There’s a name
for it.

Because the signal that tells most people what they're feeling, why they're feeling it, and what to do with that either doesn't arrive — or arrives as static. There's a name for this: alexithymia, sometimes called emotional colourblindness. It is a trait, not a disorder, and roughly one in ten people have it. The pillar explainer walks through the structure.

Yes — alexithymia. It is a stable personality trait (not a mental illness) where the body still produces emotional sensations, but the labels and language for those sensations don't reliably arrive. People often describe it as feeling blank when asked how they feel, or only being able to say "I don't know." If that pattern is familiar, start here.

Depression turns the volume of feeling down. Alexithymia leaves the volume where it is — but cuts the readout. Many people live with both, and the texture of the two together is different from either on its own: a low, flat baseline overlaid on a missing translator. Dissociation, by contrast, is stepping back from experience; alexithymia is being fully present but unable to translate what's there.

The blank is rarely indifference, withholding, or stonewalling. For someone with alexithymia, the question "how do you feel?" runs an internal lookup that doesn't return a clean answer in real time — and trying to perform one feels like lying. What looks like emotional unavailability from outside is often a structural translation problem inside. The relationships guide covers the scripts that work.

A trait. Neither the DSM-5 nor the ICD-11 classifies it as a mental disorder. Most researchers describe it the way they describe introversion: a stable personality dimension that varies along a spectrum, present from childhood, with neurodevelopmental and partly genetic contributions. Secondary alexithymia (a response to trauma, illness, or sustained stress) can ease as the cause resolves; primary alexithymia is the lifelong shape of the inner world.

Yes. Roughly half to 85% of autistic adults score above the alexithymia cutoff, but the overlap is partial in both directions — many alexithymic people are not autistic, and many autistic people are not alexithymic. Recent research suggests interoceptive differences often attributed to autism may actually track alexithymia. The autism and ADHD overlap piece goes deeper.

Several. The TAS-20 (Toronto Alexithymia Scale) is the most-cited; the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire is newer and separates trait from state more cleanly; the OAQ-G2 is the freely available online option. None of them produce a verdict. They produce a position on a spectrum. Compare the four tests here.

Not in the medical sense — there is no cure for a trait that is not an illness. The experience can change. Body-first practices that build interoceptive awareness, structured journalling that links sensation to candidate emotion-labels, and slow vocabulary work all make the trait easier to live with. The aim is not to become someone else, but to live with more lights on.