Lost for Words

At a Stress Debriefing course in Brisbane, Paul Lothrop of the Brisbane Counselling Service, asked about Stress Debriefing as a means of dealing with `alexithymia', the inability to put words to feelings. The work of Dana Willcox in the USA introduces more discussion on this interesting topic.

According to Campbell's Psychiatric Dictionary (1989), Alexithymia is defined as... "Difficulty in describing or recognising one's emotions". It's not uncommon to find people affected by highly stressful events define emotions only in terms of physical sensations or behavioral reactions, rather than relating them to accompanying thoughts or feelings.

Most writers explain alexithymia as being due to primitive defences that hide or distort the conscious experiences of our emotions. A number of therapists have made the teaching of words to label emotional experiences a major standard part of their treatment approaches to traumatic reactions.

There are indications that correcting the "alexithymic deficit" leads to much greater emotional awareness, greatly improved mental processing of emotional experiences, steadily improved life choices, better inter-personal functioning, a greater sense of control over one's life, and generally being happier.

When we consider the needs of a traumatised person, further reasons appear for focusing on the problems of alexithymia. For example, the need to deal with previously overwhelming emotions in a conscious manner, the need to transform experiential memory into narrative memory in order to comprehend and process it, and the need to become able to communicate to others what may have previously been an isolated, private hell.

For some people, including Emergency Workers, teaching emotional labelling can be a laborious and repetitive task, as the need to deny or avoid emotions may be reinforced by a powerful culture of having to cope at all costs. Perhaps one of the most useful legacies of an appropriate, properly conducted stress debriefing is the opportunity it provides for some participants to address their `alexithymic deficit' in a supportive, caring, non-judgemental environment.