DISCLAIMER: I am not a qualified health professional. This article describes my personal experience with emotional blunting and antidepressants. If you are seeking advice on your specific situation, please seek help from a medical professional.
Emotional blunting was the first thing to appear when I ‘googled’ how I was feeling after two weeks of taking antidepressants. Other names are reduced affect display and emotional numbness. These names all point to the same thing; a feeling of emotional emptiness, feeling less empathy or motivation, finding it difficult to laugh or cry and reduced levels of emotion, such as excitement or even love. It can also affect your libido and concentration.
It’s suggested that antidepressants can cause this numb-like feeling. They may be working to reduce negative thoughts and emotions, but they can also reduce other levels of emotions too.
Very Well Mind said: “Studies from Oxford University have shown that between 46% and 71% of antidepressant users have experienced emotional blunting during treatment.”
Given such a large percentage, emotional blunting isn’t often spoken about, but why?
For me, I didn’t recognise this feeling I was having until it was pointed out by someone else. Only then, did I remove myself from this emotional blunted bubble to see that my emotion levels had dropped in all senses.
Could it be that people don’t talk about their emotional numbness because they don’t realise it’s happening or that they think this is what ‘normal’ feels like now that they’re taking antidepressants?
It is a side effect from taking antidepressants. However, it can occur without them too. Emotional blunting can happen because of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. According to Healthline, it can occur from “severe levels of acute elevated stress or nervousness…post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be tied to depression and anxiety, can cause you to feel numb, too.”
As I continued to search, I realised that there was a possibility that I’d already experienced this affect over the years of suffering from anxiety and depression, without even realising it was a thing.
At first, I didn’t care that I was emotionless. I believed that the antidepressants were working because I wasn’t feeling those negative thoughts. They made me feel uncaring towards things that I’d usually give my undivided attention to. I couldn’t concentrate on work; I was so unmotivated and didn’t want to socialise. It got to a point where the feelings of love I knew I had for my partner weren’t there anymore. I convinced myself that I wasn’t in love, but I couldn’t understand why. There was a block to those feelings which I knew were in there somewhere, but I couldn’t grasp them. After realising I had this block, I became more aware of it and began hating myself for it. Why am I being like this? Why am I hurting those that I know I do love?
After finishing the first month, I realised that these particular antidepressants weren’t for me for various health reasons such as sleep and appetite. However, I knew I didn’t want to give up. I knew I wanted that slight bit of relief, that antidepressants can bring – having some of the burden taken off me.
So, I persevered. I spoke to my doctor and had them changed. This meant I had to go a week without any medication so that the original ones would leave my system before starting new ones. Within days I felt the feelings I’d been missing but that also meant feeling the ones I didn’t miss at all. Throughout this week of no antidepressants, all I thought about was how I’d be entering into that numb-like feeling again. Would the new antidepressants affect me like the other ones did? Would I withdraw again from family and friends? Would I struggle to get up on a morning and get on with my day? And how long would this last?
I was psyching myself out before I even started them. So, I spoke to my doctor (who has been extremely helpful with me ringing him every week with some new issue or enquiry). He said that if this feeling becomes too hard to deal with, then there are treatments for it, that this is a process and there isn’t a quick fix.
Since first reading about emotional blunting, I hadn’t spoken to a professional about how I was feeling. I had developed this fear that was stopping me from reaching my end goal of feeling emotional relief. Just from a single conversation, I learnt that this emotional numbness can be improved through exercising, socialising and plenty of rest, things I neglected during the numb period because I had no interest in them whereas before, I did.
Speaking to your doctor, no matter how often, asking questions you need to reassure yourself and ease your mind, is ok. Emotional blunting can also be treated by your doctor lowering your antidepressant dosage or being prescribed with another medication to offset the numb feelings, but I knew this wasn’t the route I wanted to go down.
This time, when I started my new antidepressants, I approached it with a completely different mindset. I wasn’t relying on them to make me feel better, I had to continue pushing myself everyday alongside taking them. I continued doing the things I enjoy such as; waking up early, going for a run or doing a workout. Chatting to my partner about random stuff and sitting with my family on an evening to watch a film. All simple things, but for me it made a big difference. I can say now, after a full week on my new antidepressants, that I’m yet to feel numb again. This could be because of the medication itself or it could be the way I’ve gone about it this time. Everyone’s different and will face different effects but this time I’m feeling hopeful.
Words by Maia Flora
I am going with the name Anonymous simply because I feel more comfortable telling my story this way.
I actually found this article while doom/hope scrolling about emotional blunting. While i was at a college summer camp a month ago, I somehow ended up in a trauma-dump where I learned about the term. I’ve been struggling for years to find a term for it, I would always just say “my emotions are weaker than other peoples’.” Which, is definitely true, I don’t feel that some of my emotions are not there at all; they are all still there, just much weaker than I would ever expect. Like for instance it is very hard for me to even feel my eyes start to sting or begin to light water from sadness. Plus, I have issues with actually emoting with my mouth and eyes, which is learned can be a part of emotional blunting. Since learning about this fact, I’ve realized that I have experience this in some form for essentially all of my life.
The strange thing to me is that outside of this blunting, I have never received a diagnosis for anything that could cause emotion blunting, nor have I taken any kind of medication that could cause emotion blunting. And that honestly scares me. Because I’m simply not ready to deal with whatever is causing my emotional blunting. I will officially be a senior in high school in less than a week, so I have no clue how to move forward with the pressure only going to go up from here all the way through college. For what it is worth, I have asked my parents for some kind of access to therapy, and they said that they would look into it for me. I would look myself, but I have no clue what my parents would be willing to pay for a therapist, and would frankly like to leave that issue to them. I hope therapy can help identify the cause of the blunting, or at the very least get my foot in the door on mental health, because not only have I been dealing with emotional blunting, but also loneliness and actually having no friends for most of my elementary school and middle school years, and am starting to realize the knock-on effects of both now.
I don’t really know what I am going for with this comment. I’m just feeling kinda down about this to the point where I needed a place to vent and catalogue my feelings while they are here, and the comments section of this article felt like a good place I guess.