alexithymia means A deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 86 out of 100.
Why this word is great
ALEXITHYMIA — [Noun] A psychological condition characterized by a profound difficulty in identifying, describing, and articulating one's own emotional states. Coined from Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-, "not") + λέξις (léxis, "speech, word") + θυμός (thumós, "soul, emotion, heart"), literally meaning "without words for emotions." Unlike "apathy" (which denotes a hollowed-out indifference) or "anhedonia" (which is the specific extinguishing of pleasure), alexithymia is a structural failure of the internal translator. It is the somatic clench of anxiety mistaken for hunger, the heat behind the eyes without the label "sorrow," and the bewildered silence that follows the simple question, "How do you feel?"—a profound solitude where the heart sends its signals in a code the conscious mind has lost the cipher to.
noun
- A deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions.“Finally, schizophrenic disorders involve impairments of perceptions, including hallucinations and delusions, symptoms that often impair patients’ social and occupational functioning and can create alexithymia (Maggini and Raballo 2004; van ‛t Wout et al. 2007), an inability to recognize one’s own feelings.”