Stress and emotional numbing: How to recognise? Therapist suggests 7 steps

From reduced empathy to avoiding emotional situations, here are a few signs of emotional numbing we should be aware of.

In our daily life, stress has become a part. The way we strain our emotions and mental health due to various reasons can affect the way we think, the way we behave and the way we respond. Stress has a way of altering our lifestyle and making us more anxious and overwhelmed. Stress can also lead to emotional numbness. Emotional numbness is the condition where we may feel that we are disconnected from our emotions. We may have difficulties in feeling our emotions at all. "Recognising emotional numbing is an important step towards addressing it and seeking support, whether through complex trauma coaching, self-help strategies, or other mental health professionals," wrote Therapist Linda Meredith.

Steps to recognise emotional numbing:

Disconnection from emotions: We may face difficulty in understanding how we are feeling in different emotions. This can happen because of the disconnection from ourselves, and our own emotions.

Reduced empathy: Since we fail to understand our own emotions, we also face difficulties in understanding how others are feeling. Emotional numbing can lead to decreased understanding of how others are feeling, making us less empathetic.

Avoidance of emotional situations: We may face situations where we feel overwhelmed by emotions – this can make us avoid emotional situations because of the fear of being unable to face them in a healthy manner.

Feeling emotionally flat: Emotional numbing can lead to sensations of life lacking colour and emotional depth. This happens because of not being able to be in touch with our feelings.

Engaging in risky behaviour: When people are emotionally numb, they may try to engage in risky behaviours such as substance abuse or reckless actions as an attempt to feel something.

Struggles with intimacy: Be it romantic or platonic connections, we fail to develop intimate connections with people because of emotional numbing.

Physical symptoms: Emotional numbing may show up as physical symptoms such as chronic fatigue, headache or other symptoms.