexithymic traits, which can interfere with traditional talk therapy and emotional processing treatments. This can make trauma recovery more challenging, as individuals may struggle to verbalize distress, engage in self-reflection, or process traumatic memories effectively.
Managing and Treating Alexithymia in Trauma Survivors
While alexithymia can be a barrier to emotional healing, certain approaches can help trauma survivors gradually reconnect with their emotions and develop emotional awareness:
Mindfulness and Body Awareness – Practices such as mindfulness meditation and somatic therapy can help individuals tune into physical sensations linked to emotions.
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) – This therapy helps individuals identify and label emotions in a structured, supportive environment.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – Can help trauma survivors recognize patterns of emotional avoidance and develop strategies for emotional expression.
Journaling and Expressive Writing – Encouraging structured reflection on experiences can help bridge the gap between thoughts and emotions.
Trauma-Informed Therapy – Therapies such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and somatic experiencing may help address underlying trauma and improve emotional awareness.
For those who have experienced trauma, alexithymia can make emotional healing more complex, but it is not a permanent condition. With the right therapeutic support and strategies, individuals can learn to recognize, process, and express emotions in a way that supports their mental well-being. If you’ve been struggling from trauma, reach out to Flourish Psychology today to speak to one of our therapists and get the help you need.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), typically referred to as EMDR, is increasingly becoming one of the most popular treatments available for addressing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Scientists have discovered that one potential cause of PTSD is poor processing after the event has taken place. Essentially, they’ve found that when a person experiences a significant trauma, their brain isn’t always able to fully process the event. EMDR works by essentially helping – in a calm environment – the person with the trauma go through and process the details of the event so that it can be move to long term memory and prevent excessive stress.
This process is extremely effective. But the way that it’s described often has some people worried that it sounds similar to some pseudoscientific treatments, such as hypnotherapy, and they’re worried that it could be responsible for “false memories” – where an individual, typically under the guidance of a therapist, remembers events that did not take place.
QUICK ANSWER: EMDR cannot and does not erase, alter, or place false memories. EMDR’s role is to change where existing, evidence based memories are stored in the brain.
How EMDR Works and How it Affects Memory Processing
During the overwhelming experience of trauma, a person’s memories of the event do not fully form the way other memories form. Instead, memories can be fragmented, emotionally charged, and difficult to process. Because the brain isn’t accurately able to process these memories, they begin to affect the person’s mental health.
EMDR aims to integrate these memories more adaptively by:
Reducing the emotional distress associated with the memory
Helping individuals view past events with less reactivity
Strengthening cognitive insights related to the experience
Since EMDR relies on memory recall and cognitive restructuring, it operates within the natural processes of memory reconsolidation – where memories are reactivated, modified, and re-stored in a way that aligns with new information. In other words, new memories are not being introduced, nor is a person trying to discover information that was not already there. Rather, they’re taking information that is already in their minds, and using the process of EMDR to store it all together.
Why EMDR is Not at Risk for False Memories
For a person to experience false memories, a person would have to be under very specific conditions that all have to align. Research suggests that for someone to have false memoires implanted in their minds, all of the following situations would need to be present:
The person would have to be given new information or provided with new possibilities that were not already present.
The person would have to be in a situation where they could be guided towards new beliefs, with leading questions, suggestive language, hypnosis, or because they are unable to recall any details of the event and are seeking answers.
Unlike some other forms of therapy that explicitly work to “recover” repressed memories, EMDR focuses on existing memories and the emotional responses tied to them. These memories are not hidden or repressed. They are simply very emotional. The person that has these memories already knows they exist, but is simply having a difficult time processing it effectively.
EMDR in the Hands of a Qualified Psychotherapist
Therapists that specialize specifically in EMDR are trained directly not to use leading questions, not to imply any event has occurred, and not to suggest that something is being missed or repressed. The goal of EDMR is to prioritize existing memory recall and use a series of techniques to reduce how emotionally charged the events feel, so that ultimately the brain can move the memories into their correct placement in the brain instead of these fragmented memories that cause significant stress.
