Alexithymia and Autism: When There are No Words for Feelings

Are autistic people really "emotionless"? This groundbreaking episode reveals how decades of autism research accidentally created one of the most harmful stereotypes about neurodivergent minds.

Discover alexithymia—the difficulty identifying and describing emotions that affects 50% of autistic people, but is completely separate from autism itself. Host Anita, a late-diagnosed autistic academic, unravels the research mix-up that confused two different conditions and painted all autistic people as lacking empathy.

What You'll Learn:

• Why "emotionless autistic" stereotypes are scientifically wrong
• How alexithymia creates a "translation gap" between feelings and words
• The difference between not having emotions vs. struggling to express them
• Why separating alexithymia from autism changes everything about empathy research
• Practical tools for building emotional vocabulary and recognition
• How families, workplaces, and communities can support different emotional expressions

Meet the Voices: Elena, the barista navigating workplace emotional expectations; Marcus, managing sensory overwhelm; Alice, showing care through actions, not words; and Anita's journey from academic burnout to understanding.

Research-Based: Grounded in peer-reviewed studies from leading psychology journals, including landmark research by Bird & Cook, Shah et al., and comprehensive meta-analyses on alexithymia prevalence.

Perfect for autistic adults, families, mental health professionals, educators, and anyone curious about neurodivergent emotional experiences. No jargon, no inspiration porn—just honest, evidence-based exploration of how different minds navigate feelings.

