How do you quantify the stealth feeling of numb? Numbness, it resides inside of you, influencing your daily mental and physical life. Yet you cant put a number to numbness like body weight. You cant get your arms around numbness like the feeling you get when you huge someone you love. Standard definition for the word numb: adjective, 1. deprived of the power of sensation. verb, 1. deprive of feeling or responsiveness. A real word down to earth example of feeling numb is when someone jumps out from behind a door and scares the hell out of you. A brother, a sister when growing up. Yup it's happened to me many, many times. You feel the surge of adrenaline rushing through your veins - a transition to numbness. Your body turns on autopilot, you scream and you take flight. But what about when you are raped? Witness a rape? Witness an atrocity. You are "auctioned off" to a fixed marriage? Religious exorcism? Subjected to conversion therapy? Subjected to years and years of homophobic bashing? Let me spell the word "n u m b n e s s". In my case numbness took over me in my mid teens, diminishing me the full human experience - finding and bonding with another human being I'm innately attracted to. Numbness (a resultant of shame, etc) blocked all mechanisms for me to empirically determine I was gay. Of late, numbness is being replaced with understanding, reduction of stress and love of myself. I banish you numbness to the basement of my inner being.
Easy "metrics" are, when a person has their first kiss with someone they are innately attracted to. Their first date. Then more kissing....sex! Lets live together - yes. All easy parameters to quantify. But oh how does one measure a reduction in numbness? An attainment of feelings? Not easy question(s) (parameter(s)) to answer.
When you are numb, you watch your life happen to you. You go along with what you know is expected of you, as you long ago acquiesced all control of your path. The numbness is what allows you to stay in denial. The numbness is familiar and safe.
I have had two different types of numbness, anhedonia and dissociation. When my depression is at its maximum I suffer anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure), I know that things are getting better when I can read a book, do a puzzle or take a walk. I am not sure if I could provide a metric for how much or little I feel pleasure though. The things that you mention causing the numbness are traumas, from the traumas that I have experienced I dissociate. Minor dissociation simply causes me to not feel what is going on. Major episodes can make me not even remember the time period. I think at least for me these often operate as on/off, once over I can feel life again.
Agree. There are a few YouTube vids I've got queued to watch on this very subject. Through very close observation and note taking (journaling) I catch myself exhibiting behavior from my early days. See link below for link to one such vid on this subject. Bingo. I'm about to post on this thread about paralysis. I invite you to look at the reply post. Thanks for the great feedback. Links: and
What is happening, I think, is I am FINALLY comprehending the effects of "things" that happened to me in my childhood.
I thought I had uncovered and dealt with all of that years ago myself, and now it’s coming up again and I’ve realized even more layers of impact it had. I’m once again questioning so much of my identity and many past choices. Good luck on this journey, @brainwashed.
I feel you are over thinking your past to much. Look forward try new things even by yourself. You never know what excitement you my find. Wether it be a friend or an exciting new hobby. With this pandemic I have taken up walking and meet many new people. I walk in different places. New hobby sounds boring but broadway is shut down so are museums.
I think the point might be that this effect of being numb has lasting after-effects that intrude upon my attempts to move forward in my life. "Look forward try new things" sounds great, but it's a bit too simplistic, like telling an upset person they should calm down. Like Brainwashed, I often experience a lack of strong feelings about things, a diminished ability to really feel strong emotions. I think part of that is residual numbness from decades of closet dwelling, but I think some of it is needing to re-learn how to pay attention to my feelings and resisting the urges to push away my feelings. After all, I'm an expert at pushing down my feelings and ignoring them. Old habits die hard. So, it's with this intent that we seek answers from the past, hoping to add some closure to those past events and situations. I really don't know where the line is between a good amount of thinking and over-thinking. @brainwashed, thanks for the vids. I didn't really see myself among the 8 examples, but I know my childhood holds some of the answers.
As I’m working thru trying to understand myself, I find this thread striking because I think “numb” is a fairly apt description of myself.
Great thread! I look back over my life and realise how many times “numbness” actually got me through so many things. It’s like a coping mechanism just to shut off and deal with what we can’t change at the time.
This certainly was the case for me.I was convinced I just was not into sex, not really into dating women (well that was true!) I was like 'what's the big deal, this is work....If you convince yourself that intimacy with another human being isn't that big a deal you become isolated. (People can choose to be celibate for positive reasons, of course but I was doing it for negative ones) I think I did this to myself because I was terrified of being gay. Numbness also might be the 'freeze' response. There is fight, flight, and freeze- people often forget about the last one!
Numbness is actually a survival mechanism we humans have. Blocking out "things" allows us to survive said things. The problem is when we do not turn off the numbness.
This is something I’m working on thru exercise and meditation, with some success. Has it helped a bit with figuring out my sexuality? Maybe?
Good path, stay on it. If possible join Buddhist sits and practice loving kindness. You are doing exactly what I did in the past. I'm now in the thinking that sexuality matters will partially come automatically, from within, and not from logical thinking - the frontal lobes of the brain.
