Emotional Numbness in Teens: Symptoms, Causes, and Ways to Support

As we mentioned above, emotional numbness serves a purpose in the moment by preventing teens from having to feel strong negative emotions. But what causes these extreme negative emotions, and what leads some teens to shut down while others have more adaptive ways of coping? 

Let’s explore some possible causes:

Trauma and Stress

People who are exposed to repeated stressful events are at a higher risk of developing emotional numbness. Examples of stressful events that can trigger this behavior are the loss of a loved one, car crashes, physical abuse, exposure to violence, neglect, natural disasters,  and financial crises.^2,3 Stress and emotional numbness are closely linked because teens tend to want to avoid the negative experiences, so they shut down emotionally as a way to cope.

When a traumatic loss of a loved one is combined with intense grief in adolescents, it is known as childhood traumatic grief (CTG)3. Avoidance and numbing are key features that distinguish childhood traumatic grief from the healthy bereavement process. Not only will a child fail to express their emotions, but they will also avoid reminders of the traumatic situation, including thoughts, feelings, and conversations centered on the topic.³ 

Yet in many instances, reminders of the traumatic event cannot be avoided, as there are places that the teenager must visit. There may also be conversations with family members and intrusive thoughts to cope with. So, when adolescents are overwhelmed by the inability to avoid these reminders, they might turn to emotional numbing.³

Medications

Some anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants are known to have emotionally numbing side effects. If a teen is being treated for depression or anxiety and medication management is part of the protocol, recognizing signs of emotional disconnection is a part of determining the effectiveness of the overall treatment.²

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Emotional numbing is a common symptom shown in patients with PTSD, accounting for 55-65% of people studied in the current research.⁴ There are different diagnostic criteria for PTSD, which means that not every teen diagnosed with this disorder presents in the same way. 

For instance, those who meet the diagnostic criteria for type A, who have experienced a threat to their life, tend to show more signs of emotional numbing.⁴ Even though we know emotional numbing can be detrimental to a teen’s mental health, it is still considered an emotion regulation strategy. 

Problems With Emotional Processing

Deficits in emotional clarity can cause teens to use maladaptive behaviors to cope with stressful events. Emotional clarity is the ability to understand your own emotions. Research shows that people with lower levels of emotional clarity revert to numbing behaviors.⁵ 

Interestingly, teens with lower emotional clarity have also shown an increased risk of being victimized by peers, which then perpetuates the cycle further by being exposed to additional traumatic events in adolescence.

Additionally, adolescent girls demonstrated a stronger association between deficits in emotional processing and an increased rate of peer victimization. This suggests that teenage girls may be at a higher risk of developing emotional numbing behaviors to cope with subsequent traumatic events, such as bullying or teasing by peers.⁵

Mental Health Disorders

Teens who struggle with emotional numbing have a higher risk of turning to self-harm behaviors to cope with distress.⁶ While teen self-harm isn’t a mental health disorder on its own, it is closely linked to issues like depression, PTSD, bipolar depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Feeling emotionally numb can be distressing for adolescents, and they might use maladaptive coping behaviors just to feel something rather than emptiness. Self-harm is one way that they can achieve this end.

For those teens diagnosed with depression or anxiety, the risk of experiencing existential crises during this stage in their lives also increases.¹ This can be especially true in today’s society when there is a lot of pressure put on young people to find their purpose and meaning in life. When a teen lacks meaning in the world, particularly when they are acutely aware of people suffering around them, emotional numbing can become their normal response to life. 

In addition to higher rates of depression and anxiety symptoms, emotional numbing is also linked to sleep problems and overall poor mental health.⁴ 

It’s apparent that there are many possible causes of emotional numbing in teens, and getting to the root of the problem is the first step to finding the right treatment.