What does it mean when your feelings are numb?

Depression and anxiety are two of the most common causes. Severe levels of acute elevated stress or nervousness can also trigger feelings of emotional numbness. Post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be tied to depression and anxiety, can cause you to feel numb, too. Some medications can also cause numbness.

What are the symptoms of emotional detachment disorder?

Symptoms of emotional detachment

• difficulty creating or maintaining personal relationships.
• a lack of attention, or appearing preoccupied when around others.
• difficulty being loving or affectionate with a family member.
• avoiding people, activities, or places because they’re associated with a past trauma or event.

Can suppressing emotions cause numbness?

A reduced sense of self (or “presence”) and emotional “numbness” is thought to be mediated by aberrant emotional processing due to biases in self-referent multi-sensory integration. This emotional “numbing” is often accompanied by suppressed autonomic arousal to emotionally salient stimuli.

What happens when you go emotionally numb for a long time?

When you go emotionally numb, you lose the ability to feel and experience your emotions on a psychological and emotional level. In this sense, emotional numbness is often clinically connected with dissociation , which is the disconnection from one’s memories, identity, environment, body, or senses.

Are you emotionally detached or emotion Numb?

Emotional detachment is not always a bad thing. It comes in handy when you need to maintain boundaries, avoid undesired energy overload from others, and even help others in crisis situations. But emotional detachment turns into its unhealthy twin, emotional numbness, when it becomes an automatic inner defense mechanism.

Why do I feel numbness in my body?

The simple answer is trauma. Usually, emotional detachment (or numbness) can be linked to early childhood experiences such as being abused mentally, emotionally, sexually, or physically.

What should I do if I feel numbness in my emotions?

If you feel that emotional numbness is significantly impairing your life, please do an act of self-compassion and seek out support either locally or online (there are even free counseling services online such as 7cups ).