The Hidden Reason You Feel Numb Inside

A psychology practice working with couples, individuals, and families revealed a recurring pattern across many different clients. Many people carried a burden they could not name, and their struggle did not fit common diagnoses. After two years of research, the cause was identified as childhood emotional neglect. Clients had grown up with emotions ignored, leading them to wall off feelings during childhood. Those feelings remained out of awareness, and in adulthood the result was emotional numbness. Recognizing emotional numbness can be painful, and understanding the reason can be difficult, but it is presented as the first step toward change.

"I was busy seeing clients in my psychology practice. I was working with couples, individuals, and families. I was treating problems like depression, marriage and family conflict, anxiety, communication problems, anger, addiction, and more. Some of my clients had traumatic or abusive childhoods, and some did not. My clients were a varied mix: plumbers, doctors, salespeople, secretaries, scientists, stay-at-home parents, students, among others."

"Many of my clients had very little in common with each other, yet I began to see a pattern among them that appeared over and over again. A remarkable number of very different people tried to express a particular burden to me-a burden they had carried through their lives and felt deeply, but never had the words to express. They all said it differently:"

"These folks were not damaged, traumatized, or mentally ill. There was no diagnosis to capture their struggle. They weren't actually different, or empty, or alone, but they felt this way for a reason. It took me two years of delving into the question and researching to find the answer, and when I did, I was very surprised."

"The answer was deceptively simple, and not at all what I had expected. The cause of this burdensome feeling was the one life experience all these varied people shared. They had all grown up with their feelings ignored ( childhood emotional neglect). As children, they all had learned that their emotions were not accepted in their childhood homes. As children, they all had, out of necessity, walled off their feelings, which flew under the radar in their childhood homes. Now, as adults, they were emotionally numb."

Read at Psychology Today