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.
There are a number of different things that can cause emotional numbness to occur. While depression and anxiety are the most common causes, others include the following: Stress and stress hormones: Elevated cortisol levels can lead to emotional numbness in some people.
When trauma and chronic stress become overwhelming, our nervous system tends to move into a shutdown state. Counsellors often refer to it as dissociation, a common response to traumatic events.
For some people, shutting down emotionally is a response to feeling overstimulated. It doesn't have anything to do with you or how they feel about you. If your husband or partner shuts down when you cry, for example, it may be because they don't know the best way to handle that display of emotions.
Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.
the prefrontal cortex can shut down, allowing the amygdala, a locus for regulating emotional activity, to take over, inducing mental paralysis and panic. further the physiology of acute stress and are considering behavioral and pharmaceutical interventions to help us retain composure when the going gets tough.
That means, basically, that under stress, the brain automatically shifts its focus away from current activity — for example, doing homework or debating — and toward readiness for fight or flight. That's why high stress can “make your mind go blank” at the worst possible moments.
The main reason they can't talk is they're too stressed, or their anxiety levels are too high in that social setting that no word comes out of their mouth. People with selective mutism literally can't speak in certain situations. The disorder literally means 'being mute in selective situations. '
Like with emotional detachment, mental detachment is simply a coping mechanism to extreme stress. Your mind and body are under such intense stress with panic attacks that your brain decides to simply shut everything down for a while. It's not dangerous nor does it mean anything about your mental health.
When someone has shut down, they certainly look like they don't care. The facial expression is usually neutral, there is little to no expression of emotion, and voice tone becomes monotonous. Answers to questions are short, and you begin to interpret all of this as indifference.
Trina was demonstrating a “dissociative shutdown,” a symptom often found in children faced with a repeated, frightening event, such as being raped by a caregiver, for which there's no escape. Over time, this response may generalize to associated thoughts or emotions that can trigger the reaction.
If someone is experiencing dissociation during a therapy session, it may show up through a certain eye expression or through shallow breathing. Or when the attention fades or there is agitation, or other behaviors.
The Duration of a Nervous Breakdown Varies by Individual. A nervous breakdown is not a diagnosable mental health condition, and that means there are no official criteria to describe it, including duration. These mental health crises are highly variable, lasting a few hours for one person or weeks for another.
Shutting down emotionally makes it impossible to feel compassion: These individuals are often incapable of feeling compassion. Emotional repression makes it impossible to care so deeply about others, that they're compelled to act on their behalf.
Chronicfatigue, tiredness, and lack of energy.
"When the body cannot handle emotional overload, it simply begins to shut down. And that is often manifested by a sense of extreme tiredness and fatigue," says Kalayjian.
Talk through it with someone you trust: Sometimes when we are overwhelmed we see a big ball of tangled issues and we don't see where one task ends and another task begins. Talking through our tasks forces us to articulate them as smaller discrete actions rather than one abstract blob of impossibility.
Meltdowns happen when autistic children and teenagers feel completely overwhelmed, lose control of their behaviour, and find it very hard to calm themselves. Meltdowns are a sign of distress. Meltdowns might include behaviour like rocking, crying, hitting or withdrawing.
People who are anxious may feel like they can't keep up with their thoughts and may speak much faster as a result, which can cause stuttering or slurring. Communication difficulties due to anxiety may become even more apparent among people with other underlying speech impairments, as well.
Some of the causes of psychogenic mutism may be general anxiety or past trauma. For example, a child who is learning to speak might stop speaking if he or she is molested or threatened.
Children with traumatic mutism usually develop mutism suddenly in all situations. An example would be a child who witnesses the death of a grandparent or other traumatic event, is unable to process the event, and becomes mute in all settings.
This can be emotional or physical. We may feel toxic stress when we face strong, frequent, or prolonged challenges. These can include abuse, neglect, violence, or substance use in the home. These experiences can trigger our body's stress response. This response floods our body with "fight or flight" chemicals.
Mind-blanking—when our minds are seemingly “nowhere”—is defined by a lack of conscious awareness. During periods of blankness, the individual is not focally aware of any stimuli, either internal or external.