Emotion disorders: causes, symptoms and treatment. Classification and types of emotions

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

A person's life is full of events, and each of them is accompanied by certain emotions. Everyone at least once felt incredible euphoria, incomprehensible sadness, the joy of meeting or complete apathy. This is fine. Every emotion that is caused by environmental influences is a norm. But often an individual has a violation of emotions, when he unconsciously begins to fall from one extreme to another.

Emotions need to be felt

How and when a person displays their range of emotions often depends on their environment and the behavioral patterns associated with that environment. Not everyone is able to make a non-standard, sometimes even insane act. Agree, it’s not so easy to stand in the middle of the street and shout something at the top of your voice, because every person initially has social behavior patterns that do not provide for eccentric actions that do not fit into any framework.

Such stereotypes and restrictions lead to the fact thata large number of unexpressed emotions accumulate inside. Naturally, emotional stress grows every day and a person becomes prone to mental disorders. But that's not all. If you hold back emotions for too long, then after some time a person will simply forget how to express them, and they will not have a free outlet. From the inability to express one's feelings, a violation of emotions is formed, which entails the discord of the entire psychophysical system of the body.

Emotions and mood

In psychology, emotions are a subtle feeling that constantly depends on a huge number of immanent and external factors, and needs to be realized by the individual and carefully worked out. In scientific terms, this is an integral manifestation of the altered tone of neuropsychic activity. V. Myasishchev suggested that the entire list of emotions can be conditionally divided into three large groups:

1. Reactions that are response experiences to the stimuli that provoked them.
2. States. When the neuro-psychological tone changes and is maintained in an altered state.
3. Relationships. There is a natural connection between a person's emotion and a certain person, object or process.

In psychology, emotions are the main regulators of the body's mental and bodily life, which can activate psychological defense methods and help to adapt.

In general, all emotions are aimed at clearly reflecting the inner, mental state of a person, because they often show much more thanthe words. If you exclude the entire list of emotions from a person’s daily life, then everything that surrounds him will turn into a dull reality that simply is. Conversations will become monotonous, meaningless and uninteresting, and people will completely cease to understand each other. The emotional coloring of the dialogues makes it possible to understand the immanent state of a person and find common ground with him. Plus, without emotional expression, art would be meaningless.

Emotions also affect mood. And vice versa: if the mood changes, emotions change. Very often, an increase in emotions can lead to conflicts with others. Violation of feelings is characterized by the fact that a person suddenly begins to rush from one extreme to another. He becomes emotionally impotent, acquiring various mental disorders.

Exploring emotions

At all times, in order to recognize an emotion, people looked at facial expressions and listened to the emotional coloring of speech. Back in the USSR, techniques were developed that help to recognize standard emotions. These include anger, joy, disgust, surprise, sadness, fear. Today, there are various physical and psychological indicators of the manifestation of emotions.

Physiological indicators of changes in the emotional background are fluctuations in pressure, heartbeat, skin reaction, temperature, psychosomatic indicators. If a person is worried or fearful, these numbers may go up or down.

As for the technique of recognizing emotions by facial expressions and gestures, thenit was created in the middle of the twentieth century. Until now, there are disputes between psychologists and physiologists about how effective this technique is. Some gestures of facial expressions can be imposed by society, some - a person can consciously control. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to interpret the violation of emotions with the help of physiognomy.

Psychological methods are aimed at determining the immanent state of a person. For this, various tests and questionnaires are usually used that reveal the emotional characteristics of the individual. Depending on the answers, it is possible to give a more definite description of the psychological state.

You can also determine the violation of the development of emotions using a special diary. A person should write down in it all the emotions that he experiences throughout the day for later analysis. This helps to identify the state of the emotional sphere of a person. If it is broken, then all physiological and psychological data will have unsatisfactory indicators.

When a person is at odds with himself, it is extremely difficult for him to give an objective assessment of situations or people. He is concentrated on his inner experiences and very often falls into a hysterical state. As a result, he may experience such mental states as:

• Stress.
• Frustration.
• Crisis.

Stress

Stress conditions can become sources of various mental illnesses. Stress is usually understood as a strong emotional tension and / or shock that occurs as a result of unpleasantexperiences. In the 30s of the last century, the Canadian pathophysiologist G. Selye studied the effect of stress on the body's activity. He formed the doctrine of the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). In general, the scientist singled out two reactions to the influence of the environment:

1. Specific. A person develops a specific disease with specific symptoms.
2. Non-specific. In conditions of a general adaptation syndrome, any disease can be traced. This reaction has three phases:

• The first phase. Anxiety. Under the influence of stress, the body changes its basic characteristics.
• Second phase. Resistance. The body begins to resist the actions of the stressor, anxiety decreases and the body tries with all its might to adapt to the changed conditions.
• Third phase. Exhaustion. Prolonged exposure to a stressor depletes the body. A person has anxiety again, only in this case it is already irreversible, diseases of the endogenous type begin to develop.

