Emotional dullness is associated with coldness, as well as the disappearance of ethical feelings. Such people do not empathize with family and friends and lose delicacy. Psychologists note indifference not only to the fate of others, affective impoverishment contributes to a decrease in the patient’s interest in his own life.
It is curious that a person loses higher emotions, while lower feelings remain at the same level. The need for nutrition, sleep and safety does not disappear. This condition is not a disease, but it accompanies many mental disorders.
Definition of the concept
People are emotional by nature. They react to what is happening around them, assessing events. There is always a response, and the reaction can be violent or restrained. In psychology, emotional dullness is a special state of the individual’s psyche, which is expressed by the loss of higher emotions.
Loss of gratitude, tolerance, compassion and shame is a sign of the following diseases:
- schizophrenia;
- dementia;
- damage to the cerebral cortex.
Experts consider this state of the emotional sphere as “moral idiocy.” The second name for this feature is affective dullness.
Emotional dullness in schizophrenia develops rapidly, leading to irreparable changes in the personal sphere. A person often develops vulnerability in areas that are tolerated by normal people without problems. A striking example is the patient’s lack of worries about the death of a relative and an outburst of anger due to the fact that someone used his dishes. Affective dullness makes an individual unpredictable.
The danger of this feature is that a person becomes more alienated every year. But one should not confuse a dangerous state with ordinary coldness, which is a defensive reaction of the individual. Anxiety grows when the patient pushes away people who were once close and dear to him.
Emotional dullness, emotional dementia
Affective” is also highlighted
"or "
emotional dullness
" as a disorder with extreme weakness of emotional reactions (or complete absence) and emotional coldness. In its extreme manifestations, there is also an internal lack of experience: complete indifference to the suffering and feelings of others, as well as to one’s fate. Affective dullness sometimes occurs in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia (with a schizophrenic defect), as well as in some forms of dementia (atherosclerotic or senile dementia, oligophrenia with underdevelopment of the emotional sphere) [3][11][13].
The word “stupidity” in this case means passive insensitivity[14].
An analogue in Western psychiatry is the term “flat affect”.
Causes of emotional dullness
Emotional dullness is a consequence of organic disorders in the brain. Doctors note that anxiety symptoms accompany thought disorders, delusions and other manifestations of schizophrenia at an early stage. The German psychiatrist E. Kretschmer wrote that patients experience the phenomenon of glass and wood.
The phenomenon is an inadequate response to an external stimulus. Thus, a person becomes “wooden” in relation to important events, and unimportant ones drive him crazy. The “glass fragility” of consciousness distinguishes people with schizophrenic disorder. Affective changes have no age-related characteristics.
Psychological defense in patients with schizophrenia is poorly developed, so the deficit of emotions is compensated by inadequate vulnerability. In psychiatry, this condition is called emotional flattening, when a person’s face becomes similar to a mask, and speech becomes monotonous.
The described condition is irreversible. But affective dullness also manifests itself in other mental disorders. For example, hysterical psychopathy inevitably leads to an impoverishment of feelings. Another reason for the development of painful indifference is depression. Patients also lose the need for activities that previously brought joy.
Signs of emotional dullness
Let's take a closer look at such a disease as emotional dullness. The symptoms of this disease have been well studied by psychiatrists.
Pathological affect is an emotional reaction of rage or anger that occurs as a response to a stimulus. It proceeds quite quickly against the background of clouding of consciousness, and the patient practically does not remember the irritation experienced. This condition occurs in the case of organic brain damage and various types of mental suffering.
Euphoria is a joyful mood that is inadequate to the stimulus. The person is happy with everything and does not notice the real problems. He sees the surrounding reality through rose-colored glasses and even perceives tragic events positively. Excessive optimism does not allow the patient to objectively assess the state of his health. Euphoria can manifest itself at the terminal stage of some malignant tumors. A similar phenomenon is typical for somatic and psychiatric diseases.
Moriah represents a heightened, unmotivated mood with vulgar, flat jokes. Such patients behave too excitedly, this is typical for patients with damage to the frontal lobes.
