Numbness

Numbness is the feeling of feeling very little. In our model it is a surface feeling: a protective flatness that turns the volume down when something underneath feels like too much.

It can look like calm. It can look like not caring. Often it is neither. Numbness is not a bad feeling, and it doesn't mean something is missing in you. It is a dimmer switch your system learned to use.

What it protects

Numbness sits over feelings that once had nowhere safe to go. Fear is a common one. Shame is another, especially around money, mistakes or being seen to struggle. Loneliness and grief can sit underneath too.

Where anger pushes a feeling outwards, numbness pushes it out of reach. Both are surface layers. Both are doing a job.

Where it shows up in Templates

Numbness is the inner side of the strategy we call Hide.

• Around Expression, the rule says if I hide what I feel, I won't be hurt. The Expression × Hide Template keeps feelings so far below the surface that you stop being able to find them yourself.
• Around Capability, the rule says if I don't try, I can't fail. The Capability × Hide Template often goes flat at exactly the moment a task becomes important.
• Around Safety, if I stay out of sight, I'll be safe, numbness lets you go quiet and fade into the background while something tense is happening.

What it feels like in the body

Heaviness in the limbs. A sense of watching yourself from slightly behind your own eyes. Sounds a little far away. A pull towards the sofa, the screen or sleep. Sometimes the body shuts down altogether for a while. Your system is lowering its energy so that nothing has to be felt at full strength.

A letter on the hall table

It's Saturday morning. A letter from the bank has been on the hall table since Tuesday. You finally open it. Your overdraft has gone over its limit, and there's a fee.

You read it twice. You feel nothing much. You fold it, put it back in the envelope and make toast. Then you spend most of the afternoon watching videos of people restoring old furniture. By evening you couldn't tell anyone what you watched.

On Sunday, getting dressed, you notice your shoulders are up near your ears, and that you've been walking past the hall table without looking at it.

The flatness wasn't an absence of feeling. It was a lid. Under it was fear about the money, and an older shame about not having things handled.

One thing to notice

You can't think your way out of numbness, and you don't need to force feeling back. Start smaller.

When you notice the flatness, name one physical sensation you can still feel. Your feet on the floor. The weight of your hands. The air on your face. Then ask, gently: if this lid lifted a little, what might be under it?

You don't have to answer straight away. Noticing the lid is already a choice. The next small step, like phoning the bank on Monday, is still yours to take.

One day at a time.