If you have schizoid personality disorder, you may be seen as a loner or dismissive of others, and you may lack the desire or skill to form close personal relationships. Because you don't tend to show emotion, you may appear as though you don't care about others or what's going on around you.
Alexithymia is a broad term to describe problems with feeling emotions. In fact, this Greek term used in Freudian psychodynamic theories loosely translates to “no words for emotion.” While the condition is not well-known, it's estimated that 1 in 10 people has it.
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.
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.
Apathetic means uncaring. It's an adjective form of apathy—the state of not caring. It can also mean the absence or suppression of emotion or passion. Apathetic is especially used to describe people with a lack of interest or concern about things, especially those that others find important or exciting.
Emotional regulation deficits.
Individuals with alexithymia often present with emotional dysregulation issues. For example, individuals with alexithymia usually struggle to express or understand their feelings and the feelings of others. As a result, many mistake the symptoms of alexithymia as a lack of empathy.
Can alexithymic people feel love? People with alexithymia can feel love when it's strong enough. They just can't describe or express it in a way that provides others with emotional validation. Instead, they may express their love through action, rather than words or affection.
Emotional detachment is a psychological condition in which a person is not able to fully engage with their feelings or the feelings of others. It can be ongoing, as it is in people with attachment disorders, or it can be a temporary response to an extreme situation.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness.
Some alexithymic individuals may appear to contradict the above-mentioned characteristics because they can experience chronic dysphoria or manifest outbursts of crying or rage.
Feeling emotionless can often be a symptom of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic disorder so it's not something to dismiss or downplay. In these cases, seeking the help of a professional is crucial. So remember you don't have to work through this alone.
It is important to note that alexithymia is not autism, but simply a distorted emotional processing that is co-occurring among individuals with ASD. Alexithymia is a psychological construct that is defined by difficulties in emotion procession, and should therefore not be considered as a diagnosis of a condition.
Parents, teachers, peers, society, and culture affect how people feel about kindness, empathy, compassion, and helping behaviors. Some conditions may play a role in a lack of empathy such as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder (BPD).
Children with ADHD possess many notable characteristics. They tend to act impulsively, get bored easily, and become quickly distracted. One of the side effects of the combination of many of these symptoms can result in a lack of empathy.
Although lack of empathy disorder is not listed as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), it could be one of many signs of a serious mental illness. However, people who lack empathy do not necessarily need psychological counseling.
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.
Emotional blunting is a condition present in many psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia (26) and post-traumatic stress disorder (27). As its name suggests, emotional blunting refers to a sense of numbing of both positive and negative emotions.
It may stem from an unwillingness or an inability to connect with others. There are two general types. In some cases, you may develop emotional detachment as a response to a difficult or stressful situation. In other cases, it may result from an underlying psychological condition.
Traumatization has often been investigated as an environmental factor for alexithymia. To date, traumatization, occurring both in childhood and in adulthood, has been identified as the most important known risk factor for developing alexithymia.
In the behavioral results of MET, highly alexithymic individuals showed impairment in emotional empathy, both in the explicit measure of emotional concern for others and in the implicit measure of being aroused by the emotional states of others.
Across three independent, healthy adult samples (Ns = 389, 318, & 273), we examined whether alexithymia was associated with general intelligence. In all three samples, we observed a significant negative association between alexithymia and general intelligence.
Individuals high on alexithymia have difficulties distinguishing emotions from bodily sensations (see Lumley et al., 2007, for a review). Unlike repressive coping which is often seen as a defense, alexithymia is fundamentally a developmental disorder. It literally means “no words for emotion” (Sifneos, 1972).
Here are a few examples those with alexithymia experience: Difficulty identifying different types of feelings. Limited understanding of what causes feelings. Difficulty expressing feelings.
Alexithymia is not a diagnosis, but a construct useful for characterizing patients who seem not to understand the feelings they obviously experience, patients who seem to lack the words to describe these feelings to others.
A dark empath is a term that describes someone who exploits their ability to understand how other people think and feel. They can recognize another person's perspective while also showing signs of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.