![]() They said my face was just like a rock,” she told Glamour over Skype.ĭr. “I didn't know that I had it, but looking back, my parents remember seeing me during an online phone call. Yeiser was 20 years old and studying at the University of Southern California when she started to experience negative symptoms of schizophrenia, including flat affect. A study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry found that flat affect is common but not omnipresent in people with schizophrenia and depression, but some people with flat affect can move through life completely blunted. Mejied describes a disconnect that flat affect can create between the emotions someone feels (excitement to meet a friend, for example) and the emotions they are able to express (such as with a heightened tone of voice, engaging eye contact, or a warm expression). At her first job out of college, she was introduced to a coworker’s friend and said she was happy to see her social life beginning to develop, only to later hear that the friend thought Mejied “didn’t like her.” In an email to Glamour, Mejied wrote that these comments made her think, “It must be something going on with my facial expressions and body language.” Her own sister once said she noticed her appearing robotic, a blunt version of her former self. As a teenager she says her classmates and teachers told her she looked sad. But throughout her life she has heard that she gives that impression. “I don't want to give off that reaction as if I'm not welcoming, that I'm not friendly,” Majied says. But when she read the description-“still faces that show less anger, joy, and other feelings than most people"-the words on the page seemed to bridge a bewildering chasm between how she felt and how she knew she came across to others. ![]() She sees a psychiatrist about once a month to discuss how she is, and to titrate her medication, but says visits are short her face hadn’t come up. Majied’s flat affect was a symptom of her schizophrenia, a diagnosis she says she received at 28. The New Orleans–based substitute teacher says she thought, Wow, I have this. Having a school textbook put a name to symptoms like this is an experience Kirkham shares with Wakilah Majied, 35, who came across the definition of flat affect last year in an abnormal psychology course at community college. It’s like a dial tone instead of a greeting. For someone with a flat affect, their mouth may remain a straight line, or their tone of voice unchanged. Your face would react without you having to say a word: your eyes opening in celebration, or the soft exhalation of a breath, as your mouth turns down to show empathy. Let’s say your coworker, in a single conversation, shares both good and bad news: She got a promotion and her dog died. Just like if you had asthma and you suddenly couldn’t exercise-it limits you.” “Expression of emotion is an integral component of personal well-being if someone’s emotionality is unusual in some way, that’s potentially consequential. You’re getting a reaction from people that doesn’t align with your own self-image.” And that experience can be tough. “ can create a dissonance in terms of how you think you’re making your way through the world and navigating day-to-day activities and what’s really happened. Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D., professor and chair of psychiatry at Columbia University, said that flat affect exists on a spectrum of severity, and most who experience it don’t even know they have it. “I do my best to give that same energy back to someone, but it doesn't always come across the way that it's supposed to.” She says she sometimes forces herself to smile to make sure she's appearing friendly. Wakilah Majied, 35, who experiences flat affect as a symptom of schizophrenia.
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