Being emotionally stable doesn't mean you never feel anything - or that you are always content. It just means that when you do find yourself in emotionally challenging situations, you respond in a reasonable, expected way while maintaining a sense of composure. In other words, you keep it cool.
Causes of Emotional Instability
These include genetics, mental health history (including past trauma), and exposure to certain stimuli such as drug use and abuse. Some of these risk factors cannot be controlled, while some can only increase the likelihood of developing emotional instability.
An overwhelming fear of abandonment. Extreme anxiety and irritability. Anger. Paranoia and being suspicious of other people.
Emotional instability is difficult to deal with, but it is something that you can learn to overcome. With practice, these tips and techniques can help you deal with emotional dysregulation so you can feel more secure and grounded. If you need additional help, reach out to your healthcare provider for treatment options.
Emotionally stable persons tolerate minor stresses and strains of day to day living without becoming emotionally upset, anxious, nervous, tense, or angry. They are able to maintain composure under minor emotional stress.
Usually, these habits were learned and reinforced long ago in early childhood but never got unlearned. Thankfully, anyone can learn to become more emotionally stable. The key is to identify and eliminate these unhelpful mental habits that cause so much excess emotional suffering.
This trait influences our ability to cope with stress, resist our impulses, and adapt to change. People who score high on emotional stability tend to be calm, composed, and stress-resistant. They're also generally confident and not easily provoked or disheartened by setbacks.
These six dimensions (Outlook, Resilience, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Sensitivity to Context and Attention) are based on a theoretical framework drawn from neuroscientific studies of emotion.
Emotional health is the ability to cope with and manage emotions. It's also the ability to have positive relationships. Mental health is the ability to think clearly and make good decisions. It's also the ability to cope with stress and manage emotions.
Emotional Stability and Relationships
in relationships, it's common for people who lack emotional stability to become fixated upon their partner's previous emotional or sexual life. People can become quick to feel that they might be rejected. If this is left unattended it can have a very bad effect on the relationship.
For many folks with BPD, a “meltdown” will manifest as rage. For some, it might look like swinging from one intense emotion to another. For others, it might mean an instant drop into suicidal ideation. Whatever your experience is, you're not alone.
An inability to cope with problems or daily activities. Feeling of disconnection or withdrawal from normal activities. Unusual or "magical" thinking. Excessive anxiety.
Neuroticism is a personality trait that refers to your emotional stability.
The Big 5 personality traits are extraversion (also often spelled extroversion), agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.
Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression. It is sometimes called emotional instability. Those who score high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress.
Studies say men reach emotional maturity around 43, while 32 years of age is where most women mature.
Feeling emotionally numb commonly arises as an unconscious protective response to feeling difficult emotions, whether due to anxiety, stress or trauma. Experts regard it as a form of dissociation, a process that allows us to unconsciously protect ourselves from emotional pain.
Why People Emotionally Shut Down. Trauma, prolonged stress, anxiety, depression and grief all contribute to feeling emotionally shut down. Nemmers says medication, while lifesaving for many, can also trigger a side effect of emotional numbness.
Emotional detachment may be a temporary reaction to a stressful situation, or a chronic condition such as depersonalization-derealization disorder. It may also be caused by certain antidepressants. Emotional blunting, also known as reduced affect display, is one of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.