Emotional Blindness: The Celebrated Detriment
There are several factors that have pushed this and previous generations to be more emotionally neutral. For many, they even celebrate it as strength. This neutrality, if you squint your eyes just right, can come across as stability. If you’re always “fine,” then you must be consistent. For years, this often works. Life becomes shades of gray, but generally things work out. Whether it’s seasons, years, or even decades, the wall we’ve built and shoved our feelings behind cracks. It always cracks. When inevitably bigger emotions come through, people will often share that “it came out of nowhere.” The emotions that tend to be battering rams to crack through that wall are despair, panic, rage, and if we’re lucky, love. For most, if you called them three times a day and wrote their responses on a graph when you genuinely asked how they were, that graph would be consistent with occasional blips. We’d be told that they are good, maybe fine, a bit stressed, and maybe excited for the work week to be over. Said another way, their responses are likely to be flat. This is something that is especially problematic amongst men.
Despite many of us consciously aiming towards this flat state, there are no doubts that this is a problematic path. In the pursuit of stability, we lost our joy. An observation that heavily pushed the field of psychology forward in its infancy was that when emotions are pushed down, they tend to come up aggressively. The visual I often give my clients is to imagine shoving a mini basketball under the water in the pool. Takes some effort, but it really isn’t all that difficult. Despite that, the force it comes up with has caused more than its fair share of broken noses. The reemergence of these emotions can happen outside of our awareness and makes individuals feel that they are incredibly emotionally unstable. The suppression of emotion has increased our emotional volatility and cast shadows on how to effectively manage ourselves. If you regularly go from “fine” to overwhelmed, that’s a scary place to be since it provides no middle ground for the person to do anything about how they’re feeling. It doesn’t matter when you read this. I guarantee that you can scroll through your news feed of choice and see examples of this aggressive reemergence of emotion. It was likely from a man. Maybe it was a bar fight where they blacked out in rage. Maybe it was much worse.
How do we get to this point?
Slowly. As with anything that happens slowly, it will take some time to undo it. One of the biggest contributors to how this happens is how we are raised. I’d like to say that there are tons of fathers and mothers who are doing great things to help their children identify their feelings so they may understand and soothe their emotions while better navigating complex situations. For so many others, their parents and especially fathers were not able to label and effectively manage their emotions. Likely, dad would reply to any expression of emotion with anger and stress. Maybe it made him feel frustrated that he could not regulate himself in the face of these bigger emotions in his child. So, he’d respond with, “be a man. Don’t be a baby.”
He’s our dad. So, we listened. Many of us receive these messages when we at an age where parents are often seen people who know everything and have the solution to whatever problem we throw their way. When we are told that we should push these feelings down, that has to be right way. These direct messages paired with plenty of indirect ones encourage the suppression of emotion. We get upset at school. Our teacher treats us differently now. The messages from dad may have been right. It’s smarter to not feel. If we are fortunate enough to achieve something that we strived for, we might be told to “act like you’ve been there before” or “you could’ve done better.” There are two damaging messages within those simple statements. You should not show your joy - that’s another emotion that is unacceptable. And you should not celebrate something if there was room to do better. Let’s be clear, there is always room to do better. So now, one of the purest experiences of life is buried behind that wall. If an experience inspires enough emotional energy to break through that wall, we may feel this sense of shame and swap to an analytical breakdown of how we should’ve done better. Moving the goalposts. It’s an awful lesson to teach someone that will erode their quality of life and relationship with themselves.
One key cultural challenge for those in much of the west is how we navigate greetings. “How are you” has been a substitute for simply saying hello for as long as I have been alive. The natural responses range from “good” to “fine.” We are taught to give shallow answers, lie, or not even look within ourselves at all.
To me, the key mistake is misunderstanding emotional intelligence and stability as a lack of feeling. Someone can work to be in control of their actions while still experiencing great depths of emotions. The ability to feel, communicate, and regulate one’s emotions should be the target rather than suppression. On the outside they appear similar, but the internal difference is miles apart. A fulfilling and rich internal experience versus an unknown void with irregular spikes of unpleasant feelings. The assumption that someone who isn’t overcome by their emotions must not be feeling them can push people down the path of shoving their emotions down behind the wall of “fine.”
What can we do about it?
Things seem to be shifting already. There are numerous athletes who are quite expressive. Lebron James, Simone Biles, and Travis Kelce just to name three. Their emotionality has been a key part of their drive and success. But they are individuals who feel strongly and are openly admired. That’s a great start. It’s easy to think of examples where their emotions got the best of them for Lebron and Kelce. That said, we’re all imperfect and on a journey of self-mastery, so perhaps that’s a healthy thing to display too. Another great example that I suspect many have seen is of the actor, Andrew Garfield. He can be seen sharing his emotions openly and displaying the strength it takes to do so.
