Emotional numbness and dissociation are often a response to trauma, grief or loss. You might feel empty, dead inside, or like you can’t cry. Numbing is a common symptom of PTSD.
In this post I’ll explain why people go numb or experience dissociation, and what you can do about it. We’ll explore the science of the freeze response, how numbing protects us when emotions are too big, and why it shows up after trauma, grief, chronic stress, or burnout.
Most importantly, I share 5 things you can do to help you start feeling again.
What is Emotional Numbness and Why Does It Happen?
Emotional numbness is a common experience, and here’s what it can look like:
- Feeling flat, both physically and emotionally
- Losing motivation or interest in things that once brought joy
- Not feeling happiness — but not even sadness either
- Feeling detached, like you’re watching life happen from the outside
If you relate to any of that, you’re not broken. You’re experiencing a nervous system response.
But a response to what? Why do we go numb?
I had my guesses about why my member was feeling this way – when I saw that he had submitted a second question:
“I experienced a traumatic event that has turned my life upside down the last 4 or 5 months. I’m struggling with not being able to connect with my body, where I’m just numb (emotionally & physically).”
Boom, there it is.
Numbness is often a response to overwhelming stress or trauma. It’s one of the hallmark symptoms of PTSD. So let’s talk about the stages our nervous system goes through when it experiences a threat.
Understanding the Dorsal Vagal Shutdown: When Numbing Takes Over
When your nervous system senses danger, it goes through three steps to keep you safe. First it scans for help or support to protect you. Then it can activate fight or flight. But if you can’t fight off the problem or escape your attacker, or if you’ve tried to overcome the problem so many times and it just never seems to work, your body may go into a third state. This is the dorsal vagal response also known as freeze or shutdown. That’s when people describe feeling numb, detached, spaced out, or empty.
Animals do this all the time. Freezing and going numb protects them from being seen, from making noise, from feeling pain, and that can help them survive a threat from a bigger, stronger aggressor. Numbing is a protective response. And humans do it too. And it’s important to remember, going numb isn’t something you consciously chose to do—your nervous system made the decision.
Why Numbing and Dissociation Happen: 5 Common Trauma Responses
There are a few common reasons people may feel numb:
- Overwhelm or trauma When emotions are too big, the brain protects you by disconnecting.
- Grief or loss People often expect grief to show up as lots of tears, sadness, or anger; but it’s also very, very common that they just feel flat or like they’re “not feeling anything”.
- Chronic stress and burnout Constant stress floods your body with stress hormones, and eventually this depletes yoru ability to get activated- some people call this adrenal fatigue.
- Depression This often brings a flatness, where both joy and sadness feel out of reach.
- Learned survival strategy If showing emotions wasn’t safe as a child, you may have learned to shut them off.
More on that last one in a moment, but I do need to add that sometimes numbness is linked to biological or medical issues, including mental health conditions like schizophrenia, borderline, or bipolar disorder. Exhaustion and illness can also leave you feeling flat. So can medication side-effects. If you suspect that’s the case, it’s worth talking with a doctor.
But for many, numbness is the nervous system’s way of saying, “That was too much. I’m protecting you.”
Childhood Roots of Emotional Numbness as a Defense Mechanism
Ok so back to learned habits. Sometimes numbing and dissociation was a coping skill that we learned as kids to deal with a situation that was scary or painful, and we couldn’t leave. Maybe there was abuse that you couldn’t escape. Or if your parent constantly criticized you, and nothing you did was ever good enough, your 12-year-old self probably responded with, “Fine! I don’t care!”
Over time, pretending not to care became real — and numbing turned into a habit.
We learned to numb ourselves to escape some of that pain.
And then numbing becomes a habitual defense mechanism. As a child, it’s the best you can do. But as an adult, you come to depend on this skill long after the danger is gone. What started as protection morphs into alcoholism, workaholism, screen addiction, or dissociation. As we rely on it more and more, it becomes less and less functional.
The good news is that if you learned it, you can unlearn it.
What to Do About Emotional Numbness: 5 Ways to Start Feeling Again
When we feel numb, we often try two things that backfire. Either we try to force ourselves to feel something, or we try to think our way out of it. Trying to force it is actually adding stress to our system, pushing us further into the dorsal vagal response. And trying to think our way out of it is a form of intellectualization. It’s another subtle attempt to avoid our actual feelings by getting up in our heads.
Here are 5 things that actually work:
1. Be Curious and Compassionate with Your Emotional Numbness
The first step isn’t to fight numbness but to notice it with curiosity and kindness.
Instead of demanding that you feel, approach numbness like a scientist exploring something new. Ask yourself:
- Where do I feel numbness in my body?
- What does numbness feel like?
This came up in an interview I did with mindfulness expert Thomas McConkie, and I like how he explains it. (Skip to 31:32 in the video to hear this question and his answer.)
Thomas McConkie: “To learn to attune to that kind of numbness, like I don’t feel anything. Not feeling anything is another kind of feeling. And if we learn to stay with “I don’t really feel anything, we’re learning there are like 20 layers to that I don’t really feel anything. We get deeper and deeper into our actual experience, and it yields amazing insight.”