Dysthymia is a pathologically depressed mood that appears for absolutely no reason. The patient perceives the surrounding reality negatively and pessimistically. Dysthymia often leads to suicide attempts.
Symptoms
Signs of emotional dullness appear as the mental disorder intensifies. Reactions that imply a negative message are realized through bright outbursts of anger. Such experiences are often repressed, and after an attack the patient does not remember screaming or fighting with someone.
Positive emotions - getting what you want or pleasure - are experienced through a state of euphoria. The holistic perception of the situation is disrupted and replaced by affective euphoria. A person is unaware of the needs of those around him, he is only interested in his own benefit, as well as motives that are unusual for healthy people. In severe cases, the patient is not able to come to the aid of others, but he will easily commit a crime if there is a benefit in doing so.
In schizophrenia, emotional dullness has characteristic symptoms:
- the same facial expression;
- slow movements;
- dull voice.
This condition also occurs with depression. In less severe cases, indifference disrupts the social life of an individual, since he does not comply with moral and ethical standards and acts selfishly towards relatives. Patients do not realize the error of their behavior, but if they understand the criticism, such people are able to pretend and act “correctly”. But there is still no awareness of the meaning of actions.
Symptoms of emotional dullness in children can vary. Some children try to conform to generally accepted norms without understanding their meaning. Teenagers often defend their opinions, despite criticism from others and conflicts.
The famous psychiatrist W. Reich believed that feeling is a direct expression of a person’s mental energy. Describing the symptoms of affective dullness, he focused on the fact that in a problematic personality the energy is inhibited in the center of the body. The theory of chronic muscle tension was supported by the authors of domestic textbooks on psychiatry.
The patient may understand the inadequacy of his actions, notice the reaction of society, but without correction tools, the painful condition will only progress. Affective flattening inevitably leads to consequences such as suicide attempts due to rejection of what is happening. The emotional background becomes poorer, questions about feelings and mood are ignored by the person.
Manifestations of emotional deafness
Emotional coldness can vary in severity. A certain lack of emotions or lack of empathy, the so-called “sympathy,” occurs quite often in mentally healthy people and is a variant of the norm. Extreme stages of emotional apathy are observed in severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or depression.
Emotional dullness is mainly manifested by impoverishment of emotional manifestations, indifference, indifference to others, including close people, family and friends.
This condition can be quite painful for the patient himself, who understands perfectly well that his behavior and sensations do not fit into the generally accepted framework or seem abnormal to him, but he cannot do anything about it. Due to organic or psychological reasons, the patient does not have the “necessary” reactions to what is happening around him. He does not feel joy for someone, does not worry about tragedies and misfortunes that happen to someone, and is not able to experience affection, love or sympathy.
Accordingly, human behavior and needs change. He does not pay attention to the needs of those around him, and is guided only by his own benefit, practical benefit, or other motives that are not always clear to healthy people.
RELATED MATERIALS: Mental and Behavioral Disorders
With severe emotional-volitional disorders, patients may not help a person in an accident, pass by a baby in the forest, or cold-bloodedly commit any crime if it benefits him.
With mental illness, the patient may lose all emotions altogether: the face of such people becomes mask-like, the voice is muffled, movements are slow, and, as a rule, there are no desires left. This condition is typical for schizophrenia, depression and some types of stupor.
In milder versions, emotional dullness leads to disruption of a person’s social life; he does not obey generally accepted rules, does not comply with moral and ethical standards, is indifferent to his loved ones and seems absolutely selfish.
With mental illnesses, patients do not realize the wrongness of their behavior; if criticism persists, such people can pretend and act “correctly” if they consider it beneficial, necessary for themselves or “from memory”, since they remember that they need to do exactly that or even not understand why they should act differently, because their behavior and actions are usually quite rational and understandable.
The emotional state of a child suffering from such a pathology may be different. Some children learn to meet generally accepted requirements without even understanding them, for example, giving up their seat on the bus to their elders, although they do not feel any respect or pity for their grandparents, while others defend their own opinion, not paying attention to how others feel about it their people.