If you relate to much of what has been written here, there is plenty that you can do to work on it. If you are already a strong feeler with high emotional intelligence, more power to you. You may not need to work on these things further. For the rest of us, I will encourage a few areas to get started. These will be more in the realm of guidelines than rules as it can be complex to be genuine about how you are doing in certain circumstances. Always be safe. If you have an abusive person in your life who will manipulate or punish you for how you’re feeling, it is likely best not to share with them. Another common example can be when we experience negative consequences by those who mean well. For example, if you are at school and sharing how overwhelmed you are with your teacher, you may be sent to the counselor’s office when all you wanted was to be more open and attend your classes. Although this person who sent them to the counselor’s office likely wanted them to receive some support and care. However, they are likely to find this to be a punitive experience. If you find yourself in such a role as this teacher, ask what the student would like to do. As long as they are safe, it is likely to encourage them to share rather than to bury their true feelings.
Build Your Emotional Vocabulary and Don’t Lie About How You Are
When you are asked how you are, practice giving answers that align more directly with emotional labels rather than the classic “fine” or “good.” The six core emotions are happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise. These are great places to start. I’ll put one of my favorite emotion wheels by the Junto Institute below that can an invaluable tool when building your emotional vocabulary.
If you genuinely have no idea how you are, that’s okay. If you keep at it, you will get better at it. One helpful strategy can be to look for specific emotions. Ask yourself, “what you would expect someone else to be feeling if they had experienced the things you had today?” That may assist you in looking in a more accurate direction when scanning yourself.
When it comes to not lying, I encourage all of my clients to find ways to more honestly express how they are.
For the example I used for a student being sent to the counselor’s office, they would learn that they cannot safely express how they are doing and be welcomed with their fellow students. That’s a challenging spot to be put into. Naturally, most would start saying that they are “good” even when they are not to avoid this type of situation happening again. Rather than doing this, I’d encourage them to find something honest they could say. “I’m excited to go home.” “I’ve been better.” These responses don’t end up shutting down the person’s intuition who asked how they were while also providing some context as to how they are actually doing.
Check-in with Yourself
My favorite way to do this would be through quick journal entries or pairing it with something you already do. Grabbing your phone or notebook and asking yourself what you are feeling or what emotions stood out from today builds up this skillset wonderfully. Alternatively, maybe every time you brush your teeth or sit down for a meal you ask yourself what you are feeling. Again, saying I don’t know is a fair answer. Keep at it. You’ll get there soon.
Please don’t make the mistake of telling yourself that you can’t do it and aren’t good at it. You don’t have the practice. This is not a core ability. It’s a skill. It will take time to develop.
Don’t Discard Praise
This point and the next one apply most directly to experiencing happiness. Lots of those with emotional blindness will be quick to minimize their achievements and the praise others give them. Let’s say we earned a promotion at work, completed a degree, or were simply an uplifting person to be around. These are all big deals. Others are likely to call attention to these things and offer a compliment. Often, we respond to someone trying to lift us up by drawing attention to them with a statement such as, “it was nothing.” We are directly telling them and ourselves that it was not worth celebrating or even acknowledging.
Instead, remind yourself that you don’t have to feel excited or any particular way about the thing they are praising. However, you can acknowledge that they thought it was worth highlighting.
Lead with Actions
Again, this one applies most directly to joy. If you did something that people around you want to celebrate or if there is a birthday or holiday coming up, practice going through the motions even if it seems silly. Let them celebrate. In fact, join them. Get yourself an ice cream cone or decorate your home for the holidays. By doing these things, you are making space for an emotion to come up. It will take time, but I strongly suspect that hints of joy would arise if you kept at it.
Is It Worth the Effort?
Absolutely. By practicing tearing down the emotional walls you have built, you will make room for joy, love, and all the great things in life big and small. You may also uncover that you are experiencing lots of difficult emotions. You may reflect on how these feelings could have been influencing your behaviors in general or towards specific people without you even noticing. Now you know and can do something about it. Even labeling an emotion by itself helps your body to better process it and move through it. This may help you escape from the grips of depression and chase the things in life that matter to you. Additionally, you will become a far better communicator while being able to channel the energy different emotions provide to push you towards a better future.
Emotions are crucial supports when it comes to make decisions. They shouldn’t be the only thing guiding us, but no decision is a good one if emotion is completely ignored. As touched on previously, ignored emotions drive behaviors still, we just don’t notice the direction they are pulling on the wheel.
I know it’s scary. Lots of us learned to push feelings down because we didn’t like what we saw when we looked inside. But we aren’t the same people we were back then. We are likely stronger, more connected, and better able to face these feelings and situations with the knowledge we now have. You got this.
For those interested in doing more reading on this topic, the formal name of emotional blindness is alexithymia.
Written by Dr. Luke Bieber on September 5, 2025.
Feeling Wheel by the Junto Institute.