Ataraxia: when there is nothing that affects us emotionally.

A condition widely studied from psychology and medicine.

The term ataraxia has its roots in ancient Greek, and means lack of disturbance.

It makes sense that a word was used to designate something so specific, since in the Greece of the time of Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great there were philosophical schools that claimed our ability to not let anything affect us. The Stoics and Epicureans, for example, practiced a renunciation of great desires and impulses linked to easy sources of pleasure, something that made them similar to monks of Eastern religions.

Ataraxia is thus the absence of anxiety, anger or confusion.. In other words, it usually takes the form of a tendency to calmness and imperturbability.

However, the concept of ataraxia goes beyond philosophy and religions, and has gained a foothold in the domains of mental health.

The ataraxia in medicine and psychology

Sometimes, the appearance of ataraxia is not due to a voluntary effort to follow the precepts of a religion or philosophical doctrine having gone through a phase of reflection on the subject. Many times, in fact, the ataraxia makes an appearance in a totally undesired and unexpected way, as a consequence of an accident that has produced damages in the brain..

Although apparently the idea of not getting angry or sad may seem attractive, ataraxia caused by injuries has serious consequences for the quality of life of those who experience it. Both their way of relating to others and their self-image are radically changed by the fact of involuntarily remaining in a state of eternal imperturbability.

The neurological view of ataraxia

This may seem strange, but it is totally logical: our brain is not only the set of organs that makes consciousness, the ability to plan and think logically or the use of language possible, but it is also the basis of all the processes on which our emotional states are based. This means that if certain parts of the human brain begin to fail, some aspects of our emotional life may be altered, while the rest of the brain's functions may be impaired.while the rest of the functions of our way of being remain more or less unchanged.

Just as brain injuries cause only a part of the brain to die and not all of it, what is altered after such an accident is only a (more or less important) part of our mental life. In the case of ataraxia, this may be due to failures in the way in which the limbic system interacts with the frontal lobe, responsible among other things for "buffering" the impact that our emotions have on our behavior in the short and medium term.

Thus, it is very difficult for a stimulus to radically change the emotional state of a person with this kind of ataraxia; not because he has trained in certain meditation techniques, but because his brain circuits have begun to function abnormally.

How are people with medical ataraxia?

Pathological ataraxia is manifested through these main characteristics:

1. Tendency to passivity

People with medical ataraxia hardly take the initiative, and are limited to react to what happens around them..

2. Absence of the appearance of intense emotional states.

Regardless of what the person wants, you don't experience anger or anxiety, but you don't experiencebut neither do you experience peak moments of joy.

3. Unusual emotional stability

Because of the above, the emotional state of the person does not seem to depend on the environment: it always remains more or less the same..

4. Impossibility of frustration

The fact that events do not lead to the positive consequences we were expecting does not produce frustration in the person.

5. Disappearance of the feeling of guilt

It is one of the most remarkable consequences of ataraxia due to injury, at least from the moral and social point of view. The person with medical ataraxia does not feel affected by the bad things that happen to him/herbut also does not react to see how their actions can harm others.

By way of conclusion

Medical ataraxia is the mirror image of how would be the philosophical ataraxia taken to the extreme.. Not only does it worsen the quality of life of those who experience it, but it also makes it difficult to establish proper communication and emotional bonds with others.