Emotional numbness typically an unconscious protective response to feeling difficult emotions, whether due to anxiety, stress or trauma. It is the mental and emotional process of shutting out feelings and may be experienced as deficits of emotional responses or readify.
Chronic or acute trauma can trigger a stress response that swamps the system and triggers a state of collapse, including emotional numbness.
Blocking hard feelings can make it hard to feel anything at all, including the hard feelings, and it can make healing difficult if not impossible.
Mental health treatment can help young adults understand why they feel emotionally numb and address the root causes that catalysed this self-protective mechanism.
Feeling emotionally numb commonly arises as an unconscious protective response to feeling difficult emotions, whether due to anxiety, stress or trauma.
Experts regard it as a form of dissociation, a process that allows us to unconsciously protect ourselves from emotional pain. But not letting in our emotions, keeps us from processing and healing the cause of those feelings. Moreover, pushing hard feelings away, can make it hard to feel anything at all, whether that is love, happiness, surprise or even interest. Over time, detachment from our emotions can effect our sense of identity, our relationships with other people and even our physical well-being.
Experts believe that emotions evolved to help us to adapt to our environment. From an evolutionary perspective, positive emotions encourage us to seek out experiences that are beneficial for survival, like connections with others and sexual intimacy. Negative emotions motivate us to avoid or escape situations that impose a threat.
Our emotions are meant to fluctuate as part of our stress hormone response system. We should feel a surge when we need to take action and be able to downshift, when the threat has passed.
Problems arise when we lose the emotional flexibility to respond to the circumstances of the moment. Both heightened reactivity and blunted emotions are associated with a number of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. Emotional numbness can also be a sign of schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder or derealisation disorder. Genetic predisposition and personal life history may cause disorders like these to develop as part of a person's response to stress and trauma.
The experience of feeling emotionally numb can include
• Limited or mutual emotional response to events
• Reduced ability to respond to emotions in others
• Feeling disconnected from the people, leading to indifference, isolation and loneliness
• Disconnection from own self, like being on autopilot
• Fatigue
• Forgetfulness and difficulty focusing
• Hopelessness
• Sense of shame about not feeling emotions
• Engaging in self-harm or risky behavior in an effort to feel • Overuse or abuse of alcohol or drugs in an effort to further avoid feelings
• Inability to fully participate in life
• Inability to access feelings
• Preference of isolation over spending time or being with others
• Loss of interest in activities that one used to enjoy
In addition to therapy, several lifestyle may changes to help relieve some of the symptoms of emotional numbness, and hopefully, prevent more episodes from happening in the future. The key to the success of lifestyle modifications is to find what works best for each person.
Develop a support system: While reaching out to others may seem difficult at first, seeking social support from family and friends, that can be trusted, may help provide a safe way to express emotions.
Engage in physical activity: Staying physically active and engaging in exercise, that the person likes, not only benefits their health, but it can also reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Get adequate rest: Both the quality and amount of sleep are critical to managing the symptoms of any physical, emotional or mental health issue. Insufficient sleep can make coping with the stressors of life more challenging. While waking up during the night is common when dealing with PTSD, depression, anxiety or any trauma. Trying to get seven or more hours of sleep each night is essential.
Minimize stress: Both daily stressors and overwhelming stress are major contributors to emotional numbness. Finding better ways to manage stress is key to addressing the avoidance of emotions and feelings. One way could be managing the own schedule to be sure to make time for enjoyable things. Another way could be practising deep breathing, which can help provide almost immediate relaxation. It is also important to note that while some people use drugs or alcohol to cope with stress, these substances can contribute to greater stress levels
Use mindful strategies: Mindfulness strategies may be particularly helpful in reducing emotional numbing and increasing emotional strength and competence to manage stressful experiences.
There are many possible causes for emotional numbness
Chronic or overwhelming stress: The body's stress response system evolved to protect us from life-threatening experiences. When it is functioning well, it produces a rush of hormones and physiological responses, that help us through a challenging situation and then subside once the situation is resolved. But chronic or overwhelming stress can swamp the system and trigger a state of collapse (including emotional numbness). This state can be produced by specific events, such as an academic deadline, the end of a relationship, or a serious illness. Or it can result from ongoing stressors like prejudice, community violence, or financial insecurity.
Acute trauma: An acute trauma such as a car accident, an assault, or a natural disaster, can also trigger an intense stress response. This becomes problematic when the protective reflex persists long after the event has passed. That is why feeling numb can also be a symptom of post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD).
Childhood trauma: Childhood trauma has also been linked to lingering forms of dissociation later in life, including emotional numbness. Because children do not have any other way to protect themselves, the body and mind unconsciously turn off emotions to avoid pain and fear. Furthermore, if a child has learned through experiences that their expression of emotion will trigger anger in a caregiver, they may develop a fear of feelings in general. This is sometimes called "affect phobia". Emotional neglect, when a child's emotional needs are ignored, invalidated or unappreciated, can be just as harmful.
Grief: The loss of a loved one can cause intense sadness or paradoxically a feeling of numbness. Once again, feeling numb can be understood as an instinctive defence mechanism against overwhelming emotions or the loss of someone important for one's emotional survival.
Side effect of medication: Some antidepressants can cause emotional numbness, particularly the antidepressant medications SSRIs and SNRIs. Emotional blunting is reported by nearly half of depressed people on antidepressants and is a common reason why people choose to stop taking antidepressants.
Substance abuse: Most experts now agree that unresolved trauma and grief underlies most cases of substance abuse. People turn to substances to drown out their feelings or as a way to feel anything at all. The emotional numbness associated with traumatic life experiences can be worsened by damage to the brain cells caused by heavy or prolonged use of drugs and alcohol.
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