Do you feel like you can’t become intimate with anyone? Do people often find you distant or avoidant? If yes, take this Emotional Unavailability Quiz for a reliable assessment. In fifteen questions, we determine if traumas or disorders are clogging your feelings or if you are totally fine and it’s the toxic people around you who’re abusing you.
How to Self-Test Emotional Unavailability
Look for the following signs:
- Lack of compassion. Emotionally unavailable people struggle with empathy.
- Fear of commitment. Toxic attachment style leads to trust issues. And trust issues create obligation phobia.
- Emotional indifference. When a person is emotionally unavailable, they feel numb. The mindset can be described as an unintended indifference to what others feel or think.
- Self-imposed isolation. When you fear intimacy, you prefer to avoid social situations, which isolates you.
- Shallow relationships. To a detached person, any deep relationship is anxiety-inducing, as it will eventually lead to commitment and responsibility.
The Why Behind Your Emotional Detachment
Emotionally unavailable people do have feelings. It’s just that they fail to put them into words—or even actions. Their primary struggle lies in a lack of emotional expressiveness. So, what causes this? What leads a person to become emotionally unavailable is attachment trauma.
Alan Robrage, a trauma therapist, explains that detachment serves as a defense mechanism developed to shield the individual from further emotional harm. In other words, you are cold, indifferent, and numb because you don’t want to feel broken, betrayed, or belittled again.
Love as an Emotionally Unavailable Person
Can a closed-off individual fall in love? Yes, it’s totally possible for emotionally unavailable people to feel affection. However, they might have a hard time confessing it or building a healthy relationship around this feeling that they have.
Ironically, detached people can sometimes develop overly nice personalities. Dr. Robarge elucidates that emotional unavailability can prompt individuals to assume a friendly and agreeable demeanor as a means to reduce conflicts. The rationale behind this is that by being amiable, one can avoid others’ emotional demands.
How to Become Emotionally Available
Here are five tips for developing a caring and empathetic personality:
- Talk about emotions. Even if it seems impossible. Try to hold feelings as the topic of your conversations, and don’t run away from awkward emotional dialogues.
- Name your emotions. Find proper vocabulary to describe your thoughts and feelings. Don’t expect your loved ones to guess them.
- Quit the problem-solver persona. When someone is venting to you, be a listener, not an advisor.
- Learn active listening. Empathy is a skill, not a divine gift. If you don’t have it, develop it through practice. Next time someone’s trying to express an emotion, listen closely and non-judgmentally and strive to understand.
- Refer to previous conversations. An empathetic person recalls details about others’ emotions. Add snippets of your memories to the conversation to let the person know that you care.
Emotional Unavailability Quiz: A Sneak Peek into Your Suppressed Feelings
You find yourself here for one of two reasons: either someone has labeled you as emotionally unavailable, or you’re concerned that your emotional numbness could indicate something more serious. Regardless, you’re in the right place. The Emotional Unavailability Quiz is designed to assist in self-assessing your current state of mind.
After this, you may also consider taking the Abandonment Issues Test. This assessment delves deeper into your traumas to help uncover your emotional struggles.