A person is not able to infinitely adapt to environmental conditions, sooner or later his body will “wear out” and all possible emotional disorders will appear. Despite all this, stress is not always harmful, because it is only thanks to it that the mind and body are trained.

Frustration

This is another specific emotional state that occurs when a person cannot meet their needs. This condition is characterized by:

1. Having a plan that a person should have acted from the beginning.
2. The presence of an insurmountable obstacle that prevents the achievement of the ultimate goal.

In such situations, a person can manifest himself either as a mature person or as an infantile one. In the first case, the individual will become more active in achieving his goal and his motivation will increase significantly. In the second, the individual will behave unconstructively. This can manifest itself in aggressive behavior or avoiding the problem.

Crisis

This concept originated and developed in America. At this time, clinics and mental he alth centers are beginning to be created in the country. A crisis is usually understood as a state that occurs when a person encounters an obstacle on his way to a goal, and cannot overcome it for a long time with the usual methods.

At first, a person has a period of disorganization. During this time, the person makes many abortive attempts to resolve the problem. He eventually achieves a form of adaptation that best suits his interests.

Just like stress, a crisis carries a sanogenic and pathogenic component. The individual who managed to cope with the crisis acquires a new form of adaptation in difficult situations. If this does not happen, then symptoms of emotional disturbance begin to appear.

There are several types of crises:

1. Crisis of development. Usually triggered by situations such as starting a new school, retiring, getting married, etc.
2. Random crises. They are spontaneous and unexpected. Is it unemployment, a natural disaster or a certain social status.
3. Typical crises. Events that happen sooner or later in any family: death, the birth of a newborn, etc.

Each of these crises has its own characteristics that are unique to them. Accordingly, different methods of assistance and preventive measures are selected.

Symptomatics

The symptoms of emotional disturbance are quite extensive. Various emotional fluctuations can lead to stressful situations, appropriate long-term actions and cause irreparable harm to the human psyche. If the general emotional background has suddenly changed, then this may be the first signal of the development of mental illness.

Emotions arise and are realized as a result of the functioning of the cerebral cortex, autonomic and motor systems. Therefore, it is possible to observe a violation of emotions in local brain lesions and a general malfunction in the functioning of the body, and the influence of external factors only exacerbates this condition. As a result, various syndromes appear, which contribute to further disorder of the emotional sphere.

Such syndromes include such positive and negative emotions as:

• Depression is a persistent depressed state of the individual, which is accompanied by negative thoughts, melancholy and sadness for no reason. All events that occur around the patient, he perceives with a sense of hopelessness, which can lead to suicide. This condition usually occurswith hypertension or hepatitis.
• Mania. This syndrome is characterized by general high spirits, motor and mental arousal, which is usually expressed by speech and gestures. A person is characterized by the predominance of lower emotions: he ceases to feel the measure in food and sex. Self-esteem rises to real megalomania.
• Dysphoria. A person daily experiences aggression towards everything that surrounds him. This can be expressed in a sullen mood, outbursts of anger, irritability, discontent or rage. This condition is characteristic of temporal lobe epilepsy.
• Euphoria. Antipode of dysphoria. The person is serene, feels completely happy, does not pay any attention to problems and worries. Even if he has visible troubles, a person sincerely believes that he lives quite well. He simply looks at the world through rose-colored glasses, perceives even tragic situations with joy and optimism.
• Ecstasy. It is believed that this is the highest degree of manifestation of delight and admiration. In a state of increasing emotional tension, a feeling of enthusiasm blurs the boundaries between the real and the fictional world. The person goes into a trance.
• Alarm. The person is emotionally disturbed. Subconsciously, he begins to worry about tragedies or catastrophes that may occur. Usually this anxiety is not caused by anything and is provoked by a twisted life situation. The feeling of anxiety is characteristic of somatic and nervous disorders.
• Emotional lability. Emotionally labile individuals have an unstable mood. In five minutesa person can go from perky laughter to all-consuming rage. Such people are sentimental and sensitive to even minor manifestations of emotions from the environment.

