Loving the Feelings Underneath Emotional Numbness

I got a great question I want to share with you guys here and it's about that experience of going through emotional numbness, dissociation. This question is from Luke. Now it's a long question so I'm just going to keep it short here and get to the real heart of it. But Luke has been dealing with these feelings of numbness for a long time and he's got to the point where he wants to step forward with the next phase of his life. He has a big goal he wants to accomplish, take on, and he's realizing that being disconnected from his body emotionally is one of the things that's going to hold him back in this endeavor. So Luke has been fluctuating from solution to solution, advice to advice, and he's not really too sure about how to handle this. So I'm going to answer this for Luke. I'm going to give some thoughts on it. And one of the things I noticed, and I noticed this with a lot of people who have this, it comes from an initial difficult experience. Something can lead to this numbness and quite often for a lot of us it's a feeling of, oh I did something wrong. And I just call that guilt or I call it the defective story, but it's experience that's held emotionally in the body. And that is one of the things that leads to this numbness, this sense of being cut off from ourselves, cut off from our feelings, from our emotional body. Now that guilt is one of the things that's in there that leads to this. The other one, the big one, is feeling like I'm alone, like I'm cut off, I'm isolated, I'm all by myself, which is very very painful. So what do we do with that? I mean it's not like we wake up and there's this conscious awareness of, yep I'm carrying a lot of guilt today. Usually it's very buried. So what we do with this is, first thing we have to do, I know I'm repeating myself here guys, I've said this before many times, but it's always the first start. It's like to experience the numbness as a very very valid experience. It's a very valid experience and it is an experience just like any other experience that is to be met with acceptance and felt into. You can feel into numbness, to become curious about it, to welcome it even. Now I've noticed a lot of times when we're going through this, we say things to ourselves like, I don't feel anything, I just don't feel anything. And usually you know in therapy or something it comes up that, well actually you know what, that's actually not quite accurate. Because you know what I do feel? I feel sometimes anger, maybe sometimes I feel anxiety. Those are quite common. Or even depression sometimes. So what we realize here is, okay, when we're saying I'm cut off from my emotions, anger is less common. But what is really quite common is, even when we're having this experience of numbness, is and this is one thing that we really want to watch out for, because it's so useful for us when we're beginning to heal. To watch out for irritation, mild irritation, something that slightly bogged me. Because it's the irritation that we experience that is, it's at our fingertips, it's close to the surface, it's something that we are still in touch with. And that's because irritation is, it's kind of a surface level. There's a lot of stuff in there that's much deeper than that, that's actually leading to this irritation. But the irritation is something that we can become consciously aware of. So okay, great, I'm getting irritated. That's helpful. Even another one could be a feeling of boredom. But irritation is probably even more common than that. So what we do is, we start to get curious and bring in those feelings of irritation. Where was I irritated today? And to start feeling into that feeling of irritation. Because what we'll do is, what we're going to do is walk it back down into deeper and deeper emotions. Now ultimately, why would we do that? It sounds like a horrible thing of feeling into these difficult emotions. It's because ultimately, when they're felt and understood, again, it's very important to understand why they're there. When they're felt into, they can start to move again. And really, ultimately, what we're going to find at the very, very bottom of it, through all the healing, is a deep sense of peace. Like the conflict that has been unresolved has now been met, understood, and finally resolved. And then we're into, well, we're back into ourselves. We're back into our authentic personality. And we can move forward with life unimpeded by this trauma that we carry. So the way I kind of map it out is, okay, I'm going to come into touch with this irritation. It's very, very close to the surface. I'm aware of this. And what we're going to find is, here's the thing. This is another thing that we become aware of. Underneath that irritation, quite often, there is this mass of anger. So in the healing process, one of the very best things that we can do is to start to make friends with some of that anger. Start to make the anger okay. Okay to feel into that anger. Feel what it feels like in the body. Sometimes people will say things like, well, it feels like this red part of my chest. Or it feels very, very, it feels, they might say it feels hot. Or sometimes people feel it in the back of their neck, or they'll feel it in their shoulders, or in their hands, or something. To start feeling into those feelings again. Now, if we can allow ourselves, give ourselves permission to feel into that anger, what we'll find is that underneath some of that anger, we're going to come into contact with feelings of fear. This is where some of our anxiety will be held. So a little interesting side note is that every time you notice that you're angry about something, there's probably a fear sitting just underneath it. You can also notice that in other people. If you're looking at someone who is in anger, chances are that they're probably afraid also. But maybe they're not even aware of that. But this is true for ourselves also. So we start to feel into that fear that's there. Underneath that fear, when we start to allow that and feel that, we're going to come into contact with this thing called the defective story. I did something wrong, or I am wrong, or there is something wrong with me. So that's a very, very deep feeling. And underneath that, there's going to be this feeling of, I'm by myself, I'm alone, I'm disconnected. Either from myself, from other people, the world at large. And it's the process of feeling deeper and deeper into these emotions. It can be very helpful to do this with somebody else, because of that feeling of being alone. And when you realize that you're not alone in that process, it becomes a little easier to feel more deeply down into them. But in your own practice, you could say, if you're doing this body work independently, start with what's at the surface. And we're watching out for any mild feelings of irritation, or any little feelings of mild disappointment. The mild feelings are where we begin. And they're very, very valid. But to answer the question, Luke, for this, the starting place is always, always, always, to validate the experience of numbness in the body. To see it as a genuine experience, worthy of validation in its own right. Not some defect that needs to be fixed, or gotten over, but rather felt into, and understood, and even appreciated. Because it's actually serving a very important purpose, and it's there for a very good reason. It's not just some character flaw we have, right, that we're not sensitive enough, we might say, or something like that. So, Luke, I hope that's useful. And start with that, and get to work on kind of just bringing a little bit more compassion. And patience is another very, very important factor in that too. So guys, I hope that was useful, and I will see you again soon in the next video. Bye for now.