Transcript

Neurorebelpodcast: 0:05

What if I told you that half the things we believe about autistic emotions are based on a measurement error? And that decades of research accidentally studied two different things at once, but then painted an entire community with findings that only applied to some of us. Here's the plot twist no one talks about. There is a word that changes everything about how we understand autism and emotions, and it's called Alexithymia. And if you've never heard it before, you're not alone. I hadn't either until recently. Alexithymia literally means:"no words for feelings." It doesn't mean,"no feelings," but rather that there are simply no words for describing them. Now, imagine trying to describe a symphony to someone using only one word: music. The orchestra is playing beautifully. Every instrument contributing something essential, but all you can say is, Hey, there's music happening. That's Alexithymia, and here is why this matters. About half of autistic people experience it, but half of us don't. However, for decades, research treated us all as if we did, and the result, the myth of the emotionless autistic person was born. A stereotype that has harmed real people living real lives. So today we're going to untangle this knot together, not just what Alexithymia is, but how it got confused with autism and why that confusion matters and what we can do about it going forward. Welcome to Neuro Rebel, where we explore the beautiful complexity of different minds. Yours, mine, and everyone who colors outside the neurotypical lines. I'm Anita. Your host and fellow traveler on this journey. I'm autistic gifted and a retired law professor who has chosen to dedicate this part of my life to doing research about these topics that affect us all. Think of me as that friend who spent way too long in academia, got fascinated by a question, and now wants to share what I found with everyone who will listen. Today's question started in a simple way. Why do people think that autistic folks don't have emotions? I wanted to know the answer to that, but the answer as it turns out is beautifully complicated. And as always, check our show notes for support resources. And if this podcast adds value to your life, take a moment to subscribe, follow, leave us a review and share it with people who need to hear these conversations. Your support helps others find us in the algorithmic wilderness. Now, let's start with the basics. Alexithymia, And I know it sounds like something you'd need a prescription for, it is a word that comes from the Greek and it means the following:"A," Meaning without, Lexis meaning words, and"thymos" meaning emotions. So it literally means without words for emotions. Picture, your emotional life as a vast library. For some people, every feeling has its own clearly labeled section. There's the anger aisle, the joy collection, the complicated grief corner. For someone with Alexithymia, it's more like walking into a library where someone took down all the signs. The books are all still there. Every emotion, every subtle feeling, but finding the right one or explaining to someone else where it lives. That's what becomes a challenge. So how did we get here? How did Alexithymia, a trait that exists across Neurotypes get tangled up with autism research? Well, it starts in the 1970s when researchers were trying to understand something they called empathy deficits in autistic people. They developed tests, conducted studies, and published papers about it. The problem, many of their measures were actually picking up Alexithymia and not autism itself. Think of it like this. Imagine researchers trying to study whether people from Seattle are unfriendly, but instead of considering that some Seattle folks might just be introverted, they concluded that all people from Seattle lack social warmth. Not a very reliable finding. Meanwhile, half the Seattle population is thinking we're plenty warm. We just express it differently, and some of us need more time to find the words. New studies now show that when you separate alexithymia from autism, those supposed empathy gaps shrink dramatically. The research was accidentally measuring two things at once, but then stamping the results on everyone. But here's where it gets personal and painful. This mix up didn't stay in academic journals. It steeped into popular culture, family conversations, and workplace assumptions. How many autistic people have been told that they're cold, uncaring and emotionally unavailable. When in reality they were navigating alexithymia or simply expressing care in languages the world hadn't yet learned to read. The irony here is rich. Research meant to understand autistic people better ended up misunderstanding us more completely. But let's step out of the research for a moment and dive into real lives. Because alexithymia isn't just a concept, it's how people navigate their days, their relationships, and their understanding of themselves. I want to introduce you to four people whose stories illustrate different faces of alexithymia. You might recognize a friend, a family member, or even yourself in some of these portraits. First, let's meet Elena. Elena is a 34-year-old barista at a busy downtown coffee shop. She is brilliant at managing the morning rush, remembering complex orders, keeping the flow smooth when lines stretch out the door. But when her partner asks, after a difficult day, how are you feeling? She might as well be trying to translate emotions from a language she has never learned. Elena knows something is stirring tension in her shoulders: a heaviness behind her eyes, but anger, sadness, frustration? The words feel approximate at best. It's like trying to capture a sunset with a box of crayons when what you really need is oil paint. At work, colleagues sometimes find her responses too brief or too matter of fact. She might say,"it's been a challenging shift," when what she really means is:"I am overwhelmed and don't know how to explain it." Her skill at managing coffee orders don't translate to the messier realm of feelings. So Elena represents what researchers call the translation challenge. The emotions are there fully present, but the bridge between feeling and language needs constant rebuilding. Then there's Marcus, a 16-year-old high school student who experiences what we might call the sensory storm version of Alexithymia. Marcus feels everything intensely. The fluorescent lights are too bright. His shirt tag feels like sandpaper, and the cafeteria sounds. Like total chaos. His body is constantly sending signals. His heart is racing, his stomach is churning, and his muscles tense up. But when a teacher asks if he's okay, he just says, oh, I'm fine. Because he genuinely doesn't know how to sort through the sensory flood to identify these discreet emotions. Studies show that interoception, that's our ability to read our body's internal signals, often travels with alexithymia. So for Marcus, for example, it's like trying to have a conversation while standing next to a construction site. The feelings are there, but the noise makes translation nearly impossible. His mother worries he's shutting her out, and his friends think he's just moody. But Marcus isn't withholding anything. He's just overwhelmed by input he just doesn't know how to categorize. Now meet Alice. She's 42 and she shows us that autism and Alexithymia don't always travel together. She's autistic, but experiences what I call the clear channel. For Alice, emotions arrive with vivid precision. For her, joy feels like golden light spreading through her chest, and sadness is a specific weight behind her Breastbone, and anger burns bright, particularly just below her ribs. But here's the thing. She might express these feelings by reorganizing someone's bookshelf or making soup without being asked, or maybe sending a carefully curated playlist. Her emotional vocabulary is rich, and her expression style is simply different. When friends tell her,"you never tell me how you feel," alice wants to respond, but I do. I just speak in actions and not announcements. Research shows that not all autistic people experience alexithymia. For many