Why Do I Feel Numb Most of the Time?
The Pattern
You walk through your days inside a glass box. You can describe what is happening but you cannot feel it. Other people are crying at the funeral and you are wondering when you can leave. You are not cold. You are not broken. You are inside a numbness that was put in place to keep something larger from drowning you, and the numbness has been holding the line so long it has forgotten there is anything behind it.
Origins & Context
Bessel van der Kolk describes emotional numbness as one of the most reliable signatures of complex trauma. The system that learned to dampen overwhelming feeling cannot selectively undampen for safe ones. The whole channel is muted, not just the painful parts.
Stephen Porges's polyvagal theory locates numbness in the dorsal vagal branch, the parasympathetic state of immobilization and shutdown. It is a deeper, older protection than fight or flight, used when neither is available. Peter Levine names this as the body's last-resort survival posture, brilliant in the moment it was needed, costly when it stays on for decades.
The numbness is not who you are. The numbness is what kept you alive long enough to be able to feel again.— Nikita Datar
How It Shows Up
You hear about a tragedy and feel nothing. You receive good news and feel a small flat pleasantness instead of joy. You walk through your own birthday with the volume turned down on everything. You wonder if you used to feel things more or if you have always been like this.
It shows up as the secret loneliness of being in a room of people and not feeling connected to any of them. The numbness is not selective. It blocks the bad and the good in equal measure. You did not choose it. You inherited it from a younger version of you who needed it to survive the day she was in.
Named in the Literature As
The pattern is named in the literature as Dissociation (Bessel van der Kolk) and as Dorsal Vagal Shutdown (Stephen Porges), the polyvagal floor of nervous system response. Peter Levine names the underlying state as Tonic Immobility. Pete Walker frames the chronic version as the Freeze type CPTSD adaptation. Clinical literature also names the symptom as Emotional Blunting.
Related entries in this library: Dissociation, Freeze Response, Nervous System Dysregulation, Body Keeps the Receipt, Developmental Trauma.
Nikita's Note
I want to tell you something I want you to hold. The numbness is not who you are. The numbness is what kept you alive long enough to become someone who could afford to start feeling again.
You do not break the numbness with force. You break it with safety, slowly, over a long time. The feelings underneath are still there. They are waiting for the body to be sure they will not destroy it.
From the work
The numbness is not who you are. The numbness is what kept you alive long enough to be able to feel again.From You Are the Love You Seek by Nikita DatarAbout this book
Related Concepts
More in The Pattern Atlas
See all in The Pattern Atlas →I wrote about this in You Are the Love You Seek — available on Amazon.