Suppression means a person feels the emotion and actively holds it back. Alexithymia means a person cannot identify what they are feeling in the first place. Both present as difficulty expressing emotions, but they are fundamentally different problems requiring different therapeutic attention. A man who suppresses knows he is angry or sad but will not say so. A man with alexithymia may experience physical tension, irritability, or fatigue without connecting those experiences to an underlying emotional state.
For men near Delray Beach seeking therapy for this issue, Dr. David Steinbok assesses where each patient falls on this spectrum early in the therapeutic process. That assessment shapes the direction of the work. A patient who suppresses needs a safe relationship in which expressing becomes less threatening. A patient closer to the alexithymia end needs help building the internal pathways between physical sensation and emotional recognition. Both forms of male difficulty expressing emotions respond to sustained psychodynamic therapy.
