Did you know that emotional numbness is an unconscious protective response to feeling hurt from anxiety or stress? You feel like shutting out the world, and that feeling may affect you with greater intensity if you’re a highly sensitive person (HSP).
Finding healthy ways to cope with emotional setbacks is a journey you must take if you’re going through a challenging time and don’t understand your emotional blind spots. Suffering alone makes processing emotions especially difficult, and if you’ve seen multiple doctors, therapists, and coaches with few results, new holistic options feel like an uncertain last resort. But one, in particular, could be the winning idea.
Emotional numbing is a coping mechanism that many people turn to, often unconsciously, when they’re dealing with emotional or physical stress, depression, or trauma. If you’re numbing yourself (whether you intend to or not), you may be shutting off too many emotions, making you less likely to be able to improve your well-being.
Numbing yourself comes with a cost. Here are four things to look for:
- Repressing emotions can adversely affect your psychological well-being.
- You may consequently handle stress in worse ways.
- Making decisions may become more challenging.
- Resilience feels more like resistance as you get in your way too often.
I see multiple clients for emotional numbing and emotional blindspots, many of which clients are men. Holistic mindset techniques can offer unique support when life is overly intense. Unlike therapy, Rescripting uncovers the root cause of your feelings so that you find a neutral space from feeling angry, frustrated, or lost without losing positive emotions that make living worthwhile.
Let me tell you how it works through a success story about a client named John and how he overcame his emotional numbing through my practice as a holistic wellness coach.
John’s Emotional Numbing Story
John, a client in his mid-50s (a highly sensitive person), used the Rescripting Method to heal from the stress of his divorce. Without understanding what he was doing, he hid from the pain but desperately wanted answers to get back on track. John sought the help of therapists—yet long-term talk therapy wasn’t a solution to his trauma.
For three years during and after the divorce, John lacked ambition, became cranky with family members, and created drama in every aspect of his life because of a deep insecurity. Due to his emotional blindspots, he didn’t have the right tools to see a way forward.
The Rescripting Method helped John recognize how to heal from his post-divorce quarrelsome attitude. In fact, after a few sessions, his combative nature seemed to resolve itself, and instead of turning his back on the world, he was feeling optimistic and emotionally free again. In Rescripting, we call that normal human spot “neutrality,” but in John’s experience, he called it happiness.
Before Rescripting, John consistently used phrases such as:
- “I can’t trust anyone.”
- “Nothing works out for me.”
- “My fears get the best of me.”
- “People judge my behavior. They don’t understand me.”
After Rescripting, he says things such as:
- “I am worthy.”
- “I will find love again.”
- “I believe in myself after my separation.”
- “I honor my past and look forward to my future.”
As an HSP, a highly sensitive person, John felt embarrassed and hurt about his divorce, but numbing his emotional pain for so long wasn’t healthy.
For John, numbing himself meant that he avoided people and situations. He was withdrawn from friends and silent around colleagues and neighbors. His work teammates started calling him “mouse” around the office because he stopped speaking up for himself.
John finally decided to take his life back when he realized that numbing himself was a habit brought on by a childhood fear that had stayed in his subconscious mind since he was seven years old. His divorce triggered pain from the past caused by his relationship with his father. In taking up Rescripting sessions, he received new scripts to reverse his challenges, embarrassment, shame, and discomfort.
Emotional numbing delivers only emptiness and isolation, with no future ahead until you have the right holistic wellness coach in your corner.
I hope to be that one for you.
Let’s all find love waiting for us; for many of us, that means self-love.
Heal, grow, and learn about yourself by creating new healthy scripts through interactive sessions at www.rescriptyourlifenow.com.
