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• Posted April 30, 2026

Understanding Emotions Could Be Key To Quelling Chronic Pain

People who struggle to understand their own emotions are more likely to have chronic pain disrupt their daily life, a new study says.

People with alexithymia — difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions — tend to have greater psychological distress related to chronic pain, researchers reported recently in the journal Health Psychology.

In turn, the anxiety and depression resulting from this distress increases the likelihood that chronic pain will disrupt their daily lives, researchers said.

“Prior studies have shown that alexithymia tends to be higher in people who have chronic pain,” said senior researcher Rachel Aaron, an associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“However, we did not know whether alexithymia leads to worse pain, or whether worse pain leads to alexithymia,” Aaron said in a news release. “We also have not had a good understanding of why these two distinct processes were related.”

For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 1,500 people with chronic pain located across the United States. The team monitored their pain, and used a questionnaire to determine each person’s level of alexithymia.

Results showed that patients with higher levels of alexithymia at the start of the study had developed more psychological distress a year later.

Continuing to follow the patients for another year, researchers found the increased distress linked to alexithymia led to a person having more day-to-day problems with chronic pain. Their pain was more likely to wreak havoc on their daily functioning and quality of life.

The relationship only ran in that direction, however — day-to-day problems with pain did not predict an increase in a person’s level of alexithymia, researchers found. This supports the view that problems processing emotions are a risk factor for worse pain, not a consequence.

“Greater difficulties identifying one’s own feelings can lead to greater symptoms of psychological distress, including symptoms of depression and anxiety,” Aaron said. “This in turn can lead to greater difficulties managing chronic pain.”

Helping people get in better touch with their emotions might help relieve anxiety and depression among chronic pain patients, potentially easing their suffering, researchers concluded.

“These findings highlight the role of considering alexithymia in psychological treatment for chronic pain, and how it might lead to psychological distress, to improve pain outcomes,” Aaron said.

More information

The American Counseling Association has more on alexithymia.

SOURCES: Johns Hopkins Medicine, news release, April 28, 2026; Health Psychology, 2026