Inability to Express Affect and Emotions

One article which you may find interesting and useful is: Farrell, J. M. & Shaw, I. A. (1994). Emotional awareness training: A prerequisite to effective cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 1, 71-91. Borderline clients aren't the only ones who have difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions and I think the approach discussed in this article is broadly applicable. To find other articles on this topic, try doing a literature search with "alexithymia" as the keyword. Alexithymia is a fancy label for the inability to put feelings into words.

To some extent, the process of being in therapy and trying to communicate your feelings to your therapist tends to result in the client gradually getting better at recognizing and expressing feelings (simply by getting lots of practice). When working to help clients express their feelings I find that it often is useful to make sure that clients understand the benefits of choosing to express feelings and that it is even more useful to identify and address their fears about expressing feelings. Some common fears include: "I'll lose control," "I'll look foolish," "I'll look weak," "Nobody will take me seriously," "I'll be vulnerable," "If I express my feelings it will drive people away," etc.

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