My depression at its worst feels as if I have no emotion; my “sadness” is not sad, it is absence of emotion. I can feign “happiness” for a while, but it seems forced, and a bit like a circus coming to a small boring town, then leaving, the small boring town is still small and boring.
The “flat affect” doesn’t describe this absence of emotion, or the feeling that all emotion is “above” the zero baseline of “no emotion”; it describes the inability to express that emotion.
I can easily express happiness, sadness, anger, joy etc, but it all seems a little fake (objectively… and yes, I realise that self analysis is exceptionally subjective)
Anyway. The question is, is there a scientific term for the absence of substantive emotion? (Hopefully not "psychopath! ")
‘anhedonia’. Also known as apathy, “feeling numb”, or “absence of feeling”. The flat affect is the noticeable effect, so that’s what gets described: “anhedonia” is just a word used in some of the literature and to answer questions like yours…
But also good for self description, when engaged in the circular rumination that sometimes goes with depression.
It called “disassociation” and includes emotional detachment.
There is a concept of a “window of tolerance” where your emotions are within the ability to regulate. Getting too far out of one side results in anxiety attacks and other symptoms. Getting too far out in the other direction is disassociation.