Emotions have their fair share of upsides and downsides. While being emotionless all the time isn’t necessarily a good thing, there are times when it pays to be emotionless instead of easily affected by heated moments. There’s a fine line to walk between being over-emotional and completely emotionless.
In this guide, we’ll help you find that special line that you need to walk, and we’ll teach you about some of the best strategies to help you learn to be emotionless, too.
Emotionless Vs. Inability to Feel
While people often describe emotionlessness as feeling nothing (this is what the name suggests, after all), this isn’t what it’s like in practice. It isn’t possible for a mentally healthy human being to feel nothing all the time. We’re always feeling something, thinking something, or being affected by an outside force that influences us.
As such, emotionlessness isn’t necessarily the inability to feel. In practice, it’s more similar to selectiveness than inability. The ability to become emotionless when inside tense situations is valuable, and it can be an excellent method of de-escalation and conflict resolution.
Think about the most level-headed person you know. While they’re probably not wholly emotionless, they know how to control their emotions so that they’re not overcome by them all the time. Essentially, this is what cultivating emotionlessness should be like.
It’s not good to pursue an idea of feeling no emotions. Human beings are wired to show and receive feelings, and if they can’t (or won’t), it can either cause or be a result of severe mental health problems.
Rational human beings are meant to feel pain, sorrow, and suffering. When you’re unable to feel things like that, you’re also unable to feel happiness, joy, and pleasure. Like there are two sides to every coin, each unpleasant feeling or emotion is the reason why the good can exist, and vice versa.
However, being able to exercise emotionlessness when you’re in a bad situation is a good idea. Bad emotions, like anger, sadness, and discomfort, have their purposes, after all. For example, the sensation of pain is our body telling is that something is wrong; something’s harming us, and we should try to get away from it as soon as possible.
On the other hand, we try to avoid pain as much as possible, don’t we? It’s impossible never to feel pain at all, but it’s good to minimize it. Too much pain, be it physical, mental, or emotional, can cause its fair share of problems.
It’s never a bad idea to try and mitigate the bad emotions that we can sometimes be subjected to. However, not feeling them at all can put us out of touch with our good feelings, too. This is why there’s such a delicate line to walk when it comes to mastering emotionlessness.
In the same way, being overly emotional can cause us just as much harm. For example, feeling too much pleasure or too much joy can make these feelings lose their impact over time.
Consider food, for example. Have you ever tried eating your favorite food for many, many days in a row? Even if it’s your favorite, eating the same thing for every meal will eventually cause you to hate it!
Let’s liken emotions and sensations to foods here. If you overeat one meal, it no longer tastes as good. However, if you vary your diet between several foods, each one will taste just as good the next time you eat it. Additionally, if you eat something particularly unpleasant – i.e., experience a negative emotion – your favorite foods will taste twice as delicious next time!
As such, being emotionless can mitigate both excessive good emotions and the discomfort of harmful feelings. However, as we’ve said, being too emotionless is bad, too – the goal isn’t to feel nothing at all, either. Those looking to master the art of being emotionless should seek to do the following:
- Soften the blow of bad emotions and feelings, keeping them at a tolerable level
- Allow yourself to feel the full scope of good emotions when they come
- Feel the good with the bad, rather than feeling one without the other
- Keep yourself calm and level-headed in emotionally charged situations, both good and bad
Think, Don’t Feel
The best way to work towards being the right amount of emotionless is to work on thinking, not feeling. In an intense situation, we tend to fall back on our instincts to feel rather than our brains to think. Back when humans lived in the wild and had to fight for their lives, these instinctual feelings were helpful and necessary. They still have their uses today, too, but more often than not, these instincts are out of place today.
Primarily, we’re talking about the fight-or-flight instinct. While human beings still encounter dangerous situations where their fight-or-flight instincts can save them from harm, they tend to be few and far between. Our logical minds tend to serve us much better in this day and age.
Take, for example, a verbal miscommunication between two people. Let’s imagine that two people are talking, and one of them says something that offends the other. Nine times out of ten, the first person really didn’t intend to offend or hurt the other person. If we were to use our brains to think about the situation, we would quickly come to that conclusion. However, in the moment, our instinct is to become offended and emotional.
Bringing your logical brain forward in these situations and in your life, in general, is a great way to keep troublesome emotions at bay. However, thinking instead of feeling is not the same as not feeling in the first place. Instead, it involves taking a moment to stop ourselves when we’re starting to feel overwhelmed by emotion.
On the other hand, seeking not to feel in the first place can be a slippery slope. You can will yourself to not feel something, but you’ll likely still feel the first twinges of emotion before you can distance yourself. If you don’t feel emotions at all in a tense or disturbing situation, then there’s something very wrong.
Additionally, make sure to think logically while you’re at it. Not all thoughts are good. If you’re thinking of all the things that could go wrong in a tense situation, this won’t help you at all! However, if you take the time to bring yourself back to reality and think of logical outcomes instead of illogical ones, you could end up saving yourself from a lot of worries.
