How to Stop Numbing Your Emotions

If you've got very good at keeping going, and somewhere along the way forgot to keep feeling, this one's for you.

My boyfriend died in 2020 and I avoided feeling anything at all lest I imploded.

We were young, barely in our twenties, and we'd fallen properly in love. We met working on a sailing yacht together — we were both deckhands.

Along with our skipper and cook (who were also an item), we crewed this gorgeous vessel — Halcyon, she was called — over a summer for the owner and his mates.

But Jak had terrible mental health. He had manic-depression, now known as bipolar disorder, and this led to him taking his own life one night, when he was the only crew member left on the boat.

I remember getting that phone call. I was back home up north, fresh from visiting a girlfriend's house and driving home in the dark. The skipper told me to pull over before he gave me the news.

I remember my mum thrusting a cup of tea at me. The weeks that followed I just remember shutting off from my feelings entirely. Numbing everything, because I was terrified what my instincts would do to me. I even remember thinking it was a complicated lie, made up because he didn't like me any more, and I'd spot him on the street some day.

It was a mess. I just didn't have the resources to deal with this sort of trauma, and neither did anyone around me.

Compound this with the fairly dramatic and sudden decline in my step-dad's health 6 months later, and his eventual death just days after my 21st, and I was a shell of a human being. I avoided feeling anything at all and numbed all emotion. I became a pariah at university and lived alone. I caved into myself, afraid of what would happen if I actually lived out loud.

And if that's you right now — in any version of that — I want you to know something before we go any further: you are not broken. You learned to cope the only way you knew how.

Maybe for you it's slightly different. Maybe you're not avoiding grief exactly. It could be total heartbreak after a relationship ended, the fear after being laid off from work, low-level anxiety, stress, overwhelm, panic about raising your kids to be good people...

I'm speaking to the version of you that got very good at functioning and forgot to keep feeling.

Because feelings are there to be felt

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The biggest lesson since then, after leaving two toxic relationships in the span of 6 months and feeling more despair than I knew possible, is to feel more. That's the way through.

I white-knuckled my trauma back then. Hung on for dear life as my body and brain nearly destroyed me in the darkness. Except I was never going to be destroyed. The way out was right there in front of me, but no one showed me how.

That's what I'm writing this for today, my friend. I'm here to remind you: the darkness you're so afraid of feeling, that threatens to consume you entirely, it's there to tell you something. Rather than a monster, ready to destroy you and any sense of normalcy you have in your life, these feelings are a little mouse, if you can only turn to face them. A mouse just needing a bit of love, a bit of space, and probably some good cheese.

We've been taught to suck it up, to power through, to deal with it (or, god forbid, to man up). But this is keeping us afraid, and tense, and scared, and numb.

Your feelings are there to be felt. It might not be comfy for a bit. Storms might rage for a while as you process and accept and allow it all to be here. But you know what happens once the storm abates? The sun comes out. Sure, the world exists without your person there with you, in this new way post-heartbreak or trauma, but with the sun out it offers us a chance to rebuild something bigger and brighter.

Jak died in 2010, my step-dad Alan died in 2011, and both of these wonderful humans have taught me: love more, feel more, and prioritise happiness. My heart still breaks a bit writing these words — they've never really left me — but they've given me clarity and the foundations for a life well-lived.

This is what's waiting for you on the other side of your feelings. And as the wonderful executive coach Joe Hudson says, joy is the matriarch of emotions, and she only shows up when her children (i.e. all other emotions) are welcomed.

What's the feeling you've been avoiding? What might it actually be trying to show you?

Let's avoid less, and feel more. That's the way through.

With you,

Chloe

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If you're ready to stop white-knuckling it and start actually feeling your way through, I'd love to help you get there.

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