How Emotionally Self-Aware Are You? (5HT1A)

Serotonin levels strongly influence mood, social behavior, and even morality. This hormone regulates our emotions—but also the way we perceive and understand our emotions [R].

Comfort or Discomfort in Close Relationships

Up to 10% of the population find it very difficult to identify, understand, and describe their own emotional responses. These people have an inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings.

In simple terms, we would probably call this a lack of emotional self-awareness or emotional intelligence. In clinical psychological terms, these people have alexithymia, and they are more likely to have the ‘CC’ variant at rs6295 [R].

This is not to say that everyone with ‘CC’ has alexithymia—or even that they’re automatically bad with emotions. Many genes work together to create complex traits like emotional intelligence; this one just happens to have a larger impact than most.

Researchers have suggested that the ‘C’ allele may make people less comfortable with close emotional bonds; if true, this discomfort might also make people less likely to enter into a romantic relationship [R].

For more information on how the serotonin receptor affects close personal relationships, check out this sister post on 5HT1A and dating.

The ‘C’ allele may make people less comfortable forming and maintaining close emotional bonds.

Impulsiveness & Emotional Control

There are many more psychiatric disorders that overlap with alexithymia. People with this condition are more likely to suffer from PTSD, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. They are also generally more likely to experience negative emotions (to be neurotic) [R, R, R, R, R].

An inability to identify and control emotions may explain why some people with alexithymia are prone to impulsive or compulsive behaviors such as binge eating, substance abuse, or inappropriate sexual behaviors [R].

Alexithymic people may engage in these behaviors as a way to cope with or discharge the tension arising from unpleasant (and often confusing) emotional states [R].

These are all traits which, even if they’re mild, probably make a person less likely to form (and maintain) close relationships.

Alexithymia, which is associated with the ‘C’ allele, also makes people more prone to psychological disorders and impulsive behaviors.

Fight or Flight

Failure to regulate emotions activates the fight or flight system. If a person remains in a fight or flight state for a long time (as people with alexithymia are likely to), they may suffer stress-related conditions like fatigue, anxiety, pain, IBS, and an imbalanced immune system [R]. 

Through extended fight or flight activation, alexithymia may even result in dysautonomia, a disorder of the involuntary nervous system that controls reflexes, heart rate, digestion, and so on. Terrible nightmares are also common in this population [R].

One study demonstrated that the C allele of rs6295 is also correlated with enhanced threat-related information processing, which causes vulnerability to psychiatric and health disorders caused by stress. According to this study, people with the C allele were more likely to have anxiety and depression from recent stressful life events [R].

The minor C allele of rs6295 is also correlated with the underlying physiology of fibromyalgia [R].

Alexithymia can also produce long periods of “fight or flight,” which in turn can cause stress-related conditions from fatigue to IBS.

5HT1A: Presynaptic vs Postsynaptic Receptors

This receptor is tricky in terms of its mechanism, because it depends where it's activated [R, R].

For a signal to be sent in the brain, two neurons are involved: one which sends the signal and one which receives it. The first is the presynaptic neuron; the second is the postsynaptic neuron. In serotonin signalling, both the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons have 5HT1A receptors; the presynaptic receptors are also called autoreceptors [R, R].

If the postsynaptic receptors are activated, they have all of the anti-anxiety and mood boosting benefits that you would expect. However, increased autoreceptor activity causes a reduction in serotonin [R].

In order to counteract this, you either need to desensitize the autoreceptors (chronic SSRIs do that), or increase serotonin by a lot [R].

Broadly speaking, the presynaptic receptor (or autoreceptor) decreases overall serotonin activity in the brain, while the postsynaptic receptor increases it.

Joe’s Experience

Based on my experience consulting clients with these types of psychological issues, I would find that the majority of time the issues arose after a stressful event. Often this stressful event would go along with some other event, such as a toxic exposure or infection.

What often happens is that people get triggered and can't then calm their nervous system down.

Alexithymia is correlated with PTSD and the causal direction may go in both directions. If you have alexithymia, you are more likely to get PTSD. But also when you have a stressful event is intense enough, it causes an inability to regulate your nervous system, as people were able to before PTSD.

On a more micro scale, you may notice that if you get very stressed by something, you then have a harder time regulating your emotions, even if you logically decided that there was no reason to be stressed.

It's the same situation in PTSD, where people get into a mental rut and have difficulty regulating their emotions afterward.

When I get into these mental ruts after highly stressful events, I similarly have trouble regulating my emotions no matter what I do. 

The only things that helps me 'reset' my psychological state are marijuana (along with CBD), psychedelics, and neurofeedback to a large extent.

Marijuana is a shorter term reset than psychedelics. This is true based on my experience and based on the pharmacology as well. For example, LSD sticks in your brain's receptors for quite a long time [R].

Practices like breathing, yoga, exercise and cold therapy each help as well, but they don't 'reset' my psychological state in the same way that psychedelics and marijuana do. However, these 'tools' are powerful and if used the wrong way, they can actually increase anxiety. It's best to get help from people who are experts in this area to guide you through it.

Dosing, the proper mental preparation beforehand, set and setting are all critical factors for psychedelics to work well.

The G allele is slightly more common than the C allele in the global population. Among people of European descent, however, 28% have the ‘CC’ genotype, but only 20% have the ‘GG’ genotype. Thus, alexithymia may be more common in Europeans than in people from other ethnicities.

Primary SNP: rs6295

• ‘G’ = Increased emotional intelligence, reduced risk of alexithymia
• ‘C’ = Decreased emotional intelligence, increased risk of alexithymia

Note: The 5HT1A receptor is mentioned in the mood report, along with 91 other genes. If you're looking for a comprehensive report that can boost your mood, check it out.

Special Note About SNP Orientation

If you click on a referenced study, you may see the authors discuss the C and G alleles as if they mean the complete opposite that we do. For example, we may say the "C" allele is associated with some effects, whereas if you click on the study, it'll actually say the "G" allele. This is not a mistake. We do this because of the way rs6295 is generally reported in the scientific literature.

Rs6295’s other name is C-1019G. The name gives us some information: this SNP involves a change from C to G at a position -1019. The minus sign furthermore tells us which strand of DNA (you know the double helix? It’s made of two strands) we should refer to.

On SelfDecode, we report and analyze SNPs on the positive (+) strand. That means, in order to be accurate, we have to flip the orientation of any variant given on the negative strand. If the negative strand has a G, the positive strand will have a C, and vice versa. A ‘GG’ in a study on the negative strand is ‘CC’ on the positive strand.

In other words, it looks like we’re using the opposite of the studies because we are!