Affective flattening: symptoms, causes and treatment

This phenomenon is also known as emotional indifference. What is a life without feelings like?

Affective flattening is one of the evidences that mental disorders escape our preconceived schemes about what it means to suffer.

This is so because people who experience this mental phenomenon, in spite of seeing their capacity to experience emotions and express them reduced, do not feel discomfort because of this fact in itself, as would be expected of someone who is repressed, but in any case suffer because of the consequences that this fact generates in their social environment.

In this article we will see what are the typical signs of the affective flatteningIts causes and the treatments associated with this phenomenon.

What is affective flattening?

The affective flattening is a psychological phenomenon related to the lack of expression and experience of emotions.. In fact, this condition is also called simply emotional indifference, because the person who experiences it acts as if he or she were not interested in the emotional background, his or her own or others', of the situations he or she is experiencing.

For example, a person with emotional flattening may remain indifferent to a traffic accident with serious injuries, or not react to seeing a family member crying. In the same way, he will not show himself to be very happy or very angryOr it will be very difficult for him to react in that way (or in a way that is timidly reminiscent of the expression of those emotions).

Moreover, as we shall see, affective flattening is a typical symptom of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as dementia and other neurological diseases.

Emotional indifference: symptoms

It should be noted that although affective flattening almost always goes hand in hand with other symptoms that damage the quality of life of the person, it is not sadness or stupor, or any other state that generates psychological pain. It is not only the absence of intense positive emotions, but also the significant reduction in the frequency and intensity with which negative emotional states occur.

However, it must be taken into account that there is no such thing as pure affective flatteningand most people who experience this condition firsthand may experience emotions to a greater or lesser extent, even if only in exceptionally important situations. As in any psychological trait, the expression and experience of emotions goes to quantities, not everything is "yes or no".

The difference with anhedonia

Affective flattening is not exactly the same as anhedonia. The latter is, in a strict sense, the inability to feel pleasure.

Although in many cases affective flattening and anhedonia go hand in hand and therefore it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the effects of one from those of the other (as they occur in the same individual), in affective flattening the indifference to emotions is global, while in anhedonia it is focused only on the appreciation of the pleasurable character of the emotions. in the anhedonia it is centered only in the appreciation of the pleasurable character of the experiences. of experiences.

The difference with depression

Affective flattening should not be confused with the effect that depression has on mood.

While depressive disorders generate anhedonia and general mood decline, people with affective flattening are not noticeably depressed. They simply do not experience emotions in a very intense way, or they do not experience them at all: neither the positive nor the negative ones. That is why they often do not claim to have a problem emotionally, since it is not something that causes them discomfort. it is not something that causes them discomfort.

For example, it is not the same for a smoker not to appreciate the taste of a cigarette as it is for a smoker not to feel sorrow for the death of a pet.

Causes of affective flattening

The causes of affective flattening almost always have to do with other problems and symptoms that constitute a mental disorder or neurological disease. These include Autism Spectrum Disorders, schizophrenia and dementias.

1. ASD

Some autistic people experience difficulties in vividly experiencing and expressing emotions. This, added to the other problems they have in communicating with others, makes their social relationships difficult.

2. Schizophrenia

In some patients with schizophrenia, affective flattening is also common. This phenomenon would be one of the symptoms associated with the severe psychological alterations produced by this pathology.

Thus, in schizophrenia, affective flattening is part of the so-called negative symptoms. is part of the so-called negative symptomsthose that have to do with the lack of certain psychological processes, and not with their excess or their undesired presence (the latter is what happens, for example, with hallucinations).

3. Dementias

People with dementia may present affective flattening as a consequence of the progressive impoverishment of the variety of mental experiences they suffer due to the degradation of the brain.

Treatment

Affective flattening is not treated as something isolated, but as one of the manifestations of a mental disorder or illness. That is why the efforts of clinical intervention programs are directed at the root of this problem, something that depends on each case and the characteristics of the patients. It does, however, usually require the use of psychotherapy, the use of psychotropic drugs is usually required..