Emotional blunting can be temporary, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours at a time. It can also occur over the long term, from months to years. It all depends on the underlying cause. Experiencing emotional blunting may affect your relationships and how you feel about yourself and the world.
For most people, antidepressants are the main cause of emotional blunting. In most cases, feelings of numbness go away when you stop taking the antidepressant that is causing you to feel this way.
One of the widely-reported side effects of SSRIs is 'blunting', where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to. Between 40-60% of patients taking SSRIs are believed to experience this side effect.
Though the symptoms of depression have decreased, there may be a sense that other emotional responses – laughing or crying, for example – are more difficult to experience. This is termed “emotional blunting,” which is the experience of dulled emotional states caused by an antidepressant.
Emotional numbing is a common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Particularly Complex PTSD, (C-PTSD) when it can also be accompanied by memory suppression.
Antidepressants can cause changes in neurotransmitter levels and brain function; however, these changes are typically reversible once the medication is stopped.
4 According to the research, the antidepressants most commonly associated with emotional blunting are: Selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) such as Cymbalta (duloxetine), Pristiq (desvenlafaxine), and Effexor XR (venlafaxine)
Emotional blunting is a condition present in many psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia (26) and post-traumatic stress disorder (27). As its name suggests, emotional blunting refers to a sense of numbing of both positive and negative emotions.
Some believe it is unlikely that antidepressants cause any permanent changes to brain chemistry in the long term. The evidence seems to indicate that these medications cause brain changes that only persist while the medication is being taken or in the weeks following withdrawal.
For people with chronic or severe depression, medication may be needed on a long-term basis. In these cases, antidepressants are often taken indefinitely. That is, in part, because depression is not an illness that can be cured.
Emotional detachment can also be "emotional numbing", "emotional blunting", i.e., dissociation, depersonalization or in its chronic form depersonalization disorder.
Feeling empty is a complex emotion often caused by physical, psychological, and social factors. These may include the loss of a loved one, a major life change, depression, anxiety, unresolved trauma, and poor relationships. Feeling empty may also be caused by disconnection, loneliness, and boredom.
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.
“This means that the brain structure of patients with serious clinical depression is not as fixed as we thought, and we can improve brain structure within a short time frame, around 6 weeks,” said Eric Ruhe, from Rabdoud Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands .
Research published in CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics found that strength training, aerobic activity, and mind-body exercise, such as yoga, can reduce depressive symptoms and induce neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to repair itself.
Some depressed people experience difficulty focusing, learning, remembering, understanding, and more. It can be distressing to notice your mental abilities declining. The good news is these cognitive symptoms tend to improve with treatment. The bad news is they usually don't disappear.
When it comes to antidepressants, the types of “personality” changes are actually side effects of the medication - like agitation, irritability, an increase in anxiety, an increase in extroversion, and more.
Antidepressant therapy can exhibit effects on neuroplasticity and reverse the neuroanatomical changes found in depressed patients.
It is well known that harms caused by SSRIs can be long-lasting [18] and there are indications that they can even be permanent, e.g. for sexual disturbances [39, 40]. Withdrawal symptoms are also drug harms, and they can also persist for a long time [18].
In short: Yes, antidepressants can impact relationships.