Signs of emotional blunting a lack of concentration. difficulty maintaining relationships. fatigue. feeling disconnected from your body or mind.
Emotional blunting means that your feelings and emotions are so dulled that you neither feel up nor down. You simply feel "blah." People who experience emotional blunting will often report: Being less able to laugh or cry, even when appropriate.
Someone with a blunted affect displays little feeling in emotional contexts. For example, a person recalling their father's death might simply recount the factual details of the death. The person might not share much information about how they felt. They may show little facial expression or speak in a monotone voice.
Though evidence suggests emotional blunting has to do with serotonin levels in the brain, researchers still have questions about exactly why and how it happens, per research published in December 2021 in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Reduced emotional sensitivity is sometimes a residual symptom of an uncontrolled mental health issue. That's according to a report in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Research has also linked blunted emotions to mental health disorders, including: Major depressive disorder.
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.
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.
Apathy therefore falls short of WHO's definition of optimal health. Apathy is different from a reduction in emotional display or expression (emotional blunting) where individuals fail to express their feelings or emotions, though emotion itself is not intrinsically reduced.
Alexithymia is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions.
Whether you've been addicted to a drug used as an antidepressant or have been prescribed one for a mental health diagnosis, healing from emotional blunting is possible. Sometimes, it takes time; other times, you can work with your doctor to adjust your dosage or type of antidepressant.
Over time, emotional blunting can create a lack of emotional intimacy in relationships. The partner that isn't taking medication may feel abandoned or overlooked due to their partner's behavior while the partner that is taking medication may feel frustrated by the side effects they are experiencing2 .
Talk therapy is an excellent coping strategy to help you deal with the effects of emotional blunting. A talk therapist can help you understand why you might be feeling numb and give you tools to overcome apathy. A talk therapy session may include: Discussing past and current events that are troubling you.
Being emotionally numb means your emotional experience is lower than expected, dampened, or completely missing. In situations where you might be expected to experience joy or sadness, you may feel empty or detached instead. This feeling isn't positive or negative; instead, it's absent of emotion.
Emotional detachment can also be "emotional numbing", "emotional blunting", i.e., dissociation, depersonalization or in its chronic form depersonalization disorder.
Feeling emotionally numb, like your emotions have somehow become blunted, or that you have no emotions at all are common symptoms of anxiety disorder. Many anxious, depressed, and stressed people experience feeling emotionally numb. It's also a common symptom associated with sleep problems, such as insomnia.
Flat affect is a symptom in which a person experiences emotional flattening or blunting. The person does not express emotion as other people do. It is not a condition but a symptom of another condition, such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, or depression.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is associated with an assortment of characteristics that undermine interpersonal functioning. A lack of empathy is often cited as the primary distinguishing feature of NPD.
The most common are anxiety disorders major depression and bipolar disorder. Below is more information on these disorders and how ACCESS can help. Remember you are not alone, and medical experts are here to support you.
One of the widely-reported side effects of SSRIs is 'blunting', where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to. Between 40-60% of patients taking SSRIs are believed to experience this side effect.
The effects of suppressed emotions include anxiety, depression, and other stress-related illnesses. Such suppression can lead to alcohol and substance abuse.
The mental health conditions most often associated with emotional numbness are depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Emotional numbness can also come up in some dissociative disorders, which are connected with a personal history of trauma.