Breathe
There’s a reason why deep breathing is used extensively in meditation, relaxation, and self-care in general. Taking a second to breathe in and out isn’t just a great way to break the vicious cycle of an anxious mind. It’s a great way to calm the body’s fear or anxiety response, too.
After all, as we said, being emotionless isn’t the same as not feeling anything. More than likely, you’ll still experience anxiety, tension, and that fight-or-flight response every so often. It’s just about tempering that response with a rational response, as well.
Well, even if your mind is working logically, your body might not always end up following suit. Sometimes you need a little more than just logical thoughts to bring your body out of an automatic response. Deep breathing is a great way to do this.
The first thing to do is to become aware of your breathing. The chances are that, if you’re in a tense situation, your breathing is coming fast and shallow. Once you’re aware of that, though, you can start changing it by taking some good, deep breaths.
There’s a sure-fire breathing formula that you can follow in tense situations that will help your body return to its normal, calm state. It goes as follows:
- Breathe in for two seconds
- Hold your breath for four seconds
- Breathe out for four seconds
Distraction
Distraction is an excellent method to use to bring yourself back to homeostasis when you feel like your emotions have too great of a grip on you. Have you ever gotten distracted at work or at school? This is probably because your brain and your body are bored or uninterested in the situation, and they’d rather spend time doing something more entertaining or engaging instead.
Distraction takes this property and uses it to your advantage. If you have something unpleasant on your mind, try replacing it with something pleasant! For example, if you’re dreading a doctor’s visit tomorrow, play your favorite videogame or socialize with your friends before bed. Try not to talk or think about the doctor’s appointment if you can.
Alternatively, it can help some people to talk to others about the thing that’s bothering them instead. One word that people use to describe this is venting. By venting your frustrations to another person and feeling empathy, the feelings might not feel as overwhelming to you anymore.
We encourage you to try both venting and distraction to see which one works better for you. Alternatively, one method might be better for some situations and worse for others, so keep this in mind, too.
Journal
Keeping a journal is a great way to release your thoughts and feelings without venting them to someone else. After all, if we vent our worries to others too often, it can affect them, also. Venting to others to the point where it becomes inconvenient or affects their quality of life is no good.
A journal fixes this problem! You can vent any and all negative and oppressive emotions to your journal, no matter what. A journal will never become over-encumbered by your questions or feelings like a friend might. People have their own lives to worry about, after all.
However, that being said, journaling isn’t for everyone. Not everyone enjoys writing, and not everyone’s good at it. If you’re not good at it, it might not be a fun activity for you. However, we still encourage you to try it!
Another appealing aspect of journaling is that it’s something that you can do at any time. With venting, there’s always the chance that your friends might be otherwise occupied or burdened with their own worries and unable to help.
However, this is never the case with a journal. You can write in it when times are hard and completely ignore it when things get comfortable again. Alternatively, if you can make it a habit, journaling during the good times can be great for your emotional state, too.
Better yet, journaling is a form of self-expression. You can do it anywhere, at any time. And in today’s era of technology, you can journal on your phone, in a notebook, or on your computer.
An excellent way to journal to yourself if you’re not a fan of physical media is to make a journaling email. When you have something to write about, write it out and send it to your exclusive journaling email. Make sure to date and time it, too, just in case you ever decide to go back and read it.
The reason why this is such an excellent method is that it’s entirely inaccessible unless you know your login credentials. There’s no risk of losing your journal or having someone else read it unless you allow them to do so. Additionally, once you send the email off to your journaling inbox, it’ll remain there for you to go back to and read until you delete it yourself. You don’t ever even have to reread them if you don’t want to.
When you’re journaling, don’t just talk about how you feel at the moment, though this is a great place to start. Make sure to analyze how you felt and how you reacted, too. This will give you a little extra clarity for the next time you get in a similar situation. For example, ask yourself things like:
- What triggered me to feel this way?
- How did this emotion manifest in my body and mind? What symptoms did I feel?
- How did I embrace this emotion? Did I try to make it go away? Did I welcome it with open arms?
- Have I been in this situation before? Did I see this emotion coming by any chance?
Cold-heartedness
If you get good at being emotionless, you might find that others could start calling you cold-hearted. Cold-heartedness and emotionlessness are similar, but not the same. However, being too good at being emotionless can easily result in becoming cold-hearted instead, so make sure to be careful.
However, cold-heartedness isn’t always bad, despite its misleading name. It’s essential to have a measure of compassion, but not toward everyone. For example, if someone will simply take advantage of your kindness, then you probably shouldn’t be giving it in the first place.
If you look at it that way, cold-heartedness can be just as important to cultivate as emotionlessness can. However, in the same way, it’s important not to grow your cold-heartedness enough that it eclipses your ability to feel compassion altogether.
Like emotionlessness, cold-heartedness has different degrees of usefulness, depending on the person. For example, a worker who rescues animals would likely benefit from a significant amount of compassion. However, a law enforcement officer, on the other hand, would likely need to harden their heart to many of the things they see while on the job. A strong, cold heart would probably be much more useful to them.
That’s not to say that neither person should be affected, however. Like we said before, it’s vital that you still have the capacity to feel compassion if needed. The trick is to use your logical brain to know when to show compassion and when to keep it to yourself.
