Affective flattening, indifference towards emotions

What would it be like to feel like you are not able to express or experience emotions (affective flattening)? Let’s imagine for a moment that a family member is told that they have won the lottery and you cannot be happy for them. Instead of experiencing joy, you remain impassive, you do not smile, you do not congratulate him, your face does not change. Cognitively you are happy for him, but feeling, you don’t really feel that joy.

Let’s imagine that a person is fired from their job for a completely unfair reason. This person, instead of experiencing anger or sadness, is incapable of feeling any of those emotions. Affective flattening is a phenomenon that some people experience when they are unable to feel and express joy, sadness, fear, anger, or any other emotion., when justified. The previous situations reflect examples of this phenomenon.

Before continuing to describe affective flattening, let’s see What are emotions and what role do they play in our lives?. Only in this way will we be able to understand how emotional flattening can affect a person.

What are emotions and what are they for?

Emotions are reactions that we all experience: joy, sadness, fear, anger… They are known, but That doesn’t mean they stop becoming complex when we stop for a second and analyze them. Although we have all felt anxiety or nervousness, Not all of us are aware that poor regulation of these emotions can lead to blockage or even illness.

Simplifying a bit, They represent a biological tendency to react in a certain way to certain stimuli, which we bring as standard and which is modeled with learning and the environment in which we find ourselves. Currently, most experts agree that there are different responses to emotions.

These responses or manifestations are the following: Firstly, a neurophysiological response is produced (caused by hormones and neurotransmitters), which is manifested through another behavioral response (such as gestures) and one more, this time cognitive, which is what makes us aware of what we are feeling. . And these last two vary according to the environment and culture of each individual.

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The hedonic tone of the emotion, that is, the pleasure we experience or the pleasant or unpleasant sensation, are “the spice of life”. It is essential for memory, for decision making, for our judgments and reasoning, for our behavior, our social relationships and our well-being.

This is because the memories we keep are mostly emotional. We also need emotional tension to make decisions. In fact, we often decide emotionally. But the most important thing is that emotions prepare us, motivate us and guide us.

Emotion has two components: one is the subjective sensation that we feel inside us. The other component is the external manifestation of the emotion. Sometimes it is possible to separate the two components. For example, an actor can simulate all the manifestations of an emotion without actually feeling it.

What are emotions for?

One of the most important functions of emotion is to prepare us for action.. It mobilizes the energy necessary to give an effective response depending on the circumstances and directs our behavior towards the desired goal. Each of the emotions indicates and pushes us towards a different type of action.

Emotions also fulfill a social function. Communicating our state of mind to the people around us facilitates and strengthens our relationship with them. Our emotions act as signals to others. Therefore, they give them clues so that they can adopt the most appropriate attitude and behavior towards us.

In the last place, Emotions also play a motivational role.. On the one hand, emotion energizes motivated behavior. For example, anger facilitates defensive reactions, joy facilitates interpersonal attraction, surprise facilitates attention to novel stimuli, etc.

Furthermore, they direct behavior, in the sense that facilitate approaching or avoiding the goal of motivated behavior depending on how we feel. It is clear, then, how important it is to express and feel emotions.

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What does emotional flattening really consist of?

Affective flattening is not a disorder. It is a symptom that alerts us that something is not right. Thus, we can define affective flattening as a symptom related to the lack of expression and experimentation of emotions. Affective flattening is often also called emotional indifference or emotional dulling. This is because the person who suffers from it remains oblivious or indifferent to the emotions of others and even to their own.

It must be emphasized that the absence of emotions occurs with both positive and negative emotions.. The person is not only unable to experience joy, but also to experience fear, for example. Emotional flattening rarely occurs with full intensity. By this I mean that the person who suffers from it can experience emotions in different degrees of intensity, even if only in exceptional situations. It is rather a general emotional tone, in which there are very few oscillations.

How is emotional flattening related to depression?

People with emotional flattening do not have to be depressed. Depression is associated with apathy and low mood. In this sense, affective flattening should not be confused with the inability to experience pleasure.

On the other hand, the inability to experience pleasure, or anhedonia, is typical of depressive disorders.. The depressed person no longer enjoys the activities that they previously found enjoyable. Consequently he stops doing them, and this, in turn, prevents him from feeling better.

People with affective flattening experience emotions in a less intense, very “light” way, or they do not experience them at all. However, unlike people with depression, this does not cause them any discomfort. They neither feel nor suffer, as they say colloquially.

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Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish anhedonia from emotional flattening, but it is worth noting that both symptoms can occur at the same time in the same person. To distinguish both symptoms, it is good to remember that anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure (a positive emotion). However, affective flattening is the absence of emotions or a diminished expression of them.

Why is emotional flattening experienced?

Affective flattening is the symptom or expression of an underlying illness, as we noted previously. Therefore, it never occurs in isolation. Affective flattening occurs along with other symptoms to make up a certain disorder or syndrome.

Emotional flattening has always been linked to schizophrenia.. Within the disorders of schizophrenia we can distinguish two large groups of symptoms: positive symptoms and negative symptoms.

Called positive symptoms to which, making a comparison with someone who is not experiencing these symptoms, they represent an excess. The negative ones are those that manifest themselves in the form of lack. For example, a hallucination would be an “excess” of perception, while apathy would be a “lack” of motivation.

Well then, affective flattening would fall within the group of negative symptoms of schizophrenia. However, it is not only in schizophrenia where affective flattening can appear. Affective flattening can also appear in autism spectrum disorders. People with autism experience difficulty experiencing emotions intensely and also expressing them correctly.

In people with some type of dementia, emotional flattening may also occur. This is a consequence of the changes that occur at the brain level. As we have seen, Affective flattening is part of a broader group of symptoms. Therefore, to treat it, it is necessary to treat the underlying disease or disorder.