Understanding Emotional Numbness After Childhood Neglect
Do people in your life want you to tell them how you feel, but you can never put your emotions into words, or even shut down when you try? Is it hard for you to feel or notice sensations in your body? Do you often feel empty inside? What you’re feeling may be emotional numbness, a frequent experience for survivors of childhood emotional neglect and trauma.
What is emotional numbness?
Because emotional numbness can be so quiet, people often don't recognize it for what it is. It might show up as:
Difficulty identifying your feelings: Someone asks "how are you feeling?" and you draw a blank, or default to "fine" because you genuinely don't know.
Feeling like you're going through the motions: You are present in your life, but not quite in it.
Disconnection from your body: Not noticing hunger, tension, tiredness, or pleasure until they become hard to ignore.
A sense that something is missing: Even when nothing is obviously wrong.
Difficulty making decisions: Especially ones that require knowing what you actually want or value.
Relating to others from a distance: Longing for connection, but feeling like there's a wall between you and other people.
While you may be insulated from painful emotions, this numbness can lead to feelings of loneliness and emptiness because you’ve also been cut off from connection and more pleasant emotions.
Where does emotional numbness come from?
Numbing, blocking out, and dissociating are all a common coping mechanism when our system becomes overwhelmed. We can adopt this coping mechanism at any age. In childhood, you may have learned to disconnect from your emotions if there wasn’t anybody there to respond to them—for example, if you were met with hostility, shaming, dysregulation, or your parent(s) shutting down themselves. Since children need support (in the forms of compassion, explanations, and regulation strategies) to manage their emotions, numbing is a natural response to a feeling of overwhelm; that reaction can stay with you through adulthood. Adults will similarly shut down when things get to be too much.
From an IFS (Internal Family Systems) perspective, numbing is a protector part that learned to shut things down when things got to be too much. That part was likely necessary at the time in which it took on this role. Over time, if your circumstances change, the numbing part may start to feel out of place or even like its actions are having unintended consequences (some of which are described above). Remember, it’s never the intention of this part to keep you disconnected from safe people or from positive emotions; this part is trying to keep you safe in the only way it knows how, and it might not know yet that your circumstances are different now.
How to move forward
Start with small steps to become slightly more aware of what it is you’re feeling. Here are some small mindfulness exercises that may help bring awareness to your body in small ways. Try any one of these at a time.
Set a timer for five minutes and mentally scan every body part from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. See if you can notice one sensation in one place in your body.
Focus your attention on one body part (for example, feel the soles of your feet on the floor) and try to notice sensations in that one body part. You can introduce movement to increase the sensation there (e.g. wiggling your toes, rocking your feet on the floor, picking up your feet and putting them down).
Look at an emotions wheel and try to identify 1-3 emotions that you are feeling. This can help put language to your experience. Try this both when you’re feeling regulated and when you’re feeling upset.
When you need to make a minor decision (like which direction to go on a walk or what you want to eat for dinner), try pausing and asking yourself, “what do I want?” Focus on that question for a few minutes to see if a preference emerges.
Ask the part of you that’s doing the numbing what it’s trying to do for you. If you feel able, extend some gratitude towards it for keeping you safe. Ask it what it needs in order for it to feel safe to allow some sensation or emotion to come through. This may feel tricky if you’ve never done IFS before or talked to parts, but these questions may lead you in some interesting directions!
If at any point you become overwhelmed, stop the exercise, take several deep breaths with full exhales, and try looking around the room to take in some sensory information from outside your body (e.g. see the colors in the room, listen for any sounds, try to smell something). Move your body if you were staying still during the exercise.
If you started reading this because those opening questions felt a little too familiar, that recognition might be worth paying attention to. Reach out if you'd like to explore what healing might look like.
