Emotional Paralysis

Have you ever reached the stage of Emotional Paralysis?

Symptoms: Indifference, lack of interest in anything, no thrill for new ideas, not sharing your ideas with others...etc

Emotional Paralysis, i believe, comes from too much subjectivity, and complete lack of bias.

When you are always trying to put yourself in the other party's shoes. When you are always trying to understand the reasons behind someone's thoughts and ideoligies. When you are always giving excuses for others ways of analysis. You are being subjective, you think, but in reality, you are leading your soul to Emotional Paralysis.

A lot of us have been suffering from Emotional Paralysis lately. At least I know I am. I have not been expressing my opinions clearly. There is a reason for that, ofcourse. The reason is that our society still has not reached the maturity stage of having healthy arguments. Our society does not value the outcomes of healthy debates.

An Algerian friend once told me: " If a person was explaining an idea to me, and I totally agree with that idea, I will pretend that I do not agree, just to create a debate, and enjoy the thrill of it."

You still find a lot people who get really offended by your opinions just because they are different. They might even withdraw from you just because your "bizarre" ideas might affect them. This negative attitude, ofcourse, kills the thrill of a healthy debate.

In your next debate, not wanting to offend others, you try to be as subjective as possible. By time, you end up not having opinions of your own. You develop a dual vision of the two sides of each argument, and you even become able of arguing to the favor of both sides! You might think that this is smart. But it's not. Because you will end up not knowing what your real opinion is, your ideas and thoughts become numb, i.e: Emotional Paralysis.

In order to overcome Emotional Paralysis, you have to clearly discuss your views, and be proud of them. Listen attentively to the other side, discuss, have a healthy debate, agree on some issues, disagree on others. And if the other side feels offended or even schocked of your ideas, and tries to make you feel guilty about them, then the other side is probably suffering from a worse disease, that I might discuss in another post.

As part of the treatment, I want to ask each one of you to write in the comments an opinion that you always wanted to share, but continously got shut off.