Alexithymia and Improv - Part One

If you improvise with, or teach, more than 10 people then you're probably doing improv with someone who experiences alexithymia, which involves interpreting and processing emotions.

Note: Full written articles are available to paid subscribers. This topic will be released for everyone as a podcast episode/transcript next week - yay!

Alexithymia involves how a person identifies and experiences emotions, so it has a lot to do with an improv practice.

Part one of this two part series explores what alexithymia is, how it affects improv, and suggests some ways to practice improv if you experience it.

Part two covers some ideas of what students can do if they approach exercises with assigned emotions, and what teachers can do to make their classes and exercises more inclusive for those with alexithymia.

Listen to this post:

What is Alexithymia

Alexithymia is when a person has issues with emotions. This can include challenges with feeling emotions, attaching words to emotions, identifying them in the moment or afterwards, and describing or expressing them. Alexithymic individuals can experience one or many of these challenges.

The etymology of the word is "without words for emotions."

A human with alexithymia might:

• Feel a physical sensation in the moment, but not be able to describe it using terminology. For example, they might feel scared but not label the feeling in that moment.

• Not be able to communicate or describe the physical feeling in the moment.

• Think in a concrete manner about emotions.

• Struggle to understand other people’s (or characters) emotions in the moment.

• General discomfort with emotions.

If you sometimes or often think "I don't know" when someone asks how you're feeling, or this kind of question puts you in your head - like you need to fully analyze a scenario before you understand how you felt about it or are uncomfortable - this might be alexithymia.

For example, you may need to take time to think about the experience, and then you are able to describe the emotion or label it with words.