Blank Page: Emotional Dullness
- Luke Bohnenberger
- Dec 8, 2025
- 3 min read
There is a part of brain injury recovery that I never used to talk about because I simply couldn’t relate to it. Emotional Dullness. My own injury led to the opposite problem, an overflow of emotion. Everything I felt came out intensely such anger, sadness, excitement...nothing stayed quiet; so, when people described feeling emotionally numb after a brain injury I listened, but I didn’t immediately understand. I didn’t want to speak on a struggle that wasn’t mine just to sound knowledgeable.
Through years of coaching survivors, speaking at events and working inside hospitals providing peer support, emotional dullness became a pattern I could no longer overlook. Caregivers would pull me aside and say, “They don’t laugh anymore,” “They seem distant,” “They’re here physically, but I feel like I’ve lost them emotionally.” I began hearing survivors express something just as heavy: “I know I should feel something, but I don’t,” or “I care, but I don’t feel it.” Emotional dullness doesn’t look dramatic. It doesn’t yell. It doesn’t break things or explode. Instead it quietly disconnects the individual from themselves and the world around them and that quiet can be just as devastating.
Why Emotional Dullness Happens (And the Brain Regions Involved)
Emotional dullness isn’t simply “not expressive” or “flat personality.” Research shows many survivors experience alexithymia, where recognizing and describing feelings becomes difficult. The brain areas responsible for translating internal sensations into emotional awareness can be disrupted. One key structure is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), responsible for emotional regulation, value-based decision-making and linking emotion to consequences. When it is impacted through injury emotional responses can weaken or feel distant.
Another major player is the network of frontal–subcortical circuits, which link logic-based frontal lobe functions to emotion-based limbic centers. These pathways depend on smooth communication to recognize emotions and express them appropriately. Diffuse axonal injury, shearing, swelling or reduced blood flow can interrupt these circuits, this meaning someone may internally experience emotion but not recognize it or outwardly express it and add autonomic and neurochemical changes where body sensations like heartbeat, physical tension or gut signals aren’t interpreted clearly.
The Hidden Impact on Identity and Relationships
Emotional dullness affects far more than mood, it affects identity, connection and the sense of being alive. This is devastating to witness. Survivors often describe feeling like they’re “watching their life instead of living it.” Things that used to spark passion often feel muted. Caregivers experience a different kind of pain. Missing emotional connection with someone still physically present. The laughter that once filled a room now feels like silence, the excitement that used to show up in shared moments doesn’t appear the same way. Over time emotional dullness can feed into isolation, decreased motivation and misunderstanding between both sides, especially if loved ones mistake numbness for indifference.
Ways to Support Emotional Reconnection
The encouraging truth is that emotional dullness doesn’t mean emotional capacity is gone , it means the communication network needs rebuilding. Emotional-awareness training can be powerful, especially practices that reconnect the survivor to their internal experience. Asking questions like “What did you feel today?” or “Did anything lighten your mood, even slightly?” helps rebuild the skill of labeling internal states. Body-to-brain practices such as breathing, walking, mindfulness or any movement that brings attention inward help the nervous system send signals that emotion still exists in the body. All of this requires intention. Safe and predictable routines also support emotional processing by reducing the brain’s need for survival-mode thinking.
Small expressions should be acknowledged and celebrated. A slight smile, a short laugh, eye contact or a moment of comfort offered. Progress in this area is rarely loud but quiet progress is still meaningful progress. Journaling,. especially guided journaling that prompts reflection is one of the strongest tools for emotional reconnection because it bridges thought and feeling privately and slowly. It allows the survivor to observe their internal life without pressure to perform emotionally in front of others. I also recommend the caregiver to journal as well.
To Those Experiencing Emotional Dullness, and Those Caregiving Through It
Feeling too much can be overwhelming. Feeling nothing can be heartbreaking. Both are real experiences after brain injury and neither means the journey is hopeless. If you are the survivor know that you’re not broken, your brain is adapting. If you’re the caregiver, the quiet disconnect you feel doesn’t mean your loved one doesn’t care, it means their brain is still rebuilding connections. Healing may come quietly and slowly, but quietly and slowly still move forward. Emotional expression may return differently than before, but different doesn’t mean empty. There is room for reconnection, growth and rediscovery on this journey.
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