Why is it so hard for me to feel...anything?

It’s like I’m floating through my own life.I don’t think people really get what it feels like to be numb from your feelings.

Yup. I get it.

Maybe you’ve felt this recently. Maybe for years. Maybe… for most of your life.

TLDR - for the skimmers

If you feel disconnected from your emotions — either totally numb or only able to feel in overwhelming bursts — you’re not broken, you’re protected. This post explains why your nervous system learned to shut down your feelings to keep you safe (hello, survival mode!) and what you can do about it.

We cover:

• Why “just feel your feelings” doesn’t work when you’re shut down

• How your nervous system protects you by numbing sensation and emotion

• 3 practical, gentle steps to reconnect with your body and emotions safely

• The importance of addressing your environment, not just your inner world

By the end, you’ll understand why this happens and how to gently guide yourself back to feeling again — at your own pace, with kindness and compassion.

Prefer the podcast version of this article? Listen here 👇

That weird, empty feeling nobody talks about

It’s a strange experience — knowing you should care, knowing you should be feeling something, but somehow… you just don’t. Or maybe you’re living in a fog of numbness, only to come to life in sudden bursts of overwhelming emotion that scare you (and everyone around you).

This is a real, common experience — especially among trauma survivors, particularly those who grew up in unsafe, unpredictable, or emotionally neglectful environments.

💛 You are not broken. You are not cold. You are not defective.

What you’re experiencing makes perfect sense when we understand what your body is doing and why it learned to do this.

Why “just feel your feelings” falls flat

You’ve probably heard advice like:

• “Just sit with your feelings.”

• “You need to process your emotions.”

• “Face it to feel it.”

But when you actually try to sit and feel? Nothing.Just fog. Emptiness. Blankness.

Or worse — that background hum of panic with no clear target.

👉 It’s not because you’re failing or broken. It’s because your nervous system is triggering biological protections that block access to these feelings.

Shame, isolation, and the “why can’t I just feel?” loop

You might look around and think:

• Why can others cry so easily or express joy, and I can’t?

• Why do my emotions only come in explosions — then disappear?

This leads to embarrassment, retreating further into numbness, and the painful belief: “I don’t even know how to feel.”

Nervous System 101: Why This Happens

Your nervous system has one job: to keep you alive long enough to reproduce. Soooo romantic, right? lol

Whether you’re a jellyfish or a human, this evolutionary imperative drives everything:

• Heart rate

• Digestion

• Immune system

• Hormones

• Breathing

• Muscle tone

• Sensitivity to sound, light, smell

• Attention + focus

It’s all orchestrated so you can survive, grow up, and (yep) pass on your genes.

Here’s the key: Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish emotional danger from physical danger. It senses threat or safety — moment to moment.

The Nervous System Ladder

Think of your nervous system as a ladder:

1️⃣ Top (Ventral Vagal): Connection, calm, curiosity, compassion, engagement, empathy, boundaries.

2️⃣ Middle (Sympathetic): Fight-or-flight, agitation, anxiety, anger, urgency, escape, defense.

3️⃣ Bottom (Dorsal Vagal): Shutdown, collapse, immobility, numbness, exhaustion, dissociation.

If you grew up without safe connection or options to flee, your body learned to live at the bottom — to survive, not to thrive.

👉 This isn’t about being cold. It’s about survival.

Why You Swing Between Numb and Overwhelmed

Your body learned:

• Stay numb = safer.

• Only feel when you have to.

That’s why you might:

• Feel detached from joy, sadness, or anger unless they come in extreme bursts.

• Explode, cry uncontrollably, or feel ecstatic — then fall right back into numbness.

Understanding the ladder shows us:

• Why this happens.

• How we can gently guide you back up.

What To Do Instead: The 3 Steps

Step 1: Reconnect with External Safe Sensations

Let’s just say it:Forget “just feel your feelings.”When your nervous system is in a chronic state of shutdown, diving inward can actually backfire.

