Tonight's Lesson: Emotional Numbness

When people feel emotionally numb, they can feel emotionally disconnected from the world. An example if emotional numbness, When a person in a sad situation and does not feel like crying. Emotional numbness can also cause a person to feel hopeless about the future. 

It can be scary and you can begin to think you will never have feelings again.  Usually you don’t even know where to start to get your feeling back or how to figure out exactly what you are feeling.  Sometimes a negative life experience can cause the wide range of your feelings to be limited to only a few feelings like sadness, or anger or no feelings at all.  When you are emotionally overwhelmed by a situation, and don’t know how to respond, you may shut down and feelings of numbness can arise. 

The outside world may interpret your emotional numbness as being cold or apathetic.  Some people may think you don't care anymore about anything including relationships.  Others may accuse you of being distant or aloof.  They may not understand that this is part of depression.  One does not always have to be crying to be depressed.

Tips on how to deal with emotional numbness: 

Seek out the help of a good therapist. You will need support to get you through.

Realize that you are also denying yourself opportunities to feel good again. If you block everything out, you have also shut out happy feelings.

 

It may be cathartic to read books or watch movies which contain a lot of emotion. Immersing yourself in emotional content may be a more safe way to feel empathy and to begin feeling some emotion yourself. 

 

Try creative arts, for example paint, or write to express feelings.

 

Attempt to feel your feelings as they are happening. Try to be present and conscious about what you are feeling.