A closer look
If your only two emotional settings are "good" and "bad," your mental health is driving without a steering wheel. People suffering from alexithymia lack emotional granularity, meaning they cannot identify or describe specific feelings. Instead of recognizing nuanced emotions like "wistful" or "indignant," their brain translates psychological distress into raw physical sensations. A racing heart from anxiety might be misinterpreted as a literal heart attack, or anger might just feel like a weird stomach ache. Without the vocabulary to label the feeling, the brain is left blind, desperately trying to fix a software bug with a physical wrench.
