Numbness – what emotional numbness really means, and how counselling can help

Georgina Sturmer
May 9, 2023
4 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

In counselling, we’re all about the feelings. How are you feeling? What are you feeling? How does that make you feel n

ow? But what if the answer is ... nothing?

What if you can’t quite put your finger on how you feel. Or you don’t feel anything at all? Emotional numbness can leave you feeling confused, distressed, or isolated. Like you're going through the motions or watching your life unfold from the sidelines. In this article, we’ll explore what emotional numbness is, why it shows up, and how counselling can help you overcome it. Click here to view an older version of this article on the Welldoing site. I've also contributed to an article for Happiful, all about how to open up when you don't know what you're feeling. You can find that article here.

What does it mean to feel emotionally numb?

Like all emotional experiences, numbness can feel different for eveyone. Your version of happiness or sadness might not look like someone else’s. The same is true for numbness.

For some, numbness feels like a kind of emotional anaesthesia. Life is happening around you, but you’re detached, at a distance. For others, it’s a fog, a flatness, or a sense of being stuck on pause. Emotional numbness might mean that you don't feel sadness or fear, but it can get in the way of feeling joy, motivation, or excitement. There’s a psychological term for this: 'anhedonia', the inability to experience pleasure. But numbness often goes deeper. It can feel like you’re unable to experience life at all.

Why does emotional numbness make life difficult?

At first glance, it might sound helpful for our feelings to be muted. Like turning down the volume on a stereo blasting out overwhelming emotions. But emotional numbness doesn’t just dampen down the painful parts. It mutes everything.

When you’re numb, you might find it hard to:

Connect with other people
Make choices or decisions
Feel optimistic
Enjoy things that would ordinarily bring you pleasure

If life is running smoothly, this emotional numbness may go unnoticed. But when life becomes challenging, it can make it hard to advocate for yourself or create changes in your life. And when you can’t connect with how you feel, you may struggle to understand or express your needs, leaving you feeling more isolated and misunderstood.

Why do we feel numb?

It could be a whole range of things:

Unprocessed trauma

This is a fancy way of saying that sometimes things happen to us, and we don’t have a chance to explore or express our feelings. These feelings can become buried or stuck, as if they’re underneath a layer of numbness.

Fear of being overwhelmed

Sometimes it feels safer not to feel at all. If emotions seem too big or too frightening, we may shut them down as a form of self-protection. It can feel safer to bottle things up inside than to open up a can of worms.

Cultural or family messages

Maybe we were told to have a ‘stiff upper lip’, 'be a good girl', or that ‘boys don’t cry’. Perhaps we’ve learnt that some feelings are ‘bad’ such as sadness, frustration, anger or envy. These messages become internalised, and they block us from our feelings, leading to numbness.

Always putting others before ourselves

Selflessness can be an attractive quality. But it might also indicate that we are disconnected from what we need or what we want. Or that we don’t feel that we deserve to have our needs met. This can make it difficult to acknowledge our feelings. If this sounds familiar, you might want to read my blog about being a people-pleaser.

Chronic stress or burnout

Mental or physical exhaustion from work, or other commitments, can leave us feeling overwhelmed. When this happens, we often disconnect from our emotions, and end up feeling numb. It's a coping mechanism, but one that can leave us feeling empty or distant.

Beginning to reconnect: the key to overcoming emotional numbness

Start by noticing

Strange as it may sound, I would encourage you to begin to tune in to how you feel - even if it feels like 'nothing'. Do you notice patterns? Is it constant or does it change at different times or in response to different triggers. Could you scale it from 1 to 10? Is it accompanied by bodily sensations, any changes in your breathing? Once we notice something, we can be curious about it.

Notice how you feel about making choices or decisions

If we’re feeling numb it can be difficult for us to put ourselves first. This reflects in how we make choices – even right down to what we want to choose from a restaurant menu.

Embrace the full range of feelings

Recognise that there aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings, just human emotion. Just because we feel sad or angry or frustrated, that doesn’t mean that we are somehow negative or bad.

Seek out safe opportunities to explore past experiences or relationships.

In counselling, you can be supported to carefully open up and release feelings that you have been suppressing. Or use a journal or another creative outlet to explore feelings that you might not want to name.

Prioritise self-care.

Don’t underestimate the power of basics: sleep, food, movement, nature, laughter. Find opportunities to connect with the outside world and with other people, and to stimulate your senses. It might be a walk outdoors, or a catch up with an old friend, or a TV programme that makes you laugh out loud.