A Manifestation Of Depression

Emotional numbness, though it might refer to a reduced capacity for or experience of emotions, can refer to the miserable state of having no emotions at all.  This empty condition can accompany depression, despite the latter often being primarily conceived of as a deep sadness.  Someone with emotional numbness might very well prefer deep sadness to a total absence of emotion.

Otherwise sound advice for people with the deepest form of emotional numbness resulting from depression (or some other mental disorder or trauma) might treat emotional numbness as if a simple change in lifestyle or attitude will reverse it, when this involves the mere assumption that those suffering from a lack of emotion already have emotions that can be heightened.  If a person feels no emotions, them talking about or focusing on their predicament will probably do nothing whatsoever to alleviate the problem.  In order to remedy an issue, people have to first take the problem seriously and properly identify what it consists of.

Despite some denial, there is nothing logically impossible about experiencing a complete absence of emotions, even if one still experiences basic thoughts, physical sensations, and other sensory perceptions.  Mere outward behaviors can't establish that someone is actually feeling the emotions their facial expressions and gestures seem to suggest.  For example, someone who smiles isn't necessarily feeling fulfilled, content, or happy.  They might only be smiling out of habit or because it is expected of them.  Even if they lack the experience of emotion, they can still be upset, worried, or happy.  This is because being upset, for instance, does not require that one feel upset.

Emotions can certainly impact one's body: feelings of sadness or loss can lead to tears, feelings of anger can lead to a rapid beating of the heart, and feelings of sexual attraction can lead to physiological arousal, to list just a few examples.  However, an emotion is not a bodily reaction.  It is a mental/phenomenological phenomenon.  A rapidly beating heart is not fear; fear is the feeling of being frightened.  A consciousness without a body is entirely capable of feeling emotions, though there is no physical body for those emotions to stimulate.  In the same way, experiencing bodily sensations does not mean that one also has emotions at a given time.

It is possible for someone to feel no emotions, but it is also possible for the brain to be physically stimulated in a way that reawakens emotions as mental experiences.  Even if there was not one current medication or treatment capable of remedying the problem, there would be nothing impossible about a future breakthrough revealing a cure.  Fortunately, there is hope for those who suffer from the various forms of emotional numbness.  An emotionless life would likely lose practically all of its appeal very quickly, yet the emotionally numb are not necessarily doomed to live with a permanent absence of feelings, experiencing nothing but largely blank consciousness.