Retarded Spock

My wife sometimes refers to me as retarded Spock. It may not be politically correct, but it is apt. She uses this term for when I am suffering from fibrofog and a symptom that is not talked as much about- a total loss of any emotional feelings whatsoever.

This loss of emotions includes what is scientifically referred to as a flat affect. I move less fluidly and more stiffly, I have little expressiveness in my face or vocal inflection, and I can't properly interpret the emotions of others. It might sound reminiscent of the difficulties many autistic people have, but they do not have the same complete flattening of emotions- they just have more difficulty with the interpersonal emotions between people. Love may be confusing, but but they can fully feel happiness and even joy. It is also different from what is believed to be known about the blunted affect common in schizophrenia. It is thought that while their affect is flat, inside the person is still feeling emotions but is unable to express them externally. For me, I feel no emotional response to anything. There is just no connection to any emotional response.

This symptom is one of the most difficult for both me and my wife. She finds it frightening. It is as if I am no longer there, and something else has inhabited me. Something not fully human.

It certainly seems that way to me. I have little sense of myself. I literally feel nothing. I do sense that something important is missing. This should be frightening. I feel nothing about it one way or the other. It simply is what it is. Intellectually, it seems like it would be better to be my old self. I do know that my old self will come back. It is just an experience. In retrospect, I hate it, it is if much of my very essence has been stripped out of me. At the time, though, I have no strong feelings about anything, including my inability to feel.

There is a link between blunted affect and depression. As I have written before, I think the sadness I feel when I am in a deep fog is actually a fairly normal emotion. I have been depressed in the past before having this syndrome, and I don't know that I have experienced any continuing depression in that sense since having this. It is more a feeling of sadness, and who would not be sad under the circumstances? I suppose the two could be linked, but the difference, like all my fibro symptoms, is that they turn on and off like light switches. There is no improvement, they don't get better, they are here, and then they are gone. I can cycle through several symptoms in a day, sometimes overlapping, sometimes separate.

How foggy I am when I lose my emotions can vary. This can be problematic. The last time I tried really hard to think about the experience and what was happening and remember it. I was not thinking particularly clearly, though. I wondered if anything could shock me into having an emotional response. I hit upon the idea of striking my hand very sharply with a hammer. That would normally elicit a very strong emotional response from me, and I thought at the time that it would be an interesting experiment and that I should try it at once. My wife quickly disabused me of that notion.

I don't always go completely flat. The term for a less complete loss is a blunted affect, and I can have that as well. It is sort of a numbness of the emotions rather than a complete loss.

It can be disturbing to others. I have an option that many others do not. I have years of acting training. I know how to consciously modulate my voice. I know how to consciously animate my face. When I was acting, it was like I was a puppet master animating myself. The emotions expressed had little to do with how I actually felt- I was never a method actor. This is similar. It takes some effort, but I can put on an affect, although I think it is more effective with people who do not know me.

What I do find under both circumstances, whether a complete loss or just a numbing down, is that making decisions becomes almost impossible. A simple decision like what I want for lunch is extremely difficult. The more open ended the question, the more impossible it is to answer.

If I am at a restaurant, it is impossible for me to think of what I would like. I don't feel one way or the other about it. I may be hungry, but I have no desire for a particular type of food. I make my decision on whatever I had last time and whether I remember liking it. If my memory was positive, then that is what I would order.

Is there a link between a loss of emotion and an inability to make decisions? Maybe. People who lack emotions because of brain injuries often have difficulty making any decisions at all

We think that we make decisions using the intellectual part of our brain. In fact, we never turn to the intellect first. When we need to make a decision, we turn to the emotional part of our brain first. Why? Because this is much faster than sorting through all of the facts. We check to see how we assess things emotionally first, where how we feel about any particular topic is already stored. Sifting through conditionals to come to a decision is a lot slower.

Mounting evidence for this comes from brain imaging studies like those done by University College, London. When it came to make decisions, it was the emotional parts of the brain that lit up first.

I first came across this idea while reading Jonah Lehrer's book How We Decide. I found it a fascinating read.