It may stem from an unwillingness or an inability to connect with others. There are two general types. In some cases, you may develop emotional detachment as a response to a difficult or stressful situation. In other cases, it may result from an underlying psychological condition.
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.
As a condition marked by lack of feelings, it can be difficult to recognize the symptoms of alexithymia. Since this condition is associated with an inability to express feelings, an affected person might come across as being out of touch or apathetic.
What Causes Emotional Unavailability? While there is no one explanation for emotional unavailability, it can be caused by a number (or combination) of factors. These include attachment styles developed in childhood, history in relationships, trauma, mental health conditions, and one's circumstances and priorities.
Schizoid personality disorder is one of many personality disorders. It can cause individuals to seem distant and emotionless, rarely engaging in social situations or pursuing relationships with other people.
Emotional Detachment Symptoms
Difficulty showing empathy to others. Difficulty sharing emotions or opening up to others. Difficulty committing to a relationship or person. Feeling disconnected from others.
Emotional shutdown can occur within relationships where one person feels they cannot communicate with the other person well. One therapist, John Gottman, describes this practice as stonewalling.
Shyness, introversion, and social anxiety may make people put the brakes on connecting with others. If a person has poor self-esteem or mental health issues, they may also struggle to connect. If this sounds like you, you may need some extra support to start feeling your best.
You may push people away because you don't feel like you're worth others' time and energy. This problem relates to low self esteem and self compassion. Low self esteem can stem from other mental health struggles, like depression or anxiety. It can also trace back to your childhood, when your inner voice was shaped.
Emotional detachment can be part of healthy emotion regulation, but it can be harmful if it leads to interpersonal problems. Trauma, mental health conditions, and medication side effects can all cause emotional detachment. Help for emotional detachment depends on the individual, but may include talk therapy.
Certain people have a harder time socializing or opening up than others because they are constantly in fear of people's judgment or they might not be as interested in social interaction as their peers. These feelings can begin to negatively impact a person's mental health.
Detached personality type individuals become alienated to others. These individuals put some emotional distance between them and other individuals. They do not communicate with others and try to become self-sufficient. They do not like socializing and long-term social obligations.
Summary: Detachment is a common symptom of panic disorder and severe anxiety. People can detach emotionally from friends, family, and life, or they can struggle with detachment as a symptom itself – feeling as though they are outside of their body or living in an alternative reality.
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.
Feelings of Detachment After Trauma May Signal Worse Mental Health Outcomes. Many people experience dissociation, or a lack of connection between their thoughts, memory, and sense of identity, during or after a traumatic experience.
Pushing people away again and again is a frequent sign of mental health problems such as depression and trauma.
People with avoidant personality disorder have chronic feelings of inadequacy and are highly sensitive to being negatively judged by others. Though they would like to interact with others, they tend to avoid social interaction due to the intense fear of being rejected by others.
People say they feel too different, shy, depressed, anxious, or insecure to connect meaningfully. Others find it difficult to trust people, or their lives are just too busy to make enough time for their friendships. Even physical ailments make some people reluctant to open themselves up to others.