96 COPING RESOURCES
there is a discrepancy between their self-reports of anxiety (that are low) and their scores
on physiological indicators of anxiety (that tend to be high). This has been
demonstrated in experimental studies where people have been asked to perform
anxiety-provoking tasks such as public speaking (e.g. Newton and Contrada, 1992).
Measuring repression is problematic because repressive copers will, by definition,
be unaware of their feelings of anxiety. In most cases they will not even know that
they have tendencies to repress feelings. An early self-report measure of repression (the
repression–sensitization scale; Byrne, 1961) was found to correlate so highly with
measures of trait anxiety that repression was effectively equivalent to low anxiety
(Eysenck and Matthews, 1987). However, for a measure of repression to be useful,
The alexithymic personalityA personality trait often considered alongside repressive coping is alexithymia. The
term alexithymia, when literally translated, means ‘lacking words for feelings’ and
relates explicitly to an individual’s capacity to process and express emotion.
Alexithymia can be assessed using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale that measures
the extent to which respondents have difficulty in identifying, labelling and
understanding emotions, thereby identifying individuals who show impaired
capacity for emotional expression (Bagby, Taylor and Parker, 1994). However,
unlike people with a repressive coping style who are unconsciously motivated not
to recognize negative emotions such as anger, fear and stress, individuals with an
alexithymic personality experience negative emotional states but are unable to
identify, label and understand the emotion. Interestingly, the term alexithymia was
introduced in the 1970s by psychodynamically oriented clinicians who noticed that
many clients who presented with stress-related or psychosomatic illnesses
exhibited little insight into the causes of their stressful experiences or negative
moods (see Lumley, Tojek and MacKlem, 1999). Typically when an individual with
an alexithymic personality is asked about a significant relationship or an emotionally
charged situation, they will be unable to answer (e.g. ‘I don’t know’), or they will
provide simple and non-specific responses (e.g. ‘I felt bad’).
It has been suggested that this emotional deficit may negatively impact on an
individual’s ability to cope with stressful and traumatic events. Evidence indicates
that the alexithymic personality is associated with mortality and morbidity from all
causes. In particular, research has shown a link between alexithymia and increased
risk of developing cardiovascular disease (e.g. Waldstein et al., 2002; Tolmunen
et al., 2010). The alexithymic personality has been found to be associated with
cancer pain (Porcelli et al., 2007). These findings suggest that alexithymic individuals
may be more likely to use maladaptive coping and engage in more health risk
behaviours.FOCUS 5.1