Remind yourself that today is a beautiful day to feel whatever you’re feeling or not feeling right now. It’s a good day to allow yourself to be right where you are, not forcing it, but just being present to your experience right now. And this can tell your nervous system that you are capable, it can nudge you up the ladder toward internal safety.
2. Connect with Your Body
Because numbness is a nervous system state, not a thinking problem, we need body-based approaches. The way through numbness isn’t to force yourself to “just feel,” but to gently reawaken your nervous system. Here are some things you could try:
- Ground with your senses Touch something with texture, notice a color around you, or put on music. Your senses can help re-anchor you in the present moment.
Peter Levine teaches a simple exercise in his book Healing Trauma. Go into the shower and allow the water to hit various parts of your body and let yourself mindfully feel it. It might hit your hand and you look at it, and notice how it feels to have the water hit your hand. Then have it hit your arm, and you allow it and notice how it feels. We can practice connecting with our emotions through the body.
- Movement is medicine Try walking, stretching, or shaking out your hands. Research shows that exercise is one of the most powerful treatments for depression. It helps us move up the polyvagal ladder back into a sense of safety.
3. Restore Your Sense of Safety
When we feel safe, our nervous system naturally climbs back out of shutdown.
- Look around the room, move your head, move your eyes, notice that here in this moment, I am safe enough.
- Remind yourself, “I have people who will support me.” One of the most direct ways to restore a sense of safety is being in physical contact or eye contact with a caring person (or even a pet). You don’t have to talk (though that’s not terrible either).
- You could do some of the “Restoring Safety” exercises from my free Grounding Skills course. Do a safe place visualization, turn on your safe playlist, or pull out your safe cues sensory kit.
- If you’re exhausted, burnt out, or overwhelmed, you probably need a little break to create safety from whatever is draining you. What can you do to get some rest?
Safety isn’t just about your environment — it’s the message your nervous system receives that “I can handle this.”
4. Ask What’s Behind the Numbness
Behind the numbness there is often a huge emotion. Numb is a protector, it’s desperately trying to protect you from a feeling. If we imagine this protector it might be saying, “I’m afraid little Emma can’t handle feeling so much sadness, or grief, or anger, or pain.” So how can you respond to your protector part?
- Can you show compassion to your numbness? Maybe speak to it: “Thank you numbness for trying to protect me.”
- Ask your numbness, “What are you trying to protect me from?”
- Ask it, “What would you like to tell me?”
- You can reassure your numbness from a place of Self, “I’m not a little kid anymore. Thank you so much for what you (numbness) have been trying to do to protect me.”
- Ask it, “Would you be willing to step aside so I can see what’s behind you?”
Sometimes numbness may be willing to step aside and let you glimpse what’s underneath. Other times it won’t — and that’s OK. This work might be best done with a therapist. When numbing and dissociation become really chronic, removing our internal defense mechanisms can sometimes leave us overwhelmed with big traumas that we’ll need support working through.
5. Act Out the Emotion
When you’re numb or dissociated, it can be helpful to dramatize the emotion that you’re not feeling. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but hang with me. There are a few steps to this.
- Even if you can’t feel or name an emotion, you probably know deep down what is behind your numbness. If an observer of your life were to guess, what might they say instigated it? You don’t have to force an answer, but making a guess can be helpful for this next step. For example, if someone close to you recently passed away, let’s guess that you’re feeling grief or anger around that.
- Now imagine how someone who lost a loved one would feel, and describe that in writing. And I do mean describe. Don’t just say this person would feel sad. Write it like a character’s scene. Describe the sobs, the inability to speak, the stomachache, squeezing the eyes, hugging a pillow, and so on. Feel free to watch a video or read an account of someone going through the same kind of trauma that you’ve been through.
- This last part may sound so awkward that you don’t want to try it, but I encourage you to act out the emotions you imagined. Yell, shake, fake some crying. Pretend you are an actor on stage feeling a character’s emotions, and then act them out.
Healing Emotional Numbness to Restore Feeling
OK, so there’s five options for working through emotional numbness.
- 4) Recognize that it’s your body’s protective response to overwhelming feelings.
- 1) Treat numbness with curiosity and compassion.
- 3) Restore your sense of safety.
- 2) Connect with your body.
- 5) With movement, dramatize the emotion you’re missing.
With each of these 5 ways to respond to numbness or dissociation, you are recognizing that your nervous system is protecting you from something. And if you feel supported and well-resourced, you can figure out what that scary something is, and start to heal it by responding to it in healthy ways that counteract the numbness.
Hopefully, this post has been helpful, and even hopeful, that you can restore your ability to feel sensation in your body and experience a wide range of emotions.
You don’t have to force it at all, but by taking small steps you can work through it
Embodiment Practices and Other Skills for Trauma Healing
I’m working on a whole series about embodiment and emotional regulation after trauma, so if this post resonated with you, you can learn more by checking out that playlist.
Or if you’re ready to dive deep into the skills to improve your mental health, check out my membership. I’ve got 10 courses on everything from how to regulate your nervous system, to how to process emotions and work through trauma. 98% of people who took my courses said that it helped them improve their mental health.
