countmouse said 9 years, 2 months ago:

Hello Matt.

I relate to the experience of going numb after going through a certain degree of pain from someone or an event in your life. Personally, I do understand it as a kind of automatic defense mechanism, yet that feeling in itself still seems to be a special type of internal pain, at least for me. I would say it is often a very deep sense of despair and emptiness. I’m not sure if you would describe it similarly?

Yours is a complex sort of issue to navigate without some good understanding of your history and specific details about your depression, anxiety and the kind of treatment you have recieved in regards to it. Coping with depression and anxiety really depends on finding out what are the main influences over these conditions – things like how much of it is chemical/genetic, and how much is conditioning from experience/circumstance?

Strictly speaking from my personal experience, I have found the general method of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to be an extremely helpful one. Since I don’t know the details of your specific experiences and feelings, I’ll share some of my own experiences in dealing with this kind of issue, and hopefully there’ll be something in there you can glean from it yourself, if any of it can apply to you.

So much of my own progress in moving past depression and anxiety, has been dependent on becoming aware of my own negative or distorted (but very ingrained) beliefs and thinking patterns, learning to recognize what triggers them, and learning to become extra aware in myself when I am starting to have thoughts and feelings that alert me of the possibility that I am becoming reactive to something.

Whenever I have later realized that I was triggered by something someone said or did, or as I am going through the experience of it, I have very much made it a point to self-reflect and analyze the situation during or afterwards, in order to try to pinpoint and address the negative and unhealthy thoughts/beliefs underlying that situation and pulling them apart for myself in order to see it in a more holistic and clearer manner (more perspective). Consistency in writing it all down to try to figure it all out, is what I feel has been a huge key to “rewiring” the neural connections in my brain. The more I directly addressed those underlying beliefs and thoughts, the more I have trained my brain to start building and getting into the flow of activating along a healthier neural path of thought and feelings. I think of it as reconditioning myself.

I still have my moments, but it’s been nothing like it has been in the past, the improvement has been dramatic. This was a process that I was engaged in for 7.5 years before it actually felt like it all started to fall into place at a very deep emotional level, and not just mainly being this intellectual understanding that didn’t seem to have much impact on what I felt were my deeper emotional experiences.

Mindfulness has also been a huge thing for me. Learning to become deeply immersed in present experience, effectively distancing yourself from all of the noise going on in your mind that a lot of us tend to identify with to a large degree. Through this practice, I learned to act more as an observer of my own thoughts and feelings happening, without attaching a sense of my own identity to them. I would still completely feel whatever I would feel, cry if I needed to, but there was also still a part of me that was able to stand back and keep a certain distance from it all, if that makes sense. It helped so much just to be with those feelings and observe them first, without giving rise or reacting to them in a very outward sense toward anything or anyone, and without instantly judging myself for them. Simply learning to see those thoughts and feelings for what they are and the kind of purpose they serve in me.

I find that practicing this has aided me a lot as a sort of real-time coping strategy. When the emotions are particularly powerful, I find it helps me to separate myself if I can from a person or environment, and just sit with my thoughts/feelings in order to meditate on them in this way. Any other kind of interaction past that doesn’t ever tend to help calm me. It’s simply far too much processing for my brain to handle in a real-time scenario if I’m trying to meditate on my thoughts at the same time as trying to respond to someone elses feelings, with my own feelings constantly being drawn in by that.

These methods don’t necessarily completely avoid the reaction of going numb, but they go a long way toward resolving a lot of the very early instances that could have led to experiences of that nature, simply because they increased and strengthened my own awareness toward it. The ability to semi-distance myself from my own emotional reactions really tends to have a very stabilizing effect on me overall. It’s not a distance that completely numbs me, or if it does lead to some degree of apathy, it doesn’t tend to worry me as I now understand that it’s something that will simply pass and not an experience that wholly reflects on where I am or who I am as a human being. I will at least intellectually acknowledge this even if my emotions are telling me otherwise. Instead, I feel I have learned how to become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable in this way, and allowing it to run its course without reacting to it too much, and carrying on with a healthy routine and set of habits despite it.

It’s really difficult to have friends with mental illnesses or who even just have negative coping strategies, that have a tendency to exacerbate or strongly influence our own issues. I don’t feel it is my place to pass any kind of judgement on the relationship you have with your friend. I would only suggest that you pay attention to how you are able to support one another, and where that tends to fall down and exacerbate your own mental issues. Also just ensuring that there is a balance in this relationship that is more positive gain than negative overall, as hard as it may be to really consider things in that way when you care about and love someone so much. I’m not suggesting anything there about your friendship, just highlighting it as something to consider.

Sorry about the length of my reply!