Love often comes suddenly, but it is always initiated by a stirring in the heart, which is often triggered by some kind of emotional response.
Such a response does not always require the other person to make an earth-shattering sacrifice or a tear-jerking dedication.
Sometimes it can be caused by a small thing, such as handing over an umbrella on a rainy day, encountering a smile in a moment of despair, or extending a helping hand in a moment of embarrassment.
Being moved emotionally is an important way of encountering love.
However, with the accelerated pace of modern life, many people are busy with their lives and work. Their hearts are filled with too many things, and they gradually become numb, making it more difficult for them to be moved emotionally.
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People with emotional apathy syndrome are often filled with loneliness and desolation, and they tend to hold an attitude of mistrust and dissatisfaction toward the outside world.
They are skeptical of touching events and even refuse to be moved. Such people usually do not think they are sick because they only feel that they are not easily emotionally moved. Therefore, this condition is often overlooked.
“Emotional apathy syndrome” became widely known after World War I when many soldiers suffered from this psychological disorder due to war injuries.
In 1950, the American novelist John Dos Passos first pointed out the “humanistic reasons” for this psychological disorder: “apathy” is the instinctive response of individual organisms to too much or too complex survival or environmental pressures.
According to Jim Fallon, a well-known brain neurologist in the United States, the orbital cortex of the frontal lobe, which is involved in social and ethical cognitive functions (including social interaction, emotional control, motivation, and responsibility), is a key organ.
If it is damaged or underdeveloped during childhood, it may lead to the failure of the patient’s ethical and moral judgment functions, and thus lead to “emotional apathy syndrome”.
In real life, we may encounter more apathy caused by “physical apathy” and thus extend to “family apathy”, “moral apathy”, “love apathy”, etc., which may be due to external social environments, physical illnesses, or biological genetic factors.
Regardless of whether “emotional apathy” is caused by damage to neural organs, external environments, or instinctive responses, modern people’s “apathy syndrome” deserves attention.
Because we grow up surrounded by the Internet and computers, we may be more susceptible to “emotional apathy syndrome”.
Specific symptoms include addiction to the Internet, lack of emotional responses to external stimuli, indifference to family and friendship due to a lack of normal social interaction, and inability to express oneself, and some people are so severe that they are indifferent to everything.
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As for how to treat this “emotional apathy” and make emotions flow smoothly between people, feel the love from others, and make positive feedback and response, experts have given the following suggestions:
- Open your heart. Don’t always limit yourself to your original perspective, open your heart to accept all people and things, and allow them to enter your heart, so that you can develop feelings for them.
- Communicate positively. Communication can not only help people overcome apathy but also overcome all emotional obstacles because emotions between people deepen in communication.
- Contact with nature. When you feel lonely and cold, you can go to the countryside to hike, run in the park, ride a bike around, breathe fresh air, and let the broad vision eliminate the depression and melancholy in your heart.
- Appreciate art. Art takes many forms, whether it’s music, literature, or art, all of which contain amazing charm. If you can pour emotions into these lifeless things, you will develop feelings for the people around you.
- Participate in social activities. Only in group activities can we slowly get to know ourselves, understand our preferences, and find the other half we admire in the vast sea of people.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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