Self-Awareness in alexithymia and associations with social anxiety

Abstract

Alexithymia’s relation to low awareness of emotion is well-documented: Low self-awareness and the externally oriented thinking style of alexithymia may reflect avoidance of unwanted experiences, a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. The role that this plays in the association between alexithymia and emotional disorders, including social anxiety, needs to be further explicated. This investigation, examined a) the association between alexithymia and two indices of low awareness of internal experiences, namely low private self-consciousness and experiential avoidance, and between alexithymia and avoidant emotion regulation, specifically suppression b) the hypothesis that low self-awareness (experiential avoidance, low private self-consciousness and suppression) mediates the association between alexithymia and social anxiety, in two student samples. Results indicated, as predicted, that alexithymia is associated with low private self-consciousness, high experiential avoidance and greater use of suppression. The association between alexithymia and social anxiety was mediated through experiential avoidance and partially through low private self-consciousness and suppression. Results suggest that low self-awareness in alexithymia may be related to increased avoidance of internal experiences, which may play a protective role in the short term, but in the long run may contribute to the link between alexithymia and mental health problems.