👉 The body says:"Nope, that’s dangerous. We can’t go inward right now."

That’s smart — that’s your body protecting you exactly as it was designed to.

So instead of forcing your body to feel emotions it doesn’t feel safe to touch, we start by building trust.We begin outside the body — by gently reconnecting with safe sensations through the external world.

Small but powerful examples:

• Feel the sunlight on your skin and notice the warmth as it spreads across your face and arms.

• Savor the taste of your favorite tea and feel the heat travel down your throat.

• Notice the softness of your favorite blanket as it touches your arms.

• Hear music you love and feel your body relax into it.

• Smell a favorite fragrance — a flower, a candle, something comforting.

🌅 Why does a sunset help?

When you watch a truly beautiful sunset — the kind where the sky is on fire with reds, oranges, and purples — it’s not just about seeing colors. It’s about what happens inside you when you see it:

• A warming in your chest

• A softening in your face

• Your breathing slowing naturally

• A sense of spaciousness and ease

The sunset itself isn’t doing the work — it’s how your body feels in response.

This is what we’re cultivating:We’re teaching your body that sensation can be safe again.

The truth about emotions and sensations:

Sensations and emotions are intertwined.You don’t say, “I think happy” — you say, “I feel happy.”

You recognize happiness because your body feels:

• A pull in your face into a smile

• An openness in your chest

• A spring in your step

You know you’re sad because your body feels:

• Heavy

• Slack muscles

• A chest that pulls down

👉 Every emotion is a bundle of sensations. If your body has numbed sensation for survival, it’s numbed emotion too.

Why this step matters:

So when we begin this process, we’re not starting by demanding feelings — we’re starting by reintroducing safe, manageable, external sensory experiences that your body can handle without overwhelm.

This can feel deceptively simple. You might even think, “How can noticing sunlight or music possibly help me reconnect with my emotions?”

But that’s exactly how trust is rebuilt.

The more you give yourself opportunities to gently and consistently practice being present with neutral or pleasant sensations, the more your body will begin to believe that sensation isn’t dangerous anymore.

This is a practice.And the more you engage in this practice — intentionally, kindly, patiently — the more your nervous system will start to climb that ladder from shutdown back toward connection.

Step 2: Learn to Hear the Whispers

Your body has probably learned that you don’t pay attention to its quieter signals anymore. It’s gotten used to the fact that you only notice when things get big — when they feel explosive or unbearable. So over time, it stopped whispering altogether and started saving everything up until it could no longer contain the overwhelm.

This is how you get caught in that exhausting cycle: numbness… explosion… numbness… explosion. You might even feel like you’re overreacting when really, you’re reacting exactly as your nervous system has learned it needs to in order to finally get your attention.

This is why rebuilding trust starts small.

Instead of expecting your body to go straight from shut-down to perfectly regulated, you show it that you’re willing to listen again — not just when it’s screaming, but when it’s whispering.

Here’s where we practice this gently and intentionally:

• Notice mild irritations.We’re not working with “the big stuff” here — your deepest traumas or hardest memories — because if your nervous system is in chronic shutdown, it’s not ready for that yet.Instead, we practice noticing small, safe annoyances:

  • Feeling annoyed that your Amazon package didn’t arrive on time.

  • Feeling frustrated when someone cuts you off in traffic.

  • Feeling your body tense when your phone pings with another email.

These are invitations to rebuild your relationship with your nervous system.

For example:Your package was supposed to arrive between 7–10pm and suddenly it says "delayed." It’s a mild disappointment — not catastrophic — but your body still reacts.

So pause. Ask yourself: How does this feel in my body right now?

Maybe you notice:

• A slight furrow in your brow

• Tightness in your chest

• A little hunch in your shoulders

• A small surge of restless energy in your arms

These are your body’s whispers. And this is where the healing begins.