Clinical picture
Emotional stupidity towards people goes unnoticed for a long time. Only extreme forms of violations are easily diagnosed, when a person commits a crime or behaves inappropriately. While in euphoria, the patient attracts attention with his ridiculous appearance, loud laughter, and disregard for social norms.
A change in the brain allows you to step away from internal restrictions. Values and personal feelings change under the influence of impoverished feelings. A typical picture of affective dullness includes a lack of desire to give gifts to loved ones or, on the contrary, to harm enemies. The patient does not divide society into “friends” and “foes.”
Symptoms of emotional dullness
Signs of a person’s emotional dullness at the initial stage are manifested by excessive coldness even towards loved ones. This is a lack of sympathy or empathy, joy for the successes of those involved in a person’s life. At the first stages, emotional experiences are still available to a person, but the further they go, the more primitive they become. Thus, a response that implies negativity (where there may be resentment, frustration, dissatisfaction, lack of satisfaction of needs and sadness) is realized through vivid affective outbursts of anger. Often these experiences are repressed, and after an attack he may continue the previous line of behavior, simply because he does not remember screaming or hitting someone. Emotions of the positive spectrum (pleasure, joy, getting what you want, pride, and others) are also experienced by a vivid affective state of euphoria. There is no criticism regarding real problems, emerging obstacles, the integral perception of the situation is disrupted.
There is a decrease in understanding of ethical and moral standards, since primary emotions become the main regulating factors. This is manifested by vulgar humor (and subsequently a lack of understanding of jokes), rudeness, unceremoniousness and demonstrative behavior.
While in euphoria, a person will attract attention with a bright and ridiculous appearance, loud voice and laughter; in a state of depression, banal social norms of communication and behavior may be ignored.
Often people themselves understand the inadequacy of their reactions and the degree of non-compliance with the general norms of society. They are able to notice the reactions of others, but do not have the tools to correct their actions and manifestations. Without proper support and treatment, affective flattening inevitably leads to a depressive phase, against the background of which suicidal attempts arise from intolerance to what is happening.
In the final stages, complete detachment from the outside world occurs; a person’s internal experiences become inaccessible even to him. This is comparable to emptiness, indifference, questions about mood and experienced emotions may remain unanswered for an extremely long time or completely ignored. This is not a reluctance to answer or strong feelings, just being at the extreme point of emotional flattening, it is comparable to asking a person blind from birth what his favorite color is or what chair he is currently sitting in.
With the clinical picture of the last stages, a person is capable of committing any immoral and criminal acts - the framework of censorship, ethics and education is completely absent, and emotional coldness allows one to remove internal restrictions. Such people can strangle a baby in order to sleep, pass by an emergency situation, drive out into the cold those who prevent them from receiving satisfaction in the present time, and many other illegal and inhumane acts. If the violations are not yet so serious, then with this affective disorder people can comply with social norms, but they will do this more likely from memory, focusing on the fact that it has always been this way, and not on their own internal values and feelings.
With emotional dullness, a person’s appearance also changes. The face becomes like a mask, the voice is expressionless, quiet, without emotion; movements slow down to the point that a person may not move for days.
Examples from life
In psychiatry, emotional dullness is observed when talking with such patients. In a state of remission, patients are able to talk about their peculiarities. A patient at one of the clinics admitted to doctors that the emotions she was holding back were a strong cry that could hit everything around her.
When the doctors asked how the ward could restrain such feelings, she declared her will. Another woman with schizophrenia said that suppressed emotions would inevitably cause an earthquake on the planet. When there is no time for analysis, a person stops contacting reality, thereby destroying his personality.
Emotional dullness is also observed when a person is exposed to destructive factors at an early age. The reason for this condition is always emotional. There is a known case where impoverishment of feelings developed in a woman who was spoiled by her parents from birth and got everything she wanted.
Until the age of five, she was the center of attention of her relatives, but after the appearance of her younger brother, the patient’s psyche was destroyed. The girl was filled with hatred, but the child was unable to express her feelings for fear of losing her parents. Emotions were locked inside the woman for many years.
