Emotional Stagnation: When Nothing Seems To Change
The world of emotions is usually described as something chaotic or complex, a jungle in which it is easy to get lost and in which multiple dangers lurk. Dependency, toxic relationships, jealousy… are risks that undermine our life path. However, these potentially negative elements of our emotional facet can seem like prizes when compared to your nemesis: emotional stagnation
And, if sometimes a roller coaster of sensations can be exhausting and make us suffer, flattening emotions is not a better alternative; in fact, once it has been experienced, few people want it.
Next we will explore what the phenomenon of emotional stagnation consists of and what its causes may be.
Emotional stagnation can be described as absence of an evolution in the experience of emotions That is, the changes from one emotion to another disappear, and whoever experiences it remains in a state of apathy.
Since sensations such as euphoria are characterized by being peaks of emotional activation, they cannot last long, and consequently the person who experiences emotional stagnation in the flesh You will be banned from these intense sensations
This makes the daily lives of people who live with emotional stagnation monotonous and tedious. But it is not a monotony that can be explained because the same things are done all the time; Someone who faces new challenges every day is capable of feeling this emotional emptiness. The monotony, in this case, is internal and mental and is partly independent of what you do and how you interact with the outside world.
Thus, emotional stagnation can be described as a desert, a place in which there is no hint of enriching experiences not because we do not have resources around us, but because in us there is a dynamic of mental processes that has accustomed us to experiencing everything at will. through the filter of monotony.
What could be its causes?
The presence of emotional stagnation can have very different causes. Let’s analyze them.
1. Depressive disorders
Depressive disorders, such as major depression, are diagnostic labels that often come hand in hand with emotional stagnation. Many depressed people are not simply sad, but rather notice a certain inability to experience intense sensations.
For example, anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasurable or euphoric sensations, is very present in cases of depression.
Apathy, which is the lack of motivation and initiative to get things done and set goals, is also typical of depression, and is closely related to emotional stagnation. After all, if we anticipate that doing certain things will not make us feel better… why do them?
2. The experience of very intense peaks of emotion
The fact that we have gone through a stage in which emotions have been very intense can make us later find ourselves incapable of feeling things intensely, at least for a while and if we do nothing to remedy it.
For example, this It is very noticeable in people’s love lives: The fact of having gone through a very passionate relationship makes those that come after become dwarfed and, by comparison, we experience them as a total absence of relevant stimuli.
Chemical addictions to substances are capable of causing very abrupt emotional stagnation to appear. Simply put, the entire part of our brain that is responsible for producing emotions, the limbic system, makes us Your number one priority is the search for the drug
In this way, emotional emptiness is in this case the other side of the coin of the need for doses; Everything that does not have to do with the search for the substance that is needed disappears from our minds, both cognitively and emotionally.
4. Brain injuries
Some neurological disorders caused by injuries in parts of the brain they can simply stop emotions from being experienced.
Furthermore, in some cases injuries to the brain cause other mental processes to fail as well, which means that these cases of emotional stagnation come hand in hand with other problems.
However, sometimes only the part related to the production of emotions fails, causing the person to begin to experience reality as if a piece failed, something very difficult to explain. This represents a radical change in the person’s lifestyle, taking into account that, contrary to popular belief, even psychopaths experience emotions.
Fortunately, these cases are exceptional and can usually be detected through brain study technologies.
