The psychopathology of affectivity encompasses all those alterations that occur in the affects, that is, in humor, mood, emotions and feelings. When there is a failure in emotional regulation, when we are unable to modulate our affections or even to feel emotions, then we experience an alteration of affectivity (there are several: ambivalence, dullness, rigidity…).
Emotional lability, or affective lability, is one of them, and is defined as the sudden and disproportionate change in emotional states. Thus, the person easily goes from one emotion to another (sometimes even without a clear trigger) and, if there is a stimulus that “justifies” that change, it is not important or relevant enough to explain it (hence, it is a change). disproportionate).
But what else do we know about emotional lability? Can it appear as an isolated symptom? In what psychological disorders does it appear? What is your treatment? And what are its causes? We tell you in this article!
What is emotional lability?
- Affectivity is a domain of mental life that encompasses sensations, humor, feelings, emotions, state of mind… In short, it is made up of all the affects, which are states that influence or motivate us when doing things. When we are stable, these states are well regulated. But when this regulation fails, affective disorders appear (affective psychopathology). One of these alterations is emotional lability.
- But what exactly is it? A definition proposed by Look, Flory, Harvery and Siever (2010) for emotional or affective lability, in an article by Chaveiro and Almeida is the following: it is “the dysregulation or emotional problem explained by the inability to control emotions, leading to a variation of intense moods.”
- Thus, emotional lability is an alteration or disorder of affectivity, which implies sudden and disproportionate changes in the emotional state or affective tone. When we suffer from emotional lability, we feel that our emotions and our mood experience sudden and abrupt changes.
- Why do these changes arise? It can be, either by environmental stimuli (external) or by internal stimuli (for example, a thought). It may also happen that there is no trigger for that change in mood. However, when there is a stimulus, the truth is that this is “insufficient” to explain the intensity of the emotion that it is generating (which is disproportionate).
The sudden change from one state of mind to another
- When we experience these changes in mood, emotions or moods, they usually do not last long. In this way, we quickly go from one emotion to another (for example, from laughter to crying, or from sadness to joy); Thus, we can experience contrary emotions in a matter of seconds. Depending on the degree of lability, the changes can occur in a matter of seconds, minutes or hours (although, we insist, they are usually quick and short-lived changes).
- These abrupt changes can generate bewilderment, confusion and discomfort to the person suffering from emotional lability and to the people around them. The person may feel overwhelmed or overwhelmed, with an inability to manage their emotions in a healthy way, to understand themselves or to self-regulate effectively.
The duration of mood swings or emotions
We have said that changes in mood or emotions can occur in a matter of seconds, minutes, hours… but, how long do these changes last? That is, for how long does the person experience the new emotion?
It depends on the person: they can last seconds, minutes or hours, just like the change from one emotion to another. However, as a general rule, these are changes that last very little (and that are also very intense).
Disorders where emotional lability is manifested
Emotional lability can appear in healthy people (without prior psychopathology), at a given moment as an isolated symptom, or in people with some type of mental disorder. In what disorders does it usually appear? Among the most frequent we find:
Bipolar disorder
Emotional lability may appear in bipolar disorder. However, as these concepts are often confused, it is important to differentiate emotional lability from bipolar disorder itself; in the first case, we are talking about this abrupt and sudden change in the emotional state, and in the second, about a disorder with depressive and manic episodes that follow one another.
In this second case, the episodes last much longer (they are not mere changes, but entire periods with a series of characteristic symptoms). For this reason, not all people with bipolar disorder experience emotional lability, nor do all people with emotional lability have bipolar disorder.
Major depression
In major depression, a mood disorder, emotional lability is also characteristic. In these cases, the person goes from phases of affective flattening (in which “he doesn’t feel anything”) to phases where a deep feeling of sadness predominates, for example. These changes generate discomfort in the person and interfere in different areas of his life, for example, in the social sphere.
Cyclothymia
Cyclothymia is another mood disorder, where emotional lability can also appear. This disorder is a milder version of bipolar disorder; it involves alternating depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes, which are repeated cyclically, alternately. To this alternation of phases, emotional lability can be added.
How to treat emotional lability?
There are two treatments that can be used to address emotional lability: psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy.
Psychotherapy
- From the psychotherapeutic context (psychotherapy), emotional regulation techniques and cognitive techniques are used above all. Through emotional regulation techniques, work is done so that the person learns to identify the moments in which they feel that they are going to overwhelm or decompensate, and the person is also taught strategies that allow them to self-regulate.
- For its part, through cognitive techniques, the person’s thoughts are worked on more, and they are helped to identify dysfunctional thoughts that can generate these sudden changes in mood so that they can reformulate or modify them for more adaptive thoughts.
- In the event that lability appears as a symptom of an underlying mental disorder, what is usually done is to address that underlying disorder, with the most validated treatment for it.
Pharmacotherapy
At the drug level, lithium and mood regulators (for bipolar disorder), antidepressants, anxiolytics and even antipsychotics are often used. These drugs make it possible to address (indirectly, as we will see below) emotional lability but also the underlying disorder or other symptoms that the person manifests.
Thus, in reality, it is not that they directly “eradicate” the symptom of affective lability, but rather they help the person to improve their mood in general and the symptoms derived from their underlying disorders (for example: anxiety, depression, etc.).
How to deal with emotional lability
Emotional lability implies an abrupt change in affective tone, mood or emotions. This new state of mind is intense and disproportionate, and can cause confusion to the person who suffers from it and to the people around them.
To address it, it will be important to identify what causes these changes and offer the person strategies and resources so that: first, they learn to identify those changes and second, that they can self-regulate, achieving some stability. For all this, it will be important to work on emotions (especially in children, since they can also experience emotional lability), specifically:
- Identification of emotions (label them).
- Management and emotional regulation.
- Discomfort tolerance.
If you suffer from emotional lability, you don’t know how to manage it and this causes you discomfort, we encourage you to seek professional help. It may or may not be an underlying symptom of other disorders; In any case, it will be important that they can offer you a diagnosis if there really is another underlying disorder that “justifies” this symptom.
“Our emotions are there to be felt, but not to dominate our life, blind our vision, steal our future, or turn off our energy, because by the time they do, they will become toxic.”
-Bernardo Stamateas-