Emotional instability can occur in both the mentally ill and in healthy people, but it is most clearly manifested in some mental diseases.
Also, the ability to control emotions and respond adequately to situations is adversely affected by stress, psycho-emotional overwork, natural hormonal changes.
Stability or sustainability
Emotional stabilityor, in other words, emotional stability - This is the normal state of the human psyche, in which a person responds adequately to external stimuli.
His psycho-emotional reactions approximately correspond to the severity of the situation in which he fell.
For example, an emotionally stable person won't cry without a breakif he has burnt breakfast.
Strong emotions can cause only serious situations in him, say, the news of the death of a loved one.
Emotionally stable people:
- do not feel irritability without a good reason;
- able to control emotions;
- can make informed decisions, they are not peculiar to impulsivity;
- know how to ignore minor troubles.
Thereby man with a stable psyche is pleasant in communication, not inclined to affective reactions and is a good worker: minor difficulties do not affect his ability to make right decisions, concentrate and be productive.
But theory and practice are two different things. people are extremely unstable creaturestherefore, the border between norm and pathology is difficult to find. Each person has a set of features that affect how he will react to certain situations.
Factorsaffecting the ability of mentally healthy people to respond to stimuli:
- Education, including gender. Each family has its own ideas about how to show emotions, and parents pass them on to their children. For example, if a person received the installation in childhood that emotions should be exercised with extreme restraint, then in adulthood he will look more relaxed (however, such people are more likely to suffer from certain mental diseases, and stresses act on them more strongly because using emotions). Also, children copy the behavior of adults, and the child with restrained parents will look more relaxed. In many countries around the world, caregivers and parents continue to educate boys and girls differently, so boys, growing up, behave more restrained, and girls, on the contrary, more often show emotions openly.
- The amount of stress. Systematic stresses can impair a person’s ability to adequately respond to stimuli. If such a person does not fall into an environment that allows him to recover, he may develop neurosis, depression and other mental illnesses.
- Age. Because of the imperfections of their nervous systems, children and adolescents are unable to respond to stimuli in the same way as adults. Surely, many people noticed how quickly the mood in children was changing: five minutes ago he was sobbing violently, and now he is smiling and playing with a toy.
The younger the child, the more pronounced this feature, and this is normal.
- The presence or absence of the opportunity to rest normally. Chronic lack of sleep, lack of rest, breaks between classes, extremely negatively affect the mental state of a person. Also, the ability to adequately respond to different situations is negatively affected by hunger.
- Physical health. Various organic brain damage, including injuries and tumor processes, affect a person’s emotional responses. Also affected by violations in the organs of the endocrine system, chronic pain and so on.
- Accentuations of character. Accentuations, despite their characteristics, still remain within the framework of the mental norm. Some types of accentuation, such as hysteroid, are always accompanied by emotional instability.
- Natural hormonal changes. In each person's life, there are periods during which the body is rebuilt, producing more active hormones that can also affect mental well-being. The most pronounced changes in hormonal levels are observed during adolescence, as well as during and after pregnancy. Emotional lability during these periods is completely normal.
All mental diseases in one way or another affect the sphere of emotions, especially those that belong to the group of affective disorders: depression, bipolar and manic disorders.
Despite the fact that a psycho-emotionally stable person is better able to control himself, Equalize the ability to restrain emotions to emotional stability should not: when a person is restrained, angry at himself for not being calm enough, his psyche suffers.
Psychoemotional stability is achieved by a combination of many factors, the key of which is the lack of mental illness (which can develop if a person constantly holds back emotions).
Therefore, it is important to find methods that can eliminate internal stress and do not cause a negative reaction from others. And not too zealoustrying to maintain external calm.
Instability or Instability
Emotional Instability - the opposite of psycho-emotional stability.
A psychoemotional unstable person reacts to stimuli inadequately, he is more difficult to concentrate, and any, even a minor, trouble can knock him out of a rut, degrade performance.
Psycho-emotional instability can be expressed:
- weakly;
- moderately;
- strong.
Affection - This is the so-called emotional impulsivity: a person reacts violently to any stimulus, it is difficult for him to control himself, and his mood can change to the opposite in a very short time for no apparent reason.
Also, affectivity is about the same as increased emotional irritability.
Emotional swing - Another term closely related to the topic of emotions in psychology. This is how a state is called, in which a person in a short time changes his mood and attitude towards any people, and this is repeated many times.
Emotional swings are a common method used by manipulators and abyusera. They alternate a good relationship with a bad one, hurt them, and then they give compliments and give gifts so that the victim does not dare to take any action on his own salvation.