After you’ve noticed these whispers, you don’t need to dwell or analyze them — simply acknowledge them and then return to something grounding:

• Sip your tea

• Step outside for a breath of fresh air

• Listen to a song you love

• Hug your dog

This rhythm — noticing, acknowledging, returning to safety — teaches your body that you are listening now.It no longer needs to save everything up until it explodes. This might seem subtle, but over time it profoundly reshapes how you relate to your body’s signals.You’re showing your nervous system that you’re willing to be present even with these smaller cues — and that means it won’t have to yell to be heard.

And remember: This isn’t about perfection.There will be days you miss these cues, days you get overwhelmed again, and that’s okay.The point isn’t to catch everything; the point is to practice — to keep returning gently and compassionately to this process.

This is exactly how you start to feel safe enough to experience your full emotional range again — not just numbness or overwhelm, but all those nuanced, everyday emotions you deserve to feel.

Step 3: Assess Your Environment

Your nervous system doesn’t care what your brain says about your environment — it responds to what it perceives, what it senses, moment to moment.You can tell yourself “I’m fine,” but if your body is surrounded by chronic overstimulation — constant noise, clutter, tense relationships, criticism at work, pressure to perform, or a steady stream of stressful news — your body is still receiving a constant drip of danger cues.

And here’s what’s really important to understand:For many of us who’ve lived through trauma, we don’t even recognize that our environment is overwhelming… because it’s familiar.If you grew up in chaos or emotional neglect, chaos and emotional neglect feel normal.If you grew up feeling like your emotions didn’t matter, then being in spaces where your emotions don’t matter now feels… familiar too.

So even as adults, we unconsciously recreate or tolerate environments that continue to communicate “you are not safe” to our bodies — not because we’re weak or self-sabotaging, but because we haven’t learned what safe really feels like.

This is where we pause and ask the hard, honest questions:

• What is my body experiencing every day?

• Am I sitting under harsh lighting all day?

• Is my home full of noise, mess, and overstimulation?

• Do I feel trapped by obligations, unable to rest or slow down?

• Am I surrounded by people who criticize me, dismiss me, or make me feel unseen?

  
  

👉 These aren’t small questions.👉 These are the very conditions your nervous system is navigating — every single day.

And this is where we stop blaming ourselves for feeling disconnected and start recognizing that our environment plays a real role.The truth is: our nervous system isn’t the problem — it’s responding appropriately to a world that still feels overwhelming.

But the good news? You don’t have to blow up your life overnight. You don’t have to quit your job or end every relationship tomorrow.

Small, thoughtful adjustments help your nervous system begin to believe it’s safe to come out of shutdown:

• Say no to just one extra obligation this week.

• Carve out 10 minutes at the end of your day to sit quietly and do absolutely nothing.

• Declutter one corner of your space and make it a sanctuary where your body can breathe.

• Ask for help.

• Set a gentle boundary that gives you even a little more ease.

Every small shift you make is a message to your nervous system:"I see you. I hear you. I’m working to make this a safer place for us to be." And that matters.Over time, these small acts matter more than you might realize — because this is how you stop bouncing between numbness and overwhelm and start rediscovering what it feels like to truly inhabit your body and your life.

Healing is a Practice, Not Perfection

No one does this perfectly. You will have days when you feel disconnected.Moments when old patterns come roaring back. That’s okay. Healing is not about never getting dysregulated — it’s about building the capacity to come back to yourself, kindly and consistently.

The reward?You get to live in your body again. To feel again. To thrive again.

Final Words

If this resonated, I hope you remember:

💛 You are not broken.💛 You are not too much.💛 Your nervous system has been working hard, maybe for years, to keep you safe the only way it knows how.

Now, step by step, you get to show your body: It’s safe to feel again.

👉 If you’re ready to gently reconnect with your body and emotions, I made this program just for you.It’s free, easy to access, and you can start right now:👉 theholistictraumacoach.com/free