Affective Lability – Indifference To Feelings

What if you weren’t able to express or experience feelings? Let’s imagine for a moment that a family member is told that he or she won the lottery and you can’t be happy for them. Instead of experiencing joy, you remain inactive: you do not congratulate him, do not smile, your facial expression does not even change. You know this is a happy event, but you don’t really feel that joy. Let us now imagine that someone is completely unjustifiably dismissed. Instead of experiencing anger or sadness, he does not experience any emotions.

Affective lability is this phenomenon that some people experience who are unable to show joy, sadness, fear, anger, or other emotions when justified. The above situations are examples of this phenomenon.

Before we proceed to describe affective lability, let’s take a look at what emotions are and what role they play in our lives. Only in this way can we understand how affective lability can affect those affected.

What are emotions and what are they for?

Emotions are reactions that we all experience: joy, sadness, fear, anger … They are known to us, but still appear to us as complex structures if we pause for a second and try to analyze them. And only a few are aware that poor regulation of our emotions can lead to blockages or even illness.

Every emotion has two components: one is the subjective sensation that we feel within ourselves. The other component is its outward manifestation. Sometimes it is possible to separate the two components. For example, an actor can simulate all manifestations of an emotion without actually feeling them. Someone else may be able to suppress their feelings and not show them to the outside, even though they feel them.

Put simply, emotions represent a biological tendency to react in a certain way to certain stimuli that we bring with us to this world and that are based on the environment in which we find ourselves. Today, most experts agree that emotions are some kind of intermediate product, which in turn leads to two different results: first, a neurophysiological response is triggered, namely by hormones and neurotransmitters, which manifest in our behavior, and second, a cognitive one that makes us aware does what we feel. Both vary depending on the environment and culture of the individual.

The hedonic tone of emotion, i.e. H. the pleasure we experience or the pleasant or uncomfortable feeling is the “salt of life”. It is important in memory, judgment and reasoning, decision making, behavior, social relationships, and wellbeing, which is because the memories we keep are emotionally colored. That is why emotions prepare us, motivate and guide us.

So one of the most important functions of emotions is to prepare us for action. They mobilize the energy necessary for an effective response under the given circumstances and direct our behavior towards the desired goal. Each emotion urges us to do a different kind of action. So z. B. anger facilitates defensive reactions, joy facilitates interpersonal closeness, surprise attracts attention to new stimuli, etc.

Emotions also have a social function. Communicating our state of mind with those around us promotes our relationship with them. Our emotions are signals to others. They give them tips on how to best behave towards us.

What is affective instability?

Affective lability is not a disorder. It is a symptom that alerts us that something is wrong. So we can define affective lability as a lack of expression and testing of emotions. Affective lability is often referred to as affective shallowness, emotional indifference, or numbness. This is because the person suffering from it forgets or remains indifferent to others’ emotions and even their own.

It should be emphasized that the absence of emotions affects both positive and negative emotions. Man is not only unable to experience joy, but also fear, for example. Affective lability, however, rarely occurs with full intensity, so that those affected still experience emotions with reduced intensity, even if not in every situation.

What is the relationship between affective lability and depression?

People with affective lability don’t have to be depressed. Depression is linked to apathy and dejection. In this sense, affective lability should not be confused with anhedonia or the inability to experience joy. On the other hand, this inability is typical of depressive disorders. The depressed person no longer enjoys activities that they used to enjoy. So she stops following them, which in turn prevents her from feeling better.

People with affective lability experience emotions less intensely, in a very mild form or not at all. However, unlike people with depression, this does not cause discomfort. Affected people do not feel or suffer, as would be said in everyday language.

Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish anhedonia from affective lability. This is all the more true because both symptoms can appear in the same person at the same time. To distinguish them, it is useful to remember that anhedonia is the inability to experience joy, that is, a positive emotion. Affective lability, however, is the absence or diminished expression of emotions of any kind.

Why does affective instability occur?

Affective lability is the symptom or expression of an underlying disease, as mentioned above. That is why it never appears in isolation. Affective lability occurs along with other symptoms to form a specific disorder or syndrome.

Affective lability is often associated with schizophrenia. There are two broad groups of symptoms in schizophrenic disorders: positive symptoms and negative symptoms. The former are “exaggerations” of normality, the latter manifest themselves in the form of defects. For example, hallucination is an “exaggeration” of perception, while apathy is a “lack of motivation”. Well, affective lability falls into the group of negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

But affective lability can not only occur in schizophrenia. Affective lability can also occur in autism spectrum disorders. People with autism have difficulty experiencing and expressing emotions. Affective lability can also occur in people with dementia. Then it is a consequence of changes in the brain.

As we have seen, affective lability is not a disease, but a symptom. Therefore, it needs to be treated as part of the underlying disease or disorder.