Or maybe it's a disease?
Of course, there is no such disease called “inability to compassion.” But it can be a symptom of a variety of disorders, ranging from depression to schizophrenia. Since 1973, a pathology such as emotional color blindness, scientifically known as alexithymia, which deprives a person of the ability to understand his own and others’ emotions, has also been widely studied. Feelings are raging inside him, a lump in his throat or an increased heart rate, but he cannot accurately determine his state: is it anger or fear, joy or shame. He doesn’t understand why others react so sharply to what seems to him to be ordinary situations. But this disease is rare. “Much more often, callousness and callousness are hidden behind another term - “sociopathy,”
says
psychiatrist Pavel Lapanov
.
— This disorder is associated, as a rule, with problems of upbringing at an early age (up to 3 years): quarrels, aggression, indifference, parental alcoholism.
That is, everyone is from the family. As a result, a child who often observes aggressive situations around him grows into an adult who is extremely stingy with emotions. His formation of attachment to other people is impaired. Emotional disorders, according to the psychiatrist, begin to appear from 14 to 16 years of age. Such children break rules, like to deceive, lie about little things, are aggressive, impulsive, and break things. Sociopaths do not understand what conscience and shame are. They say about such people: “He lies and doesn’t blush.” They are unable to share not only the grief, but also the joys of another person. “Give something just for the soul? What is the benefit and what is the pleasure from this? — an emotionally dull person will think pragmatically. Yes, he can play the emotion (if necessary), but he doesn't really feel anything like it.
Treatment
Emotional depletion therapy begins with a clinical conversation between the psychiatrist and the patient. The doctor analyzes the mental state of the patient based on behavior, verbal and non-verbal signs. Often in a specialist’s office such people behave anxiously, speak quietly and indistinctly, and turn away from the doctor’s gaze.
Less common is a manic state when the patient shows a different attitude to the problem. He grabs documents with his hands, laughs, constantly gets distracted and changes the topic of conversation. In both cases, it is necessary to study the functioning of the central nervous system, as well as the brain. Treatment depends on the diagnosis and duration of the disease.
In childhood, emotional dullness is easier to treat. Thanks to medication and correction by teachers and psychologists, it is possible to level out a person’s condition. In rare cases, when there are no organic brain lesions, the problem can be corrected with the help of psychotherapy.
All family members must participate in the process, since it was the model of relations between relatives that influenced the appearance of this feature. Adult patients are examined by a neurologist, and during treatment the level of development of thought processes is checked. If the changes are caused by a brain tumor, then the first step of treatment will be its removal.
The meaning of psychotherapy
In people with impoverished emotions, dreams also disappear. The absence of imaginary actions in a dream leads to internal devastation. Loss of senses does not affect life expectancy in any way, but sharply reduces its quality. Experts recommend using the following techniques:
- Gestalt therapy;
- art therapy;
- suggestion.
You need to be patient during the treatment process. When the patient becomes interested in creativity, we can talk about success, since it is closely related to the manifestation of emotions. It is advisable to motivate the individual to create something colorful and unusual: paintings, crafts, works on paper.
The goal of psychotherapy for the patient is to learn to express emotions. Then work is carried out with comprehension and recognition of feelings. The mentee must describe them, expand his own vocabulary and study materials, as well as monitor the reactions of other people. Additionally, the patient receives medications that suppress physiological problems.
Emotional dullness is not only a condition when the patient is afraid of change. He feels the emptiness inside himself and strives to fill it with anything. The result of treatment depends on the desire of the person himself to change his quality of life for the better.
In Gestalt therapy, a person is a holistic image, the integral parts of which are body, soul and spirit. With the help of such a technique, a person will be able to experience feelings, as well as apply them to the experience gained. As a result of the experience, the patient completes the situation in the sense that it acquires clear features.
Psychology teaches us to experience “liberated” feelings without compromising the patient’s mental health. Success can be judged when the student begins to associate events with emotions rather than with details. At the same time, the patient’s imagination develops, he describes what is happening in colors.
