Anxiety has an intriguing way of dealing with people. In fact, most persons find it difficult handling this individual due to the impact he has on their performance. With this in mind, it is worth acknowledging the fact he makes one feel uneasy, worried and afraid of what is about to happen. He blends in with the emotions and physical sensations that we constantly experience while we are nervous or worried about something. In most cases, having to deal with this person is quite an unpleasant experience that requires a great personality to overcome. However, when anxiety and other types of emotions overwhelm the consciousness of an individual, disconnecting from the situation is an effective response people embrace. Popularly known as being numb, this condition encompasses one’s dissociation from feelings such as hope, pain, nervousness and grief. Unlike anxiety, having this psychological condition makes one immune to pain and other demeaning emotions. This paper evaluates the causes of emotional numbness among people and the role of anxiety in its development. For a fact, anxiety has a great contribution in the development of emotional numbness by triggering conditions such as stress, grief, depression, seclusion and trauma.
When people find it difficult dealing with stress, the development of emotional numbness is triggered. According to Marche (n.p), this condition makes one believe that it is impossible to deal with life challenges and, as a result, makes them feel nervous. With a heightened level of anxiety, highly stressed individuals become apathetic and may resolve to use alcohol or drugs to drift away from the problems they experience. In the process, they tend to disconnect themselves from experiencing emotions such as sadness and despair. As such, disconnection from demeaning emotions from the environment makes such people numb. People constantly develop stress when they fail to meet their expectations or those from other people. The fear of how the society might respond to their inadequacies triggers the development of emotional stress. The impact of anxiety in the aftermath of this situation is quite significant since it makes the affected people feel worried, uneasy or afraid of what might happen. Consequently, stress is a lead causer of emotional numbness.
Experiencing grief after losing a loved one often leads people into choosing to be numb. In fact, the fear one develops upon realizing that their loved one would not be part of their life greatly contributes to their emotional shut down. According the Atlantic (n.p) people experiencing grief at any time choose to psychologically dissociate themselves from their environment to avoid pain and disappointment. During the first phase of grief – shock and avoidance – people become emotionally numb because of the pain they experience. During this period, the affected individuals find it difficult coming to terms with what has happened as they are in constant denial. By failing to acknowledge reality, handling their emotional breakdown is lesser challenging to them, as it would have been if they were emotionally conscious. In the second stage of grief – acute grieving – the emotional numbness slowly goes away as the individual emotionally acknowledges the situation. Therefore, grief contributes to the development of emotional numbness among individuals.
Depression makes people feel the need to choose to dissociate from any emotional attachment to a situation. According to the Guardian (n.p) emotionally negative events have negative impacts on one’s behavior thereby leading to depression. During this period, affected individuals experience an alteration to their normal emotional state. For instance, people constantly feel like being sad or crying to make what they are experiencing fades away. During this period, depressed individuals have diminished pleasure levels in any engaging activity, as they may feel unloved by other people or unworthy. This situation has a negative impact to their self-esteem and it may trigger unnecessary guilt in most cases. As such, the development of emotional numbness is imminent in such cases. People willingly chose to be emotionally numb when they are experiencing the mixed emotions caused by depression such as anxiety. Consequently, individuals chose to be emotionally numb to make it easier dealing with the negative impacts of depression.
Poor social connection among people or seclusion leads one into being emotionally numb. According to the Atlantic (n,p), not being compassionate to other people makes them feel unloved and unappreciated. As such, they retaliate by distancing themselves from other people emotionally. This condition can be described as being emotionally numb. Morton (507) argues that people often feel numb because they are disconnected from other people. In fact, the lack of constructive emotions such as joy and happiness that can be achieved through social interaction alters limits one’s spectrum of emotions. As a result, people become anxious of what might have happened if the situation would have been different or if the level of their seclusion is consistent. Individuals feel trapped and afraid of making decisions that might have a negative impact on their social wellbeing. Consequently, being emotionally numb is a common among such individuals.
After experiencing a traumatic event, people choose to go emotionally numb to make it easy to deal with the situation. According to Morton (506), traumatic events such as natural disasters or sexual assaults cause disturbing emotions. After surviving such occurrences, the victims may experience an anxiety disorder popularly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In such cases, the patients have constant intrusive memories similar to flashbacks that remind them of the difficult situation they are struggling to overcome. The two common emotive responses that develop form this situation are emotional arousal and emotional numbing. The latter causes the affected person to dissociate themselves emotionally from their environment while the former enhances people’s response to situations such as being easily startled. In the emotional numbness scenario, the affected individuals tend to avoid recalling or thinking about the traumatic events they were involved in. In the process, they emotionally detach themselves from incidents they ought to be associated with. Consequently, traumatic events augment the development of emotional numbness.
People chose to be emotionally numb because of many factors. As it has been explained above, stress, depression, trauma, grief and seclusion lead one into numbness as a means of coping with the situation. However, it is imperative to note that anxiety plays a major role in causing the abovementioned emotions. This situation is largely accredited to the fact that it triggers the development of emotions that lead to emotional numbness. People, therefore, chose to avoid emotional breakdowns by embracing this condition. By distancing one’s self from other people and abusing drugs, it becomes easier to deal with challenging emotions since these activities heighten the level of emotional numbness. As such, anxiety has a great contribution in the development of emotive numbness by triggering conditions such as stress, grief, depression, seclusion and trauma.
Works Cited
Etchells, Pete. "Declinism: Is The World Actually Getting Worse? | Pete Etchells". the Guardian. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Aug. 2016.
Marche, Stephen. "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?". The Atlantic. N.p., 2016. Web. 5 Aug. 2016.
Morton, Adam. Imaginary Emotions. Print.
