Besides being social beings, we are also emotional beings. Some people more than others, but from emotions, no one escapes.
And it is that emotions, whether we believe it or not, have a fundamental role in our day to day.
Take a moment to ask yourself the amount of feelings and sensations that you get to feel in the same day. And, most of the time, it is difficult for us to identify the reason for that emotion or they appear, apparently for no reason..
Have you ever had one of those days when you don't know why, but suddenly you start to feel sad? All of us get to feel many emotions in a single day.
This is when, we can feel emotional lability if we talk about this phenomenon to the extreme. This concept basically implies the tendency to change quite abruptly and quickly from one emotional state to another.
We are then faced with an instability on an emotional level since, we can feel emotions that we usually classify or feel as contrary from one moment to another or, in a relatively short period of time.
When we speak of emotional lability we are referring to a symptom and not a disorder. That is, according to what type of pathologies, we find ourselves faced with this symptom that manifests itself with this variety of emotions in short periods of time and quite abruptly..
These mainly mood and mood changes are expressed in a very relative period of time since it can range from hours to days.
That is, a person who manifests emotional lability may feel a strong emotion, for example sadness and in a matter of hours or a few days, move to a euphoric state of mind, therefore a change appears after several days or an excessive amount of hours of expressing a specific emotion or several very similar ones, as for example in this case, grief, melancholy and sadness passing to a joy that we could classify as excessive.
The reason for these changes can be produced by external stimuli but it also doesn't have to be caused by something that happened to the person. In addition, when we talk about emotional lability, we see that it is possible to go very quickly from one emotion to another totally opposite.
This phenomenon can become a adaptive tendency when we refer to the solution of problems and their possible approach since, most of us, we present emotional lability throughout the day since, we usually have a range of habitual emotions in a fairly constant way.
Emotions each have a function and it is important to be able to learn to detect them in order to, in the short term, carry out good management and emotional acceptance.
As I mentioned before, emotions play a fundamental role in our life and they come and go depending on what we think, what happens to us and in relation to the external stimuli that surround us..
When these changes are abrupt and intense, beyond the emotions we feel in our day to day and depending on the personality, we may be talking about a symptom of possible mental disorders.
Can be found in personality disorders, Histrionics, manic episodes, delusional disorders, dementia, delirium, and other neurological disorders.
Although we also find them more specifically in major depression, since there are different phases in which the person suffering from this pathology can go from a deep, very intense sadness to anhedonia.
Another disorder in which emotional lability is very frequently present is in bipolar disorder since, in these cases we find episodes and phases of mania in which euphoria and excessive joy are present and other phases of depression.
As well as it is a frequently present symptom in the cyclothymia. Although, in this case, it is true that the changes are not as abrupt or experienced as intensely as in other possible disorders in which emotional lability appears.
It is important to determine and analyze each case depending on the person. It is true that, in most cases, when we talk about a symptom such as emotional lability we are referring to psychological problems or some type of specific pathology. Therefore, it is important to define and each case will depend on the individual in question.
But studies also show a correlation between emotional lability with problems in the brain, specifically in the part of the limbic system presenting abnormalities in the brain.
It is important to bear in mind that, in these cases, we must differentiate emotional lability from affective incontinence since, when we are talking about affective incontinence, we mean not being able to control these emotions, regardless of the variation between them.
Therefore, we are talking about a lack of control of affective expression, being this very excessive and the person feels that he cannot manage his emotions as they appear very intensely and quickly. But, in this case, when we talk about affective incontinence we are talking beyond the time between one emotion and another, of its good management and control of this.
In the same way, we must differentiate the symptom of emotional lability with other types of symptoms and concepts that may be similar but do not have to be associated or imply the same. As is also the case with the affective ambivalence.
In this case, we refer to the coexistence between emotions that we classify as positive and negative in the same experience. In this case, we see that the emotional lability the emotions alternate constantly in a certain time but, when we speak of affective ambivalence we are facing a situation in which the emotions coexist at the same time.
Finally, another concept with which it is important to differentiate emotional lability is affective rigidity. In this case, when we speak of affective rigidity we are dealing with an alteration that affects the affective modulation capacity. That is, there is a permanence of emotions that persist regardless of the situation that the person is living.
In order to carry out a good treatment, we must mainly know the ttype of diagnosis presented by the person since, as we have previously commented, emotional lability is not a disorder in itself but a symptom that is present in different possible pathological disorders.
Therefore, a treatment must be carried out in accordance with the diagnosis previously established by a clinical and healthcare professional.
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