Feeling emotionless might seem okay from the outside. But, for those who experience it, it can be truly isolating and distressing. Although it offers temporary relief from pain, emotional numbness can have long-term consequences.
Emotions are essential to making connections and healthy, successful social interactions. Being emotionless can harm your ability to engage with others and can lead to social isolation and loneliness.
When you lose the ability to feel or express any emotions, this is called flat affect. If you feel numb only to positive emotions but are still able to feel negative emotions, this is called anhedonia. Anhedonia is a common symptom of depression and shows up in a lot of mental health conditions.
Meaning of unemotional in English. not having or expressing strong feelings, often when this is surprising or a bad thing: Investigators said the couple seemed oddly unemotional about the disappearance. They described him as cold and unemotional.
What is Schizoid Personality Disorder? Schizoid personality disorder is one of many personality disorders. It can cause individuals to seem distant and emotionless, rarely engaging in social situations or pursuing relationships with other people.
Alexithymia is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions. It is not a mental health disorder but has links with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating disorders, and various other conditions. It can occur with autism.
Focus on your own feelings
Both Neblett and Gatling agree that if you address someone's emotional unavailability, express how it's affecting you and lead with "I" statements. It's also important to have clear examples of why you think they're emotionally unavailable so that they don't feel ambushed, Neblett emphasizes.
Low emotional intelligence, burnout, and stress
Being under prolonged stress may also lead someone to be less tolerant of other people's behavior and have lower cognitive empathy. In some cases, emotional avoidance may also be a reason why someone may not develop or practice empathy.
Shutting down emotions can be a normal part of human experience, as a coping strategy in stressful situations. Under high stress, it allows your body and brain to protect itself from perceived threats or harm.
Bottling up negative emotions like anxiety and anger can disrupt the normal function of your stress hormones called cortisol. This results in lowered immune function and an increased risk of developing a chronic illness. Not expressing your emotions is also a gateway to developing mental health conditions.
believing you have no emotions. a general sense that nothing matters. the absence of care or concern for others or events in your life. being unable to experience and express the appropriate level of emotion in a given situation.
Feeling as if you don't care about anything anymore may be related to anhedonia or apathy. Anhedonia is a mental state in which people have an inability to feel pleasure. It is often a symptom of mental health conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, and substance use.
Emotional blunting can be temporary, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours at a time. It can also occur over the long term, from months to years. It all depends on the underlying cause. Experiencing emotional blunting may affect your relationships and how you feel about yourself and the world.
Nonmedical terms describing similar conditions include emotionless and impassive. People with the condition are called alexithymics or alexithymiacs.
Dark empathy is characterized by emotional distance disguised as charm and understanding. It is usually motivated by personal gain. Dark empathy is related to the dark triad personality traits. The dark triad refers to the malevolent personality types of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
The authors concluded that persons with psychopathy do not have a total absence or incapacity to empathize with another person, but that brain mechanisms involved are not automatically activated in these individuals (see also Keysers and Gazzola, 2014 on the ability vs. propensity for empathy).
Friendship.
Even close friendship can be difficult because, at a certain level, friendship requires vulnerability. Emotionally unavailable people find banter, or their shared history with someone, easier to cope with so they'll often keep a friendship at a slight distance.
Can A Person Be Emotionless? Have you ever felt detached and disconnected from your emotions? The answer is probably yes. You may have felt that way when you were overwhelmed with everything going on in your life, and realized at one point that you actually felt nothing.
You may be elated or depressed, but others can't tell. You may seem uncaring and unresponsive, but you're still feeling an emotion. This is called flat affect. Flat affect can be the result of different neurological and psychological conditions.
INTJs are typically very quiet and reserved unless they happen to meet someone who, like them, loves exploring theoretical concepts, analyzing possibilities, and dreaming up long-term goals. That said, they're not typically very verbal when it comes to discussing their feelings or people's personal lives.
INTJs are often seen as cold-hearted, detached, and objective—but they only appear as such on the outside. That's because they're not reactive, meaning they don't show emotion in front of those they don't know well.
The short answer: INFJ (Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Judgment) is the most complex Myers-Briggs Personality Type.