of us, emotions flow clearly just through different channels than the world expects. Alice reminds us that autism doesn't equal alexithymia and emotional fluency doesn't necessarily require traditional verbal expression. And then there's my story, what I call the academic unraveling. Picture this. You're a tenured law professor, published researcher, and someone who's supposed to have answers. You have spent decades analyzing complex legal frameworks, teaching brilliant minds, and traveling internationally. On paper, everything looks solid, but inside your body is staging a quiet revolt: chest tightness that won't lift, or brain fog that makes simple tasks feel impossible. And a fatigue so profound that it feels like carrying invisible weights. Colleagues described to me as distant and aloof and over coffee, they would whisper. She's brilliant, but cold. What they don't see is the constant translation work I had to undertake. Like trying to convert the storm of sensory overwhelm, the emotional flood and the executive function chaos into something that looks like professional composure. Four years, I could not name what was happening to me. Burnout felt too simple. Depression, though present, didn't quite fit, and it wasn't until I learned about Alexithymia that I had the language for the gap between feeling everything intensely and being able to communicate that experience. Studies show that when autism and Alexithymia intersect with chronic masking and sensory overwhelm, the risk of anxiety, depression, and complete burnout skyrockets. The cost of being perpetually misunderstood, adds up, and eventually the bill comes due. And it is a high one indeed Now let's pull back and look at what the studies are actually telling us, because the research behind Alexithymia is both fascinating and frustrating. Here's what we know. Studies show Alexithymia occurs in about 10% of the general population, but jumps to around 50% among autistic people. Now that's a significant difference, but notice what it means. Half of autistic people do not experience Alexithymia. The most common assessment tool is something called the TAS 20, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. It asks questions like, I find it hard to describe my feelings, and I prefer to analyze problems rather than describe them. These might be useful, but here's the catch. These measures were developed primarily with Western, often white, typically male populations. They may not capture how Alexithymia shows up across different cultures, genders, or even lived experiences. Studies also suggest that alexithymia isn't necessarily permanent. Emotional vocabulary can be built, and interoceptive awareness can improve. Translation skills can strengthen. So it's not a fixed destiny. It's a current state that can evolve. but here's the critical part. Research shows that much of what we have attributed to autism, like the supposed empathy deficits or the emotional flatness, may actually be alexithymia. So when studies control for alexithymia, many of those differences between autistic and non-autistic people disappear or shrink significantly. And this isn't just academic hairs-splitting. This mixup has real consequences for real people living real lives. So, where does this leave us? It leaves us with better questions, clearer distinctions, and a more nuanced understanding of what this is all about. If you are recognizing yourself in these stories, here are some bridges that research suggests can help. First, building an emotional vocabulary. That doesn't mean forcing feelings into words. It might mean creating your own feeling categories. For example, maybe spiky tired for overstimulation, or heavy bright for excited anxiety. The words matter less than having some way to mark the territory. Interoceptive practices can help too. Simple body check-ins throughout the day. Not to fix anything, but just to notice. Notice temperature, tension, energy level. Sometimes awareness is the first step toward translation. And alternative expression channels deserve recognition. Maybe you express care through actions rather than words, like problem solving rather than processing or presence rather than verbal validation. These aren't lesser forms of emotional communication, they are different dialects of the same language. And here's something crucial. The work isn't just individual families. Friends, workplaces, and communities can learn to recognize and value different forms of emotional expression. We can ask better questions. Not just,"how do you feel?" but we can say, for example, what does your body need right now?" Or would it help to process this differently? The goal here isn't to make everyone emotionally expressive in the same way it is to create a space for the full spectrum of human emotional experience and communication. Here is what I keep thinking about. For decades we've been solving the wrong puzzle. We thought the question was, why don't autistic people show emotions? But the real questions are far more interesting. Like how do different minds experience and express the full range of human feeling? Or what happens when we measure everyone against one template and one template alone? And what do we miss when we mistake translation Challenges for absence. Elena, Marcus, Alice, and myself. We are all having rich emotional lives. They just look different from what the world was trained to recognize. Studies show that when you account for Alexithymia, when you look for emotional expression in its many forms, the stereotype of the emotionless autistic person simply crumbles. But here's the thing that gives me hope. Awareness is growing. Researchers are asking better questions. Families are learning new languages of care. Workplaces are beginning to recognize that emotional intelligence comes in many forms And maybe. Just maybe we are moving toward a world where saying, I don't have the words for this feeling is met with curiosity rather than dismissal. Where making someone's soup is recognized as emotional fluency, or where the goal isn't to make everyone express feelings in the same way, but to honor the beautiful variety of ways in which humans connect and care. Because that's what this is really all about. Connection and understanding. The recognition that behind every seemingly unexpressive face might be a rich emotional world that simply speaks a different language than the one you're used to hearing. So here's what I'd love for you to take from today's conversation. Alexithymia and autism are not the same thing. About half of autistic people experience alexithymia, but half of us don't. The stereotype of the emotionless autistic person was built on a research mixup, and it's time to retire it. If you recognize yourself in these stories, you're not broken or deficient, you're navigating a real phenomenon that deserves understanding and not judgment. And if you love someone who might be experiencing alexithymia, look for the ways they do express care, the playlist, the fixed appliance, the quiet presence during difficult times. This week, I challenge you to notice moments when someone might be expressing emotion differently than what you expect. Instead of assuming absence, Get curious about alternative languages of feeling You've been listening to Neuro Rebel. And I'm Anita, your host and fellow explorer of the beautiful complexity of different minds. If this episode gave you new language for your experience or changed how you think about emotional expression, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. You can find show notes, transcripts and resources at my website, neurorebelpodcast.com, and follow us on social media. If this work adds value to your life, consider supporting it. Buy me a cup of coffee, not'because you owe us anything, but because together we can keep mapping these territories for all the travelers coming behind us. And remember, you don't need to be fixed, cured, or made more like someone else. You need to be understood, valued, and supported for exactly who you are. Until next time. Thank you so much for listening. Keep questioning, keep exploring, and keep being beautifully unapologetically yourself.