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Olivia Newton-John May Have Been Right About Body Talk
A sexy song from a superstar singer may have carried a message beneath the overt call to “let your body” talk in her video, but now we’re listening.
The body does “talk” to us, but we need to be trained to listen to it and to accurately interpret what it is “telling” us, which might be the source of our mental anguish. It’s not a new approach because the original work in alexithymia was by Sifneos in 1973. And he wasn’t even the first to theorize that there must be a mind-body connection that had not yet been adequately explored and utilized in some form of therapy.
The term alexithymia describes a problem with understanding and expressing one’s own feelings. Individuals with alexithymia frequently experience difficulty correctly identifying and expressing their emotions, which can have an effect on their general emotional health and interpersonal interactions. The symptoms of alexithymia include anger, confusion, difficulty “reading faces”, discomfort, emptiness, increased heart rate, lack of affection, and panic.
Since somatic therapy offers a different method of accessing and dealing with emotions, it might be especially helpful for those with alexithymia. But who is diagnosing alexithymia these days? It seems to have fallen out of favor.
