Flat affect or emotional indifference How would it be to be unable to express feelings or to not know anyone at all? These are what are called flat affections.

Flat affect or emotional indifference
How would it be to be unable to express feelings or to not know anyone at all? These are what are called flat affections. Imagine for a moment that a family member tells you that you have won a lottery and you can not feel happy for it's sake. Instead of feeling joy, you are apathetic. You neither smile nor congratulate the person, and your facial expression is not changed. Cognitively, you are happy with the person, but your feelings do not reflect that feeling.



To use another example: imagine someone being dismissed for an entirely unfair reason. Instead of being sad or angry, a person who suffers from flat or distressed feelings will be unable to feel any sense. It is a phenomenon characterized by the inability to feel, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, or any other feeling that would be understandable in each situation.
Before we describe the sluggish effects more thoroughly, we will discuss what feelings are and what role they play in our lives. In this way, we can better understand what happens to people who suffer from flat effects.
What are feelings?
Feelings are reactions that we all experience - happiness, sadness, fear, anger ... Although we all are familiar with feelings, they do not make them less complex when you stay for a moment to analyze them. Although we have felt nervous and anxious before, not everyone is aware that bad control of these feelings can lead to emotional blockage or even illness.

In order to simplify the whole little feelings, a biological tendency is to react in a predetermined manner to particular stimulation that can also be learned from the environment. Today, most experts agree that for each sentiment there are a few different answers.

First and foremost, a neurophysiological response, triggered by hormones and neurotransmitters, manifests itself in a beteen response (such as gesture) and a cognitive response, which makes us aware of what we know. Behavior and cognitive responses vary based on the respondent's environment and culture.

The degree of pleasure or discomfort that you experience through every sense is the spice of life. Feelings are essential to memory, decision making, judgmental, resonance, behavior, social relationship and well-being.

That's why most memories we have are emotional by nature. We also need emotional excitement to make decisions. In fact, most decisions we make are based on emotions. But the most important thing about emotions is that they prepare, motivate and guide us.

Feelings have two components - the subjective feeling we feel within us and the external manifestation of that feeling. Sometimes it is impossible to separate the two. For example, an actor can simulate all external manifestations of a feeling without feeling them.
Which function fills emotions?
One of the most important features of the emotions is to prepare for action. They mobilize the energy necessary to enable us to respond effectively to the circumstances and target our behavior towards a specific goal. Every feeling indicates and directs us towards a particular kind of action.
Emotions also play a social role. Communicating what you know with people around you facilitates and strengthens your relationship with them. Our feelings act as signals to others, give them clues to what attitude they should take and how they should treat us.

Last but not least, emotions have a motivating function. Feelings drive us to live out motivated behaviors. Ilse facilitates, for example, defense reactions, happiness facilitates interpersonal attraction and surprise facilitates new stimulus.

Feelings also guide our behavior in such a way that we approach or avoid performing specific behaviors depending on how we feel. It is thus clear that it is important that we feel and express our feelings.
What does it mean to have flat effects?
Flat effects are not a disturbance, it is a symptom that indicates that something is not working properly. Flat affections can be defined as the inability to experience and express feelings. It is often referred to as emotional indifference or emotional disturbance. This is because the person appears as distant or indifferent to both his own and other people's feelings.

It is important to point out the lack of both positive and negative feelings. For example, they can not experience happiness, but they can not experience fear either. It is unusual for anyone to completely lose affection - this means that most people can experience a certain amount of emotions, but only in extreme situations. It is more like a general emotion with a very small spectrum.

How are flaws affecting depression?
Flat affections should not be mixed with depression or the inability to experience well-being. Depression is associated with apathy and feeling down.

The inability to experience well-being or anemia is typical of depressive disorders. Depressed people are unable to enjoy activities that they previously appreciated. Therefore, they end up performing the same, making it even harder for them to feel better.

People with flat feelings feel their feelings to a very small part or not at all. Unlike people with depression, they are not afraid of this. They do not know anything, but they do not suffer either.

It can be difficult to distinguish ahedony from flat effects. Both can occur at the same time, but in order to distinguish between the two, it is important to remember that anhedony is an inability to feel well-being (a positive feeling) while flat affections imply lack of any feeling or a greatly diminished expression of them.
Why do flaws develop?
Flat effects are a symptom or expression of an underlying disease, as we noted earlier. Therefore, it never occurs isolated, but rather with other symptoms that together create a particular disorder or a particular syndrome.

Flat effects are always linked to schizophrenia. There are two types of symptoms that occur in people with schizophrenia: positive and negative.

Positive symptoms are those that occur in exaggeration in comparison to someone who does not experience them. Negative symptoms are the response that is lacking in these people. For example, a hallucination is a positive symptom because it is an "exaggeration" of perception, while apathy is a negative symptom due to its lack of motivation.

Therefore, blurred affect the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Either way, schizophrenia is not the only disturbance where flat effects can occur. They can also also manifest themselves in humans with specific types of dementia as a result of the changes that occur in the brain.

Since flat effects are part of a larger group of symptoms, the underlying disease or disturbance must be addressed in order for treatment to take place.

references
Díaz Marsá M, Afrontando la Esquizofrenia. Guía para pacientes y familiares. Enfoque Editorial S.C. , 2013.

Cooper, David (1985). Psiquiatría y antipsiquiatría. Paidós Ibérica, Barcelona.