Alexithymia in Sport

Firstly, what is alexithymia? 

This concept was originally bought to light by Sifneos (1973) who labelled three fundamental characteristics of the personality construct. These included an individual having; poor ability to recognise their own emotions and ability to express them with other people, a limited capacity to elaborate fantasies and a natural tendency to externally oriented thinking. 

This personality construct is best measured by using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale - 20 (TAS-20) (Bagby, Parker & Taylor, 1994), although there is some debate as to whether alexithymics should use a self-report measure due to their difficulties describing and identifying their feelings. 

It is highlighted that individuals high in alexithymia are more likely to be associated with self-harming behaviours which is also linked with anxiety and depression. A study in Finland showed a strong correlation in the general population between the degree of depression and alexithymia (Honkalampi et al, 2000).

Gratz (2000), stated a release or expression of emotions by deliberately harming oneself without trying to commit suicide can be found with people suffering from anxiety.

From day to day an individual high in alexithymia finds it difficult to manage their emotions, and research is still unsure about the origins and intensity of their emotions which in turn ends in poor emotion regulation (Cisler, Olatunji, Feldner & Forsyth, 2010). 

With this inability to identify emotions, self-harming behaviour may be a way of expressing an intense emotion which they can identify with. The self-injurious activity for an alexithymic individual could be tempting as the pain experienced offers specific attention to emotion regulation (Gyrak, Gross & Etkin, 2011).

Furthermore, research suggests the population that self-harm tend to be individuals high in alexithymia as they have few ways to regulate emotions (Zlotnick, Shea, Pearlstein, Simpson, Costello & Begin, 1996).

Research suggests that one way to regulate emotions could be for an alexithymic individual to look for stressful, dangerous or chaotic situations such as sports with a high-risk element to restore greater control over their emotions and a perceived sense of agency (Lupton & Tulloch, 2003). Fenichel (1939) proclaims that anxiety in basic terms could be made more identifiable through a known feeling, such as fear. 

Woodman, Cazenave & Scanff (2008) investigated the effects of alexithymia, focusing primarily on the rise and fall of anxiety in women that skydived. Their findings uncovered the state anxiety of alexithymic individuals had weakened significantly pre-to post jump, however, seventy to ninety minutes after they had landed their anxiety levels had significantly increased (whereas nonalexithymic women skydivers showed no fluctuations with anxiety), showing that these reductions in anxiety were short-term suggesting this is only a temporary mean of regulating emotion. 

This study offers support for the paradigm that high alexithymic individuals search for stressful, dangerous or chaotic environments as a way of regulating their anxiety to try to increase the level of perceived agency over their emotions (Barlow, Woodman & Hardy, 2013).

 As the emotion regulation is only temporary as it hasn’t been ‘addressed at its core’ they are likely to feel the need to search for further emotionally demanding high-risk opportunities to regulate their emotions, as they have difficulty describing them. 

This difficulty with describing and expressing emotions could lead them to search for ways to regulate such as expressing their feelings through pain, much like the self-harm but in a positive way, such as intense exercise, marathon running and potentially sports with contact whereby some pain is inevitable. 

References:

Bagby, M., Taylor, G. J., & Ryan, D. (1986). Toronto Alexithymia Scale: Relationship with personality and psychopathology measures. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 45(4), 207-215.

Barlow, M., Hardy, L., & Woodman, T. (2007, September). "Because it's there?" a re-examination of the motives for participation in serious mountaineering. 12th European Congress of Sport Psychology, Halkidiki, Greece.

Cisler, J. M., Olatunji, B. O., Feldner, M. T., & Forsyth, J. P. (2010). Emotion regulation and the anxiety disorders: An integrative review. Journal of psychopathology and behavioural assessment, 32(1), 68-82.

Fenichel, O. (1939). The counter-phobic attitude. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 20, 263.

Gratz, K. L. (2000). The measurement, functions, and etiology of deliberate self-harm. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Gyurak, A., Gross, J. J., & Etkin, A. (2011). Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: a dual-process framework. Cognition and Emotion, 25(3), 400-412.

Honkalampi, K., Hintikka, J., Tanskanen, A., Lehtonen, J., & Viinamäki, H. (2000). Depression is strongly associated with alexithymia in the general population. Journal of psychosomatic research, 48(1), 99-104.

Sifneos, P. E. (1973). The prevalence of ‘alexithymic’ characteristics in psychosomatic patients. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 22(2-6), 255-262.

Tulloch, J., & Lupton, D. (2003). Risk and everyday life. Sage.

Woodman, T., Cazenave, N., & Scanff, C. L. (2008). Skydiving as emotion regulation: The rise and fall of anxiety is moderated by alexithymia. Journal of sport and exercise psychology, 30(3), 424-433.

Zlotnick, C., Shea, M. T., Pearlstein, T., Simpson, E., Costello, E., & Begin, A. (1996). The relationship between dissociative symptoms, alexithymia, impulsivity, sexual abuse, and self-mutilation. Comprehensive psychiatry, 37(1), 12-16.