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Feeling numb and struggling to connect with emotions and feelings. I spent a lot of time where I feel numb. I can go about my day and do my job and look after my child, but I’m in autopilot. On some days I feel like I’m calm, but the more I think about it the more I believe I’m numb. When I try to look inside, I often just cannot connect with the emotion I am feeling. This makes the journaling exercise difficult. I can think about physical sensations, but I’m not always clear on how they connect with my emotions. Is there anything else I can do to try to better connect with my emotions?
I would actually probably turn more to your body. If you’re able to connect with them through body movement and listening to your body, I would let your body express itself. Is my body wanting to move? Is my body angry? Is my body wanting to shut down? And that’s part of observing that emotion. And then if I want to move, if I want to punch, what is this punch, I’m angry, right? If I’m wanting this, I’m wanting just to curl up in a ball and cry, I’m sad.
So listen to your body. It may be telling you punch, fight, curl up, sad, it wants to be free; okay I want to move, I’m happy. I want to go. I want to create. So I would want to learn to listen through what your body is telling you, and then pausing as your body’s doing this okay, maybe that’s the emotion. Because our body’s movement, the way we anger, fight, whatever it is, that’s what our body could be telling us. So I would listen to your body.
Some of the journaling experiences, sometimes I would just write, and you can actually open up by just writing. My suggestion is probably 20 minutes. If you find yourself getting stuck, just keep writing, whatever keeps coming through, just keep writing. And that’s what we would say, putting yourself through that writing exercise until you find what is your answer. Anyway, I found that sometimes we have to get through that initial wave of writing to the deeper level of writing and that, sometimes, I found to be very effective with my clients, is just to continuously going a little bit longer, a little bit deeper. What’s next? I don’t know what’s next. I’m getting mad at what? Don’t edit just right. And I think you’ll be able to look back and see that there’s some emotion or some hurt or some anger or some sadness that comes out.