Classification and types of emotions in various mental illnesses

Emotional disorders are characteristic of people with mental illness. People suffering from neurosis note painful emotional-affective reactions and emotional states. Those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder have increased sensitivity and anxiety. For those suffering from hysteria, the lability of emotions and impulsiveness are characteristic. Neurasthenics suffer from irritability, fatigue and weakness. All types of neuroses are characterized by reduced frustration tolerance.

Psychopathic patients are prone to pathological emotional-affective reactions, for epileptoid, hysteroid and hyperthymic psychopathy emotional-aggressive outbursts are characteristic. For those who suffer from asthenic, psychasthenic and sensitive psychopathy, low mood, despair, lethargy and melancholy are characteristic. But in schizoid psychopaths, there is a dissociation of emotional manifestations that can be described in one simple expression:

Fragile as glass to themselves and dull as wood to others.

Epilepsy is characterized by dysphoria. Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy often suffer from fears, anxiety, anger; much less often, they can observe feelings of "enlightenment" and pleasant sensations in different organs. sufferingOrganic lesions of the central nervous system note emotional-affective reactions, irritability, euphoria, anxiety, "incontinence of emotions".

If we take into account the above types of emotions, then the category of relationships suffers most from the discord of emotions. They become pathologically distorted, a person may not understand what is happening to him: at one moment he feels normal (that is, he experiences neutral emotions), and at another second he feels all-consuming hatred or jealousy.

In a normal mental state, a person feels the need for activity and strives to complete the work that has been started. If some emotional pathologies arise, then a person may be haunted by affective outbursts, he will refuse to work, his muscles will tense up and obvious vegetovascular reactions will appear.

Children

Emotional problems haunt not only adults but also children. As you know, the emotional sphere develops in a person from birth, and young children are much more receptive than adults. As a result, the child's emotional disturbance may be more pronounced. Unfortunately, parents do not attach importance to the general depression of the child and write off uncontrollable behavior or unwillingness to do homework as personality traits and simple laziness.

In an adult, emotional instability is expressed in a standard way: it is sadness, melancholy, tension, unmotivated joy and mood lability. In children, this diagnosis is latent, andmost often the child simply begins to suffer from pain in the lungs, heart and other organs. These are psychosomatic disorders. The child begins to lose his appetite, he has problems with the gastrointestinal tract, mental development is inhibited. He does not sleep well at night, sweating appears.

Violation of emotions in preschool children is manifested in anger, unmotivated aggression, fictitious fears. If a child has organic lesions during childbirth or as a result of some other trauma, then in the first few years this creates irreversible changes in the emotional background.

By genetics, children are given characteristics such as temperament, balance, adaptation and mobility. All other emotions are acquired in the process of socialization, just like their normal functioning.

The development of a child is greatly influenced by his environment, especially peers. Usually children tend to be like each other, to have the same interests and views. For growing children, this is normal, but it is worth watching to see if the child is turning into a conformist.

Violation of emotions in children can be divided into two types of reactions:

• Pathological. Mental reactions, which are expressed in a change in behavior, which leads to a change in social adaptation. Usually manifest as neurotic disorders. A significant role here is played by behavioral and psychological factors such as family conflicts, improper upbringing and non-pedagogical behavior of teachers. Symptoms are displayed in continuous violationemotional sphere.
• Characterological. This reaction is due to the impact of a certain microenvironment on the behavior of children. It has a precise focus, does not violate social adaptation and does not have concomitant physiological disorders. Violations are manifested in mental deviations, which are expressed in low self-esteem, emotional immaturity, speech and cognitive disorders. There is a general intellectual underdevelopment.

How to manage emotions?

Exploring the emotional sphere of a person, psychologists, physiologists and psychotherapists have developed several techniques to correct changes in the emotional background in children and adults:

• Activity approach. This is where play therapy for children comes into play. Most often, children with emotional disabilities have a lack of play. The lack of active games negatively affects mental and mental development. If the child will work out various situations from life in the game process, then he will quickly adapt to real life conditions.
• Psychodynamic approach. The weakening of emotions occurs due to the resolution of internal conflict. A person must learn to understand himself and his needs, to be aware of the life experience gained.
• Ethnofunctional therapy. Under laboratory conditions, the duality of the subject is artificially created so that a person can realize his problems by looking at himself from the outside. Having the opportunity to transfer their emotions to an ethnic projection, a personis fully aware and passes through itself. Since managing emotions is not always easy, ethnofunctional therapy is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Today, problems in the emotional sphere are common among all segments of the population, of all ages. There is no person who in the conditions of modern life does not experience stress, fatigue and irritability. Some social conditions tell us to hide our feelings, others appeal to the excessive manifestation of the entire list of emotions. With such cognitive dissonance, it is not surprising that the public suffers from emotional discord.