A patient's emotional feeling seems to differ from how it is being shown. Before revealing the answer, decide what distinguishes an abnormal expression of emotion from an abnormal emotional reaction.

Ask whether the disturbance lies in the underlying feeling itself, its intensity or proportionality, or in how that feeling is shown or handled outwardly. An abnormal expression of emotion is a disturbance not in the underlying feeling itself but in how that feeling is shown, communicated, or acted upon, distinguished from a disturbance in the emotion itself, which is instead the territory of an abnormal emotional reaction or a morbid disorder of emotion. An abnormal emotional reaction, by contrast, is an emotional response to a real event that is recognisable as an ordinary kind of feeling but excessive in degree, disproportionate to what happened, or persisting longer than the situation warrants, with the disturbance there lying in the feeling's scale, not in how it is displayed. Whether the feeling itself is out of proportion, or an ordinarily-proportioned feeling is being shown or handled in an unusual way, is the key distinguishing feature.