Our experience in life is predominantly shaped by our senses – what we see, smell, hear, taste, touch, and our awareness of body and balance.
More often than not, we tend to take our senses for granted. We only realise the importance of our senses when we lose them. For example, it feels terrible when we have a blocked nose and our food tastes bland because we lost our sense of smell or taste temporarily.
The impact of COVID-19 has affected the senses of COVID survivor. On the morning after Christmas in 2020, Carolyn Hinds woke up and realized she couldn’t smell or taste anything. Other signs of COVID-19, like fever, cough and muscle aches, came in the following days. Those symptoms subsided with time, but her lack of smell and taste did not. Close to two years later, Hinds who is 38 years old, can barely smell anything, and her sense of taste remains warped—sweet things leave a strange aftertaste, salty foods upset her stomach and spice makes her lips and tongue burn but tastes like nothing. “These things will mess with you mentally and physically because it changes the way you experience the world,” she says. Almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a lot of people who have similar experience with Hinds.
The inability to fully experience and feel everything around us can cause us to feel detached and withdrawn. Dr Zara Patel, a head and neck surgeon and smell-loss expert at Stanford University explains that “the inability to partake in the simple pleasure of life really starts to weigh on people and detracts from their overall quality of life and even leads to depression and anxiety and social withdrawal.”
What happens if you are ‘feeling nothing’?
The feeling of ‘not feeling’ anything might be called emotional numbness. It’s hard to describe what feeling numb is like, but you’ll intuitively know it if you’ve felt it. Know that you’re not alone.
Many people report feeling disconnected from the world around them sometimes, feeling “flat,” or feeling like life is on autopilot. Perhaps events and people seem muted, or less colorful somehow. It can also be described as chronically running on empty, feeling ungrounded, having a hard time focusing, or losing track of time throughout the day. Feeling numb can make it hard to connect with others, which creates loneliness or a sense of isolation in your experience.
Emotional numbness, also called “affective blunting,” is most commonly associated with depression. It can also occur with other mental health conditions and medications. It can be linked with states like dissociation or depersonalization — feelings of being disconnected from yourself, your emotions, or your surroundings.
The good news is, emotional numbness is usually temporary and treatable. This article will walk you through causes, treatment, self-help strategies, and additional resources.
“Why do I feel nothing?”
There’s no one answer to this question, but experts have a pretty good theory. Emotional numbness can occur when the limbic system is flooded with stress hormones. This is the area of the brain that deals with emotional regulation and memory.
There’s an emotional component as well. High-stress situations can tax our emotions and exhaust the physical body. The combination of the two can lead to a feeling of being drained and, consequently, numb. Numbness may also be a coping mechanism to prevent more pain from entering the psyche. This is especially true for those in high-stress environments and those who have experienced trauma.
The mental health conditions most often associated with emotional numbness are depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Emotional numbness can also come up in some dissociative disorders, which are connected with a personal history of trauma. Depersonalization is the sense of being disconnected from yourself, as if you’re having an out-of-body experience.
Anyone can experience this disconnect. Sometimes, it’s linked with an anxiety disorder or depersonalization-derealization disorder. It’s also one of the less talked about symptoms of a panic attack.
In some cases, antidepressants may be the cause of emotional numbness. A 2017 study showed that 46% of research participants experienced emotional numbness as a side effect of medication, most commonly with a classification of antidepressants called selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).
What to do when you feel numb
In the moment, you probably don’t feel like doing much at all. Sometimes, just curling up in a blanket and making yourself comfortable can feel soothing. Other times, it can help to move around, talk with a friend, or release some pent-up emotion. We talk more about these methods below.
- Move your body
Emotional numbness may feel like being “frozen” for some people. If this is the case for you, exercise might be the last thing on your mind. However, doing any form of physical movement is a great way to get out of your head and into your body. Try just walking around your room and shaking your arms out to connect with your body, or put on a lively song and move to the music in a way that feels good.
