Alexithymia
noun /əˌlɛksɪˈθɪmiə/ — Difficulty naming your own emotions — feeling without language.
Definition
A condition characterised by difficulty identifying and describing one's own emotions; an inability to find words for inner states. Feelings exist but language for them does not.
Beyond the definition
Alexithymia is not the absence of emotion — it's the absence of a map for emotion. The feelings are there, pressing and real, but they have no names. It's like having a library with all the books locked and no key.
Origin & history
Coined by psychiatrist Peter Sifneos in 1973. From Greek a (without) + lexis (word, speech) + thymos (emotion, soul). Literally: without words for emotion.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
His alexithymia meant he could feel the weight of something without ever finding its name.
She suspected her partner had alexithymia — not that he didn't feel, but that he couldn't say.
Alexithymia is why people sometimes say 'fine' when they mean something entirely different.
Synonyms
emotional wordlessness, feeling blindness, emotional illiteracy
Antonyms
emotional intelligence, emotional articulation, empatheia
Related words
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Fictional scene
Difficulty Finding Inner Language
One person stands vividly, while their partner, holding a neglected guitar, looks washed out and copies the first person's posture.
The partner’s lack of self-direction and faint reflection suggest an inability to identify their own inner states. Their feelings exist, but they have no language of their own, relying on cues from another to express themselves.
Image credit: Wordspun · AI-generated conceptual illustration