Test · Mental health

Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire

A quiet look at how you notice your feelings and put them into words. Five minutes, no judgment.

≈5 min Questions: 24

A jay stepping onto the mossy rim of a stone garden basin with an acorn in its claw, its reflection in the water below.

You know the moment when something is clearly happening inside you, and the words for it do not come? This test does not judge whether you are a good person. It shows how recognizing and naming feelings works for you right now. Pick the option closest to how things go for you today, since there is no right answer, and at the end you get a short reading of your pattern. It takes about five minutes. What would it change to know where the words come easily and where they go missing?

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Your team lead answers a long, careful message of yours with one word. How clear is it which feeling this stirs in you?
During a group video call, a client cuts you off mid-sentence. When do you realize what you are feeling?
Your flight home gets canceled, and by evening your mood has dropped. How easily do you connect the two?
A neighbor has parked across your driveway again. How quickly do you know which feeling this is?
You burn the dinner, and then the smoke alarm shrieks. How separate do the two reactions feel?
You finish a long project you have carried for months. How sure are you which good feeling this is?
You spend a Saturday afternoon repotting plants while a good mood slowly builds. When does it register with you?
A colleague leaves a small gift on your desk, unexpectedly. How clear is it how strong the pleasure is?
A train you were sure you had missed pulls in late. How quickly does the good feeling take shape as a specific one?
While you wipe down the kitchen counter, a lightness comes over you for no reason you can point to. How readily do you take it for a feeling?
A friend asks why you went quiet at lunch, and you want to tell them. How specific are the words you find?
A colleague stops by your desk and asks straight out how you feel about the reorganization. What do you answer with?
You tell a roommate you are frustrated about a dispute over the deposit. How well does that word match what is happening inside you?
You tell a friend you feel overwhelmed, and they ask you to say more. What happens next?
You write an email to your manager explaining why a rough month has left you drained. How readily do specific words come?
At the coffee machine on Monday, a coworker asks how your weekend was, and it was a good one. How far does your answer go?
You reach the top of a long hike, and a friend asks how you feel. How quickly does the exact word arrive?
The phone rings with news you have been hoping for. What happens with words?
You are writing a short review of a meal you loved. How readily does a full explanation come, rather than one word?
A neighbor tells you that after years on a waiting list they have gotten a plot in the community garden, and you are glad for them. How readily does the exact word for your feeling come?
At the end of a workday, someone close to you asks how you are really doing. What does your answer cover?
You are cooking dinner when a feeling starts to build. How strong does it have to get before you notice it?
You are packing for a trip when a wave of unease comes up. What do you do with it?
You are standing in a pharmacy line with nothing pressing. Where does your attention go?

Maryna Lyadneva psychologist

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How this test works

Where the questions come from, what the scale rests on, and why the result is not a diagnosis.

The test measures self-reported difficulty recognizing and describing one's own feelings, pleasant and unpleasant, and the habit of directing attention to outside matters instead of inner states.

Author Maryna Lyadneva

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Methodology

The questions follow the structure researchers use for the trait. Two areas concern recognizing feelings and two concern describing them, each split by whether the feeling is unpleasant or pleasant. A fifth, wider area asks whether attention goes to inner states or to outside, practical matters. All answers add up on one scale, and a higher total means more signs.

Researchers treat alexithymia as a matter of degree: every person sits somewhere along it, and no line splits people into two kinds. Neither DSM-5 nor ICD-11 lists it as a mental disorder.

Everything rests on self-report. The answers show how you see your own emotional life today, which is not the same as being observed by someone else, and a trait like this can make that self-view harder to judge.

A plain definition of the term is available in a short psychology dictionary entry.

Nothing on this page is a clinical instrument. The result describes how you see your emotional awareness right now; it is not a finding about health, and it does not label alexithymia or anything else as present or absent. It is no stand-in for a professional evaluation. The page title names the subject only: the questions are original to this page and are not taken from the published questionnaire with that title, nor scored against its cutoffs. If a result weighs on you, a conversation with a specialist is the right next place to take it.

Questions

How much can I rely on a self-report test?

It captures how your emotional life looks from where you sit today. That has value, though nobody else has checked it, and the usual weak spots of questionnaires apply: mood on the day, how a question is read, how well anyone knows themselves.

Can this test tell me whether I have alexithymia?

No. Researchers study alexithymia as a trait, and neither DSM-5 nor ICD-11 lists it as a disorder, so a test has nothing to confirm. What you receive is a self-reported level of signs, which is different from a clinical conclusion.

Can a pattern like this change over time?

Patterns like this are generally thought of as movable, and nothing here says otherwise. How or why they shift is beyond this test, and it offers no method or promise of improvement. Returning to the questions another day can show where things stand then.

Can someone have these signs and not notice them?

It can happen. Part of the trait is that your own emotional workings are hard to read, and that same difficulty can hide it from you. Neither answer is certain, so treat the result as something to be curious about.

Sources
  1. Preece, D., Becerra, R., Robinson, K., Dandy, J., & Allan, A. (2018). The psychometric assessment of alexithymia: Development and validation of the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 132, 32–44. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2018.05.011
  2. Preece, D., Becerra, R., Allan, A., Robinson, K., & Dandy, J. (2017). Establishing the theoretical components of alexithymia via factor analysis: Introduction and validation of the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia. Personality and Individual Differences, 119, 341–352. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.003
  3. Bagby, R. M., Parker, J. D. A., & Taylor, G. J. (1994). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale—I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38(1), 23–32. doi:10.1016/0022-3999(94)90005-1