How Do Fibromyalgia Patients With Alexithymia Experience Their Body? A Qualitative Approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Patients suffering from chronic pain such as fibromyalgia (FM) not only experience change in their physical bodies but also in their embodiment. There are two forms of disturbed body awareness (BA), namely, “disembodiment” and “hyper-embodiment.” This study describes how patients with FM experience their body and whether there is a difference in BA with or without alexithymia. Based on two self-report questionnaires (Toronto Alexithymia Scale [TAS]-20 and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS]), a purposeful sample of FM patients with and without alexithymia was included. Two focus groups were conducted with nine alexithymic and six nonalexithymic FM patients and were analyzed by a Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Body experience appeared in two themes: “the lived body as hyper present” and “alienation from the lived body.” A third theme emerged as “the lived body in interaction with others” and indicates the importance of the interpersonal aspect of BA. We found no differences regarding BA between the alexithymic and nonalexithymic patients. These results suggest that BA in FM patients cannot exclusively be classified under the constructs of hyper- or disembodiment. The authors suggest to consider embodiment in FM, subjected to intra- as well as interindividual influences, as a dimensional construct whereby the equilibrium tends to hyper-embodiment. Still, a temporary shift of this equilibrium from hyper- to disembodiment due to certain emotional state or stress is possible. As alexithymia had no influence on the description of BA, it seems that FM patients primarily fail to express their BA without in fact being disembodied.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".