Licensed therapists, trained EMDR, like those here at Flourish Psychology, know how to address trauma accurately and correctly and avoid any situation where suggestion or leading questions could alter a person’s thoughts and memories.
EMDR is and remains one of the most effective strategies we currently have for treating PTSD and trauma. But of course, it is important to work with people that have been specifically trained in this type of approach. If you’re looking for help with trauma for yourself or someone you love, please reach out to Flourish Psychology, today.
So often, when we talk about various mental health symptoms, we gloss over them without explaining the process that causes them to occur. For example, one of the most common symptoms of anxiety and depression are “irritability.” People that have depression are more irritable with their family and friends than those that are not.
But why is this?
If you want to read a long science article about it from the NIH, you can do so here. But if you prefer to understand it in a more simplified way, let’s talk about the possible causes.
More Than One Trigger
As with many mental health issues, the actual causes can be complex. Possible connections include, but are not limited to:
Limited Stress Coping
When you’re struggling with depression, you’re already experiencing difficulty coping with stress. If you imagine that you have a limit on how much stress you can cope with at any given time, it’s easy to imagine that normal life interactions become more difficult to handle overall, which in turn makes you more irritable.
Poor Sleep
Depression leads to poor sleep, and poor sleep leads to a decrease in positive emotions and an increase in negative ones. As you sleep less, you become more likely to feel generally irritable, which in turn leads to feelings of irritability. The same issues can occur if depression affects your diet.
Reduced Pleasure
Typically, we need to be able to experience positive feelings in order to avoid negative ones. But when we have depression, we may not be able to experience pleasure. It’s a condition known as “anhedonia.” If you can’t experience positive emotions, often all that is left is the experience of negative ones.
Projection
When we experience anger on the inside, where we feel negative about ourselves, we can sometimes project that anger outwards. You’re already feeling angry about yourself, so your immediate emotion when faced with challenges is anger.
Other Thoughts on Irritability and Depression
It should also be noted that, while anyone with depression can be irritable, irritability as a symptom is more common in children and teens. Why might this be? Perhaps because they haven’t learned other coping habits, or emotional regulation, so it may come out as irritability.
In addition, it’s important to remember that mental health issues affect our neurotransmitters, which change the way we think. It may turn some thoughts into more irritable ones, which in turn delivers an irritable response.
Regardless of the cause, irritability can be a symptom of depression, and in turn would benefit from a depression treatment. Find out more by contacting Flourish Psychology, today.
Most of us have had some strange dreams and, depending on who you talk to, many times people will try to talk to you about what your dream might “mean.” There’s this belief that dreams have meaning, which causes people to remember their dreams more or think about their dreams intensely, using them as fuel to make decisions or better understand themselves.
Scientists frequently debate whether or not dreams have meaning. Most agree that the answer is probably “no.” Dreams occur when our brain are trying to create memories and process the day, and then the dream itself is just how our brain weaves that processing together in order to tell a story.
Still, that doesn’t mean that dreams are useless from a psychotherapeutic perspective. Quite the contrary. While it’s not clear whether or not dreams always have meaning independently, there are ways to decipher dreams anyway that can have meaning.
For example:
YOUR Intepretation
You’ve probably heard about Rorschach Tests. These are tests where a person looks at an ink blot that has no particular design, and tells the therapist what they see. The ink blot itself has no design, but what we see the ink blot can typically be very meaningful.
Dreams can be very similar. For example, imagine your parents are in your dream, and your mom is helping you with a problem but your dad is silent. You interpret that as a sign your dad is distant, or keeping a secret, or neglectful. Within the context of the dream, it may not have had meaning. But the way you interpreted the dream absolutely might have meaning, which in turn can be used to spark discussion.
Common Dream Experiences
Studies have confirmed that certain emotions and experiences could affect some of the themes of our dreams, which is why many of us have very similar dream experiences. For example, many people dream about being chased. Why would so many people dream about being chased, if dreams are just processing events of the day?
