Do video games cause alexithymia?

Regular gamers tend to feel their emotions with less intensity than other adolescents. Regular gamers express their emotions less than other adolescents. Regular gamers have difficulty identifying and describing emotions, which translates into a higher level of alexithymia than other adolescents.

How does alexithymia develop?

Several subsequent studies suggested that alexithymia might develop in response to overwhelming stress to avoid experiencing agonizing and unbearable emotions[97,98]. During the previous two decades, this “state or trait” issue has been assessed in several studies discussed in the next section.

Can video games affect your mental health?

Gaming Causes Poor Emotional Regulation

One of the biggest negative effects of video games can lead you to struggle with regulating your emotions properly. Studies show that people diagnosed with Internet gaming disorder are more likely to be aggressive, depressed, and anxious.

What is alexithymia linked to?

Alexithymia is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions. It is not a mental health disorder but has links with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating disorders, and various other conditions. It can occur with autism.

Do people with alexithymia cry?

Some alexithymic individuals may appear to contradict the above-mentioned characteristics because they can experience chronic dysphoria or manifest outbursts of crying or rage.

What Causes Alexithymia?

Is alexithymia low empathy?

A core aspect of social cognition, empathy, has been reported to be reduced in alexithymic individuals (Moriguchi et al., 2007; Grynberg et al., 2010).

Can people with alexithymia smile?

He has found, for example, that people with the condition have no trouble recognizing faces or distinguishing between pictures of people smiling and frowning. “But for a few of our really alexithymic people, while they can tell a smile and a frown apart, they have no idea what they are.

Is alexithymia a trauma response?

Alexithymia may be related to the repeated experience of trauma and the nervous system's susceptibility to stress [13, 14].

What is the root of alexithymia?

In fact, subsequent research both from the field of developmental psychology and from neuropsychology has found that the root of alexithymia could lie in either a problem of cerebral organization, or in a marked lack of suitable emotional models during the passage from childhood to adulthood, or else a combination of ...

Do people with alexithymia get angry?

Given their inability to express their true emotions, alexithymic patients exhibit high levels of anger [14] and more aggressive behaviors [25, 26].

Do video games drain your mental energy?

Mental or physical exhaustion

If you're affected by gaming fatigue or burnout, you will most likely experience symptoms of exhaustion which include feeling tired, lethargic, irritable, and emotionally drained. You may also experience physical ailments such as headache or feeling physically weak.

Is it OK to play video games all day?

Studies show that excessive gaming can lead to poor emotional regulation. Poor emotional regulation contributes to mood problems such as anxiety, depression, and aggression.

Do people with alexithymia know they have it?

People with alexithymia feel the usual range of emotions, but they are less aware of their own emotions and the emotions of others. If your partner has alexithymia, there's a good chance they're unaware of their condition.

Who is alexithymia most common in?

Alexithymia is a term to describe problems with feeling emotions. In Greek, it loosely translates to “no words for emotion.” It is estimated that 1 in 10 people has alexithymia, but it is much more common in those with depression and in autistic people.

Is alexithymia a psychopathy?

Our findings reveal that in HDIs, alexithymia is uniquely related to the impulsive/antisocial features of psychopathy (PCL:SV Factor 2) but not to the interpersonal/affective psychopathic traits (PCL:SV Factor 1).

Will alexithymia go away?

Alexithymia is a complex and challenging condition that can have a significant impact on a person's emotional and social functioning. While there is no cure for alexithymia, therapy and other strategies can be helpful in improving emotional awareness and expression.

What does someone with alexithymia look like?

People with alexithymia are often articulate, likeable, and high functioning in many other ways – they just cannot talk about their own emotions. People with alexithymia may experience sensations in their body, such as tension or pain, but not be able to associate that with a feeling, such as anxiety or anger.

Does alexithymia get worse with age?

For instance, one large-scale study found that the prevalence of alexithymia increased with age, with the highest TAS scores obtained by participants aged 85 years and older (Mattila et al., 2006).

Is alexithymia permanent?

State alexithymia has a specific cause is is often a temporary condition.

How do people with alexithymia cope?

Don't punish, shame or mock their emotional unresponsiveness. Instead, practice patience. Consider explaining your needs in briefer terms, “I'm feeling tired, I don't want to cook. Let's get take-out for dinner.” Or helping them label emotions, “You look angry.

Do people with alexithymia dream?

Participants with alexithymia described their dreams as less fantasy-like and less vivid than Page 9 DREAM EXPERIENCES IN ALEXITHYMIA 229 the control group. This information can be crucial, especially considering the fact that high alexithymia may be connected to impaired imagination (Sifneos, 1973).

How serious is alexithymia?

Alexithymia is a threat to emotional, social, and physical health and well-being. Alexithymia is not considered a mental health disorder and is mentioned only once in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Is alexithymia a form of autism?

It is important to note that alexithymia is not autism, but simply a distorted emotional processing that is co-occurring among individuals with ASD. Alexithymia is a psychological construct that is defined by difficulties in emotion procession, and should therefore not be considered as a diagnosis of a condition.