“flattened affect” is a psych term, and it’s a side effect of several anti-depressants, if I’m not mistaken. I believe it means basically that your emotions go dead. (please correct me if I got anything significantly wrong there)
I’ve been feeling a little emotionally dead. I ask myself what I want to do, and it’s like I’m sulky teenager, hands shoved in my pockets, looking down, kicking a rock, saying “nuttin'”. At least, within the realm of the reasonably possible. It’s rather frustrating. I think it’s arisen in part from swallowing my frustration over various things, including my available free time and social things, and …
Yeah, maybe I just need to bitch more. =)
I feel the same way a lot – but its more of a general apathy or deep fatigue than really being emotionally dead, because inside emotion still exists, I just don’t want to do anything on the outside. If that makes sense.
*poke*
If we lived closer I’d bug you to hang out but… *takes a sniff*
Yup… geography still stinks. Sorry 🙁
I can read your entries though 🙂 Even if you decide to just go haywire and bitch in one of them for paragraph after paragraph.
well, flattened affect — iirc, it has a bunch of meanings kind of tied up in it, but it’s not that your emotions have gone dead *internally*, but that you also don’t display appropriate emotional responses externally. Emotionally dead inside is more a symptom of depression; flat affect is often a symptom of something more serious (schizoaffective disorder, fr’ex). You can have both going on at once, obviously, or an apparent flat affect due to internal emotional death, or whatever.
see, I bet you KNEW I was gonna pick at you. Because I’m picky that way.
But you sound depressed to me. :/ I wish I could help.
You sound depressed, go to the gym dammit. ::kicks you in the ass::
To echo what others have said…yeah, “affect” is your external presentation. So if you were talking to me about how great your life was, but you did it in a monitone and with your hands clasped in your lap the whole time, that would be flattened affect. Or if you were telling me about a traumatic event and your presentation of the story was the same…ditto.
Here’s another question…have activities that you usually enjoy come to not appeal to you anymore?