#blunted affect

others not seeing your feelings doesn't make them any less real

it doesn't make you any less human, doesn't make you scary or robotic or put you in the "uncanny valley"

if you can force your outside to match your inner feelings sometimes that doesn't mean you're faking them, and it doesn't make the times you can't do it any less real

• Having "schizophrenic" in our charts makes a lot of medical professionals automatically not believe us. Especially if it is a problem that they can't instantly see themselves. They may think we are either delusional or having some kind of tactile hallucinations. They could see it more as a "psychiatric problem" rather than the physical medical problem that it is.

• If you have flat or blunted affect, they may not believe you, especially if you are describing pain. They have the expectations that you would be screaming, crying, grimacing, etc. When you are straight faced and monotone and say "I am in extreme pain right now" they will likely not believe you. And this paired with medical professionals views of chronic pain just makes them not believe you even more.

• Alexithymia makes describing your symptoms very hard, and even harder to describe how the symptoms affect you. The medical professional goes off of what you tell them, if you are vague or don't have the words, they will not understand you or not believe what you are describing. Either way that will hinder your road to treatment and diagnosis.

• Having memory problems, or trouble keeping track of things can also hinder your care. If you can't remember, or even remember to write down how often a symptom occurs, how long it lasts, how it felt in the moment, and how it impacted your life at the time, they may once again not believe you. Diagnosis often requires some sort of timeline or prevalence of symptoms, and not keeping track of that could keep you from diagnosis.

• They may avoid prescribing pain killers (even if you need it) because the fact that schizophrenic people are more likely to abuse drugs than the general population. And while that fact is true, it doesn't mean that someone in extreme pain does not deserve the right to pain killers just as much as anyone else who needs them.

• Being part of a disenfranchised group while also being schizophrenic can have compounding affects on your physical health treatment. Being low-income, being a person of color, being assigned female at birth, being transgender, being intersex, any other disenfranchised group or any combination of these will impact how you are treated by the healthcare system.

• Fear of medical professionals, or fear of Dr.s offices can impact the quality of your visit. You may feel too frightened to tell them how you really feel, you may just completely avoid going into the building at all. This can happen to anyone but is especially common for schizophrenic people due to our paranoia, inability to advocate for ourselves, lack of self esteem, historical medical abuse or personal experiences with medical abuse. Plus we can have doubts about the quality of our care because of any of the other reasons listed above.

And all this occurs while we as schizophrenic people, are at higher risks of several physical health problems (you can read about it here):

Blunted affect-Beynin Kendini Duygulara Kapatma Durumu

Blunted affect diye psikolojik rahatsızlık var. İnsanlar olarak yaşam boyu pek çok duyguyla baş etmeye çalışıyoruz. Zaman zaman yorulup “Keşke hiçbir şey hissetmeseydim.” dediğimiz olmuştur. Gerçekten de duyguları hissetmeden yaşayan kişiler var. Ancak bu durum bir seçim değil, bir rahatsızlık. Bir tür beyin anomalisi. Çoğunlukla yaşanılan büyük duygusal travmalar bu durumu tetikliyor.…

What is Flat Affect – Its Causes, Symptoms & Treatment

The person lacks non-verbal expressions, like facial expressions, eye contact, hand gestures, etc. Because of which one seems as apathetic or unemotional. They show symptoms like monotonous voice, no or low eye contact, little or no interest, low pitch of voice, facial expression, etc. People with flat affectlacks response to any emotion.  This post will discuss about what is flat affect, its…