In such situations, the victim gets into an emotional swing.: today she hates abyuzer, scared, upset and begins to think about how to get away from him, and the next day she gets a ton of sincere looking apologies, compliments, gifts and begins to doubt that she felt yesterday, and her mental state is improving. This contributes to the formation of dependence.
Psychologists and psychotherapists use psycho-emotionally unstable patients scale of arousal.
In order to understand which part of the scale the patient is on, they offer him to undergo tests that reveal the degree of his instability. There are many such tests, but the most famous are the following:
- the technique "Emotional excitability - resistance", created by Smirnov B. N.;
- The “temper scale” questionnaire developed by Kovaleva P.A. and Ilyin E.P.;
- test "Characteristics of emotion", focused on self-test, created E. P. Ilyin.
Such tests can help not only specialists, but also people who are not familiar with psychology and psychotherapy, since they can help to understand how strongly the instability is expressed and whether it is worth visiting a psychotherapist.
Emotionally unstable personality disorder, which in some sources may be called emotional-volitional instability syndrome, is a type of personality disorder in which one of the key symptoms is the emotional instability of an individual.
Main symptoms of the disorder:
- volitional violations, due to which a person poorly controls himself and his emotions;
- lack of balance, haste in decision making;
- lack of desire to take into account the consequences of decisions taken;
- aggressiveness, frequent outbursts of anger.
The first signs of the disease are observed in childhood and transition. There are two types of disorders:
- impulsive;
- borderline.
Behavior and emotional state control is carried out with the help of normochemical medications and antipsychotic drugs.
Symptomatology
The main symptoms of psycho-emotional instability:
- Impaired ability to control emotions. It is extremely difficult for an unstable person to restrain himself during an emotional outburst, he may begin to behave inadequately.
- Frequent mood swings. At the same time, the severity of differences is extremely strong: from joy, feelings of happiness, peace of mind, to perceptible depression, accompanied by the desire to cry, to stand idle.
- Increased tearfulness, sometimes unreasonable. Even a minor nuisance such as a burnt breakfast causes tears. Also, such people say that they have begun to react more strongly to the sad news, the tragic moments from films, books.
- Difficulty concentrating. If you bring every little thing to tears, it really is difficult to concentrate.
- Irritability, anger. Any disagreement with the opinion, conflict with someone cause a bright emotional reaction: a person can break, say rudeness, even go to physical violence. More typical of men.
- Impulsiveness. Decisions are made too hastily, thoughtlessly. This is especially noticeable during short-term "outbreaks" (which may contain both an aggressive element and a depressive element). A psycho-emotionally unstable person may even commit suicide at such moments.
The set of symptoms can vary and is highly dependent on the causes of this condition. If the imbalance is associated with mental illness, signs characteristic of such a disease are added to the above symptoms.
Causes
The main causes of the violation:
- abundance of stress and psycho-emotional shocks;
- hormonal changes in the body;
- endocrine disruption (for example, anger, aggressiveness and impulsiveness in men may indicate an excess of testosterone);
- the presence of organic brain damage;
- mental disorders: neurosis, various types of depression, bipolar disorder, manic disorder, personality disorders and many others;
- the effect of certain character accentuations;
- chronic fatigue, lack of sleep, hunger, malnutrition (including various extreme diets);
- side effects of certain medications and psychotropic substances;
- personal characteristics;
- congenital defects of the nervous system;
- lack of vitamins and minerals;
- some somatic diseases affecting mental health.
What strengthens?
Factors that aggravate psycho-emotional instability:
- stress;
- lack of sleep, malnutrition, hunger, lack of rest;
- psycho-emotional shocks;
- various somatic diseases (worsening of general well-being may lead to aggravation of the symptoms of the disorder);
- poor nutrition;
- lack of treatment of mental illness, if any;
- being in a restless, uncomfortable environment, forced communication with unpleasant, toxic people.
Psychology tips
How to become an emotionally stable person? Key recommendations:
- try to avoid stress;
- communicate as little as possible with unpleasant people who cause you inconvenience;
- when the first problems with mental health appear, contact a psychologist or psychotherapist;
- undergo prophylactic examinations regularly;
- eat well;
- try to get enough rest;
- often do what brings you pleasure;
- ensure regular exercise (exercise relieves internal stress well);
- be in the open air more often.
It is useful to do yoga and meditate: it will improve mental well-being and reduce the level of internal stress.
If psychoemotional instability is too strong, need to go to the hospital to make sure it is not related to somatic diseases. If a connection with somatics was not found, it is important to come to an appointment with a psychotherapist.
9 signs of an emotionally unstable person:
