Attachment, Trauma and Alexithymia

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Background

The main negative consequence of anxious attachment styles and early childhood trauma is general emotional dysregulation, also visible on the biological level. It results from the disturbance of dynamic psychoneuroimmunological balance of systems which take part in response to stress, due to the sensitization process. Trauma exposure and insecure attachment styles resulting from negative experiences with caregivers during childhood, are positively associated with alexithymia. Alexithymia refers to a reduced ability to identify and describe subjective feelings and to distinguish among different feelings a paucity of fantasy and a cognitive style that is externally oriented. Current evidence shows that the alexithymic deficit in processing feelings is likely to affect health in affective states, psychopathology directly related to emotional dysregulation through somatosensory amplification leading to low tolerance to painful stimuli, posttraumatic shutdown of emotions, altered autonomic, endocrine and immune activity leading to tissue damage, and somatosensory amplification and health care-seeking behavior.

In the limited available literature in which traumatic experiences, attachment dimensions, and alexithymia have been investigated together, alexithymia appeared to be positively associated with insecure attachment styles, parental failures of care or abuse, and current post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Alexithymia become a transdiagnostic construct associated with a wide variety of physical and psychiatric disorders. Alexithymia appears to modulate the onset the course and the recovery of psychological and medical syndromes, particularly when they occur jointly, even though its role in illness configuration is still unclear. Assessment of childhood attachment relationships and traumatic experiences is imperative in clinical work with alexithymic individuals, in order to better understand the origins and characteristics of their maladaptive strategies of emotion regulation and to provide treatment accordingly. It is important that theory and research continue to focus on the relationship among alexithymia, traumatic experiences and attachment, so that knowledge deriving from this scientific effort may continue to provide us with useful information with which to better address problems with affect regulation in insecurely attached patients, as well as to improve diagnostic accuracy and ability to treat traumatized patients.

We welcome the following themes in this collection:
• Alexithymia and language processing different experiences: non-verbal and verbal language.
• Attachment style alexithymia and parentification and parental burnout.
• Alexithymia and emotion knowledge: detecting, identifying and recognizing emotions in oneself and others.
• Type of trauma experience in childhood, attachment, alexithymia and sensitivity interoception in psychosomatic disease.
• Examining the relationship between alexithymia, attachment and interoceptive sensibility and interoceptive accuracy in autism spectrum disorder in context trauma, dissociation.
• Research on the role adverse childhood experiences and alexithymia as risk factors for major depression and other mental disorders.
• Intervention program which aims to develop individuals abilities focus on both intra- and interpersonal deficits in identify emotions in oneself, identifying other’s emotions through nonverbal communication and facial expressions.

Keywords: Alexithymia, Attachment style, Trauma, Interception, Emotional dysregulation, Dissociation

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