Step Back
Taking a step back from the situation can do a lot for yourself when you need to be emotionless. We mean this both mentally and physically, too. Everyone knows that removing yourself from a situation when you’re feeling frustrated is a great way to calm down, but not as many people realize that you can do the same thing from a mental perspective.
Let’s consider, for a moment, that you’re being scolded by your boss. Perhaps you messed up somehow, or maybe you’re being blamed for someone else’s actions. You could get angry and argue with your boss about the situation, but would that really be all that helpful?
A much better method is to take a mental step back instead. Rev up your logical brain, and think about what’s going on objectively. Try to see it from your boss’s perspective. Do they have a reason for chewing you out? Are you responsible for what happened?
Even if you aren’t responsible, taking a mental step back is a great way to distance yourself from a situation emotionally. This is especially helpful when you’re in a position that would typically leave you emotionally charged.
Instead of getting angry at your boss, for example, you might act calmly and take responsibility. While this might not sit well with you, especially if you don’t feel like you deserve the scolding, it can be a great way to save face.
Another great situation to step back is one where you might be getting too involved. Let’s imagine that you and some friends decided to go out for a few drinks on a weekend night, for example. There’s nothing wrong at all with going out for a few drinks and having a little fun.
However, let’s imagine that now your friend wants to drive home while clearly being under the influence, and you can’t convince them not to do so. Instead of riding home with them, it would be best to take a step back, call yourself a cab or sober ride home, and not involve yourself any further. This could save you from getting hurt or in trouble, even if the person who insisted on driving home was a friend of yours.
Peer pressure is a real danger, even for adults. However, taking a mental or physical step back in these situations is a great way to resist falling into a negative peer pressure situation – or really, any situation where you feel like you might want to remove yourself.
Some people say that a great way to remove yourself from a situation is to imagine it as if it were happening to someone else. Try to look at it as if it were a movie, TV show, or even a story being told. It might change the way you react to the situation if you look at it from this perspective.
Exist in the Now
One of the most significant ways that people bring themselves anxiety is when they think about the future. While there are many reliable methods to predict what’ll happen in the near future, there’s no sure-fire way to know what’ll happen. As such, there’s little reason to worry about it when we don’t know whether something will happen or not, right?
There are many more productive ways to use your time and your brainpower instead of worrying about things that might or might not happen. Instead, try taking the future into your own hands. If you’re worried about something that might occur in the near future, try doing everything you can to prevent that outcome in the now instead.
Let’s take school, for example, since we’ve all experienced it to some extent. Imagine that you have a difficult exam or project coming up in one of your classes – one that’s particularly tough for you. You’d probably worry about it, or even dread it, as it comes closer.
However, there are a lot of things you can do instead of worrying about how you might do on the test. First and foremost is studying, of course! By studying for the test or working on the project, you’re making sure you do better on it than you otherwise would. This is already far more productive than just worrying, and it’ll help some of your fears disappear along the way, too.
This same principle applies to many areas of your life. If you have a tough job interview coming up, research what to say and do during a job interview to find success. If you’re nervous about meeting the family of your significant other, consider how you might make the best impression. You could do research or even ask your significant other what they think would be best.
Acceptance
Acceptance plays a massive role in keeping a level head in tough situations. Just like cold-heartedness and emotionlessness, acceptance isn’t something that should overtake your entire life, but knowing when and where to practice it can be extremely beneficial.
Let’s consider that you’re being blamed or even disciplined for something that you didn’t do, for example. For someone who practiced acceptance all the time, they might just accept whatever discipline was coming their way without fighting it. However, that’s a bit unfair, isn’t it? If you weren’t responsible at all for what happened, you shouldn’t have to bear the repercussions of it.
In this situation, it would be better to fight your fate instead. However, let’s instead imagine that you were responsible for what happened, even if inadvertently. Instead of fighting what’s coming, it might be best to accept whatever punishment might come your way.
There are plenty of other comparisons we could make to describe how acceptance works. Consider the existence of a higher power, for example. The belief in a higher power is largely based on acceptance since we, as human beings, cannot currently prove that one exists. If you want to be a member of a particular faith, accepting that you may never know for sure plays an enormous role.
Advice
If you find it difficult to accept a situation or distance yourself from it, another good option is to seek the advice of others. However, do keep in mind that some people are good at offering input, while others are not. Make sure to ask people who you know are logical and level-headed for information, or you may get information that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t help you.
This is why getting advice from multiple people is so helpful. After all, different people are good at different things, so while one friend might be capable of giving excellent relationship-based advice, they might be abysmal at work-related advice. In the same friend, another friend might be hopeless in relationships, but they might have great information on, say, home improvement.
Getting advice from others ties into venting, too. Often, we associate the two things together sequentially. We’ll vent to a trusted friend about our problems first, then ask them for advice. We might even end up asking multiple people for help this way.
The critical thing to remember about advice is that you shouldn’t depend on it. While a friend might be able to help you learn how to be more emotionless in a given situation, you should always be seeking how to learn to do this on your own, too. If you’re not, the day will come when you’ll need advice, but you won’t have any friends available to give it.