We don’t entirely know. But we do know that it’s more common in those with anxiety. Perhaps it is the brain trying to train a person in their sleep on how to flee if they face danger (since anxiety is the activation of a fight/flight response), or maybe a person with anxiety has a heart that is beating faster in their sleep, and the brain is trying to explain that heartbeat increase by having the person run.
These are all ways that how we feel can affect our dreams in some form, even if the content itself is not entirely meaningful.
The Exceptions
What if “dreams” as a whole don’t have meaning, but that we can somehow introduce things that we process within our dreams that have meaning.
This can be hard to explain so let’s look at an example. Imagine that you are someone that has struggled with negative self-talk, referring to yourself in your internal monologue as “trash” or garbage.” Then you go to sleep, and you’re processing the day, and suddenly you see a garbage can in the dream, and everyone is yelling at the garbage can.
Clearly, it’s possible that this garbage can represents you, and you’re dreaming about how you feel about yourself. This would be a dream that “has meaning,” which would directly contradict the idea that dreams are otherwise meaningless.
Even in this situation, the dream itself didn’t create meaning. The meaning came from your brain trying to process your day, and that includes the self-talk that you had earlier in the day. Still, it’s easy to see how this dream subject would be meaningful. The dream wasn’t trying to tell you something, but it still had meaning.
Analyzing Dreams and Discussing You
Dreams themselves may not inherently have meaning. But how we interpret our dreams, or the issues that occurred recently that led to us dreaming the way we did, can still be interesting. We don’t need to envision that dreams mean more than they do, but we can still think about our dreams and talk about our dreams in a way that might be meaningful.
Struggling with your dreams of late? Experiencing mental health challenges that may be affecting your life and happiness? Reach out to Flourish Psychology, today.
It’s Hard to Make Decisions – But It’s Even Harder Not To
Frequently, throughout life, we’re faced with choices. We have to choose where to go for dinner. We have to choose what show to watch next. We have to choose where we want to live, what shoes to wear with our outfit, what to name our dog.
Some of these choices are easy. Others are much harder.
But regardless of difficulty, most of us will, at times, face situations where we simply cannot seem to make a choice. This has a term – choice paralysis. Faced with the need to make a decision, we struggle, and eventually do nothing at all.
How Choice Paralysis Manifests
Choice paralysis refers to situations where, faced with more than one option, we pause on making a choice and ultimately – either intentionally or unintentionally – choose to do nothing at all. There are many examples of this in action:
Sometimes, choice paralysis is caused by being overwhelmed by choices. For example, if you’re scrolling Netflix looking for the next show to watch, there might be so many shows to choose from that you keep scrolling and struggle to make a decision, ultimately watching nothing.
Sometimes, choice paralysis is caused by the choice being too significant. “Should I buy this home” for example is a huge financial decision, and some people do nothing as the home they wanted gets taken by someone else.
Sometimes, choice paralysis is caused by just an overall lack of motivation. “What job should I apply for?” can be a bit stressful, and if you’re not fully motivated, that stress can then lead to simply not making a decision at all, and giving up.
Choice paralysis can be caused by anxiety, ADHD, stress, or nothing at all. But in all scenarios it creates a problem: if you freeze when you need to make decisions, then one of two things might happen:
You run out of time and make the wrong decision and rush to any decision, even if it wasn’t the right one.
You make no decision at all and nothing happens or changes for you.
Either way, it’s easy to envision how this is a problem. If you aren’t making decisions – or you’re not making the right decisions – then you aren’t going to be able to achieve your goals.
What Happens Next?
Choice paralysis is a real issue. It’s something that stands directly in the way of you being able to achieve your dreams and goals.
But addressing it requires an understanding of what it comes from. What is your thought process? Why is it occurring? What are the goals you’re trying to reach and what do YOU need to help you get there?
This will be different for every individual, which is why it is so important for us to meet and discuss your needs. But achieving your dreams and goals requires making sure you have the confidence to make decisions, self-knowledge so that you can motivate yourself, and more.
If you find that you have trouble with these types of decisions, reach out to the therapists at Flourish Psychology today. Let’s start you on a path to reaching your goals and removing choice paralysis from your life.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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