Alexithymia is not an absence of feeling. It is a difficulty in identifying and naming feelings as they arise — the emotions are present, moving through the body, shaping behaviour, but the bridge between that raw experience and conscious, nameable awareness is narrow and unreliable. The feelings stay below the threshold, influencing things from underneath without becoming available as clear information.

Speaking from the heart in real time asks for something that architecture doesn't easily support: simultaneous access to an internal state that is already hard to reach, plus language, plus social navigation, all running in parallel with no buffer and no chance to revise. Writing works better because it allows circling — approaching, sensing it's not right, trying again. But in a group, with attention directed inward at you, the monitoring of how you're landing competes directly with the already effortful work of sensing inward. What comes out can feel flat even when the feeling underneath is real. That is not a failure of authenticity. It is a mismatch between the conditions and the capacity.