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I’d felt this feeling before. Low energy. Anxious and overwhelmed, yet apathetic and depressed at the same time. I was emotionally numb, cut off from the world, and lost in my thoughts. On the edge of burnout and misplaced at sea.
I wasn’t crying (though I felt like it), and I wasn’t breaking down, but I also wasn’t really feeling anything. Did other people feel this way? What’s wrong with me? How long will I be in this place, Lord?
While numbness is a feeling that should be normalized, it often isn’t. We live in a prosperity Gospel world where many Christians fake it till they make it, but is that really what the Gospel calls us to do? Of course not. Because the numbness we’re experiencing isn’t just burnout, exhaustion, or anxiety, though they can all certainly play a role, it’s emotional numbness. A numbness deeper than our flesh, straight to our souls.
What Is Emotional Numbness?
On the surface, many people mistake emotional numbness for depression or apathy. They think it’s severe sadness or a lack of feeling. While each of these things can impact emotional numbness, they aren’t always the root cause. Because emotional numbness isn’t just sorrow, it’s the absence or void of feeling. When we’re overwhelmed, numbness is often our stress response or coping skill to a body that desires to shutdown.
Emotional numbness can stem from disconnection, a lack of motivation, or feeling “flat” even in good moments. But overarching each of these symptoms are 5 key culprits:
1. Chronic Stress and Burnout
When our bodies are constantly going, doing, and putting out without proper rest and fun, our nervous system gets overloaded. This leads to living in a state of chronic stress, which ultimately leads to burnout. Chronic stress and burnout have sadly become the norm in our society, but that doesn’t mean we should keep living life this way. Remember: Our bodies aren’t machines created to run 24/7.
2. Anxiety and Overthinking
Similar to stress and burnout, emotional suppression is often a coping mechanism for survival. Instead of dealing with our anxiety or anxious thoughts, we push them down, ignore them, or try to numb them. When I first started going to counseling, I didn’t realize how much “baggage” was weighing me down. Over the years, however, I’ve learned that having proper coping mechanisms in place to help me through these tough times is essential to my overall wellness. And that includes taking time to process and pray through what I’m feeling inside.
3. Unprocessed Pain
As with unprocessed emotions comes unprocessed pain. I’ll never forget the day I sat in my first therapy session and handed my counselor the stack of paperwork he had me complete beforehand. The more we talked through his questions, the more at ease I felt. Until he said this: “Amber, you do realize you’ve been through trauma, right?” For decades, I’d lived in denial. My pain was unprocessed, and I was going to keep it that way. But friends, unprocessed pain doesn’t heal; it will later boil up and overflow.
4. Depression
While it may not always be the root cause of emotional numbness, depression can certainly play a role. Clinical depression is more than a bad day or a low mood a few days a month. It’s feeling a deep lack and sadness for weeks and months on end. Especially when it’s not clinically addressed, it can only make feelings of numbness and apathy worse.
5. Spiritual Disconnection
As bio-psycho-social-emotional-relational beings, it’s clear that many facets impact our health. Our bodies, minds, and souls have a lot going on inside. But spiritual health and our relationship with God also play a major role. When we feel disconnected from God (for whatever reason), this can deepen our numbness. Many with mental health struggles battle with this because we wonder where God is in our suffering.