If you want to crank it up a gear, try working up a sweat with a bike ride, a brisk walk outdoors, swimming, or some yoga.
If none of these options sound appealing, remember what physical activities you used to love as a child — the hobbies that brought you pure, unbridled joy. Maybe that’s roller-skating, horseback riding, or boogie boarding. Do more of these activities to see if you can tap into that youthful exuberance.
For optimal health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source recommends getting at least 30 minutes of moderate physical exercise at least 5 days a week. Moderate exercise means you’re breaking a sweat and your heart is working hard. Regular exercise will get the endorphins flowing and perhaps help you feel more alive, yet grounded in your body.
- Talk it out
Sometimes, when we feel like we have no one to talk to, we shove our uncomfortable emotions down because we feel safer that way. Do this for long enough, though, and you might find it easier to feel nothing at all — as in, emotional numbness.
While it’s hard to be vulnerable, it’s also hard to keep everything bottled up inside. It can help to open up to someone you trust about what you’re going through. You might say something like, “I notice that lately I don’t feel much of anything at all. Has this ever happened to you?”
The bonding experience will release a neurotransmitter called oxytocin, also known as the cuddle hormone. This feeling of connection may be a welcome relief from the sense of “nothingness” you may be used to.
If you don’t feel like opening up to a friend or family member, you might consider reaching out through an online forum, a support group, or a session with a therapist to talk about what you’re experiencing.
- Try grounding exercises
If you feel numb and disconnected, it might help to gently bring your awareness to your body and your surroundings using grounding techniques. These techniques are often recommended for coping with PTSD and anxiety because they help reconnect you and remind you of the present and help you to emerge from feelings of distress.
Grounding can be physical or mental. Here are some ideas to try:
- Breathe deeply and notice your breath moving in and out of your body.
- Touch a familiar object and notice how it feels in your hands. Is it heavy or light? What texture does it have? Does it feel warm or cool?
- Notice the colors of objects around you. Try to find and name five blue, green, or red objects in the room.
- Hold a piece of ice in your hand. How does it feel as it melts? Challenge yourself to name the sensations.
- Put on a favorite song and really listen to it. How does it make you feel? Record your feelings in a journal.
Here is a link on other grounding techniques: https://www.healthline.com/health/grounding-techniques#physical-techniques
- Release pent-up anger
If you suspect that the emotional numbness has to do with repressed frustration, consider going to a beach or a lake and throwing stones into the water. Or you might consider taking kickboxing classes or booking a day at a batting cage.
You can also look up a local Rage Room. Once there, you’ll be given safety gear and weapons to smash things, like plates and old TVs, in a safe environment.
- Learn about emotions
Self-study can be an effective tool to become familiar with what you’re feeling. Sometimes, your feelings are too complex to be expressed or verbalized.
Create a mood diary, set a daily alarm, and jot down your emotions every day at the same time. Assign what you’re feeling a number between 1 and 10. If digital note-taking is more your style, try mood tracker apps.
There’s way more to the world of emotions than just happy, sad, and angry. If you’re trying to figure out what you’re feeling, refer to this list of emotions — 54 of them, to be exact.
We hope that after trying some of the tips and advice, you will emerge more confident in expressing your emotions in a healthier and more effective way.
Most emotions researchers agree on these five Universal Emotions: sadness, anger, disgust, fear and enjoyment, are the emotions that all humans, no matter where or how we were raised, have in common. To help you understand your emotional world and improve your emotional awareness and responses, take some time to explore this website: http://atlasofemotions.org/#introduction//
Which of the emotion(s) do you experience most frequently? How can you manage your emotions positively?
Sources:
- https://time.com/6113909/covid-19-smell-taste-loss/
- https://sciencing.com/do-parts-brain-control-5754118.html
- https://psychcentral.com/depression/i-feel-nothing-emotional-numbness#long-term-methods
