Created by Sarah
Alexithymia: A sense of emotional blindness.
Alexithymia is a state where an individual finds it challenging to identify and articulate their own emotions. It is a peculiar feeling, like having a complex emotional landscape but lacking the words to describe it. Imagine experiencing a whirlwind of feelings ranging from deep anguish to head-pounding rage. This inability to express emotions can lead to a sense of isolation and frustration, as it becomes difficult to communicate with others and even with oneself. The emotions are there, vivid and real, but they remain trapped within, unspoken. Alexithymia underscores the profound connection between language and emotion, highlighting how essential it is to give voice to our inner experiences.
Sophomore Donna connected alexithymia to her tendency to overthink social interactions and carefully consider the emotions of others before speaking.
“I'm a person who likes to anticipate, predict, and expect certain outcomes,” Donna said. “But when it comes to human emotions, it's an unfactored variable that I have to factor in.”
Ms. Higgins was also deeply connected to the emotion, relating it to the environment she grew up in and the way emotions were often hidden away rather than openly discussed. She described a common saying amongst some Irish families known as lace curtains, which referred to emotions that were meant to be tucked away despite appearing pleasant on the surface.
“It’s something that I've always struggled with, and even into adulthood, I need to tell myself that it’s okay to process emotion,” Ms. Higgins said. “Back when I was in high school, even a simple concept like anxiety didn’t come up as much, and we weren’t shown how to address it.”
Growing up, Ms. Higgins was accustomed to the idea that conversations surrounding emotions and mental health were uncommon. She explained that learning to openly process emotions was something that she only learned later on in her life, through teaching and exposure to Wooster’s S.E.L. programs.
Jouska: A hypothetical question you endlessly play out in your mind.
While the name throws off any sense of familiarity, jouska is the typical state of mind for any overthinker. It's not constrained to happening after any sequence of events, nor a certain uprising of feelings; rather, it is subject to any individual. Whether it is imagining how a future interaction may unfold, or dwelling on alternate outcomes to citations, it maintains an endless cycle of hypothetical thinking that many experience daily. Often, imagined scenarios can become difficult to separate from reality, causing bipolar emotions from reassurance to self-doubt, depending on the scenario.
Donna connects jouska with being strongly connected to worrying about different possible outcomes and constantly analyzing situations before they happen.
“It's more or less the outcome of scenarios that you're worried about. If you're academically challenged, you're looking for different responses,” Donna said. “Socially extroverted, you're looking out for your own wording in terms of the way it may affect others.”
Mr. Fischer also related to the feeling, explaining that it often happens when replaying lessons or conversations repeatedly in his mind after they happen. For him, overthinking would either become reassuring or stressful, depending on the situation.
“Sometimes I will replay a way that I had taught something, or how I communicate, and phrases I had said over and over again in my own head…I can see the way that it works in both positive and negative lights,” Fischer said.
He explained that sometimes reflecting can be positive, helping him feel reassured about something that went well, while other times he would doubt his approach and consider an alternate angle he could have taken in his lessons.
Sarah '28
Journalism Student
