From the category archives:

Awkwardness

What to do when you feel numb

by Ella on September 18, 2010

Blank face

Pic by KatB Photography

Know what really, really sucks? Feeling absolutely nothing for anyone or anything.

Emotional disengagement is an understandable strategy when faced with an overwhelming world. But when numbness goes beyond being a temporary coping mechanism and becomes your default state, something needs to be done. You need to bring yourself back.

So, what’s this numbness of which I speak? I’ll explain it according to my experience. It’s a sense of disconnection from the world. Things people say don’t register. You feel nothing. You have a lack of empathy for — or even like of — people. You judge them, criticise them and can’t get excited about their achievements. Your attention span is affected, too — you may read an entire page of a book, magazine or newspaper and have absolutely no recollection of what it was about.

Sometimes numbness is a reaction to something painful. Heartbreak tends to come first — it’s horrible, but it’s usually acute. It’s temporary, ripping through your world and displacing everything before moving on and giving you the opportunity to rebuild. But numbness is pervasive. It creeps in and settles. It gradually dulls your senses and seeps into the world around you, flooding it with white noise and blurring its outlines. Everything becomes hazy. Experiences wash over you and you stop noticing the details.

Numbness is also often the result of too much input and not enough output. Every day we are confronted with a barrage of information: RSS feeds, emails, advertising, TV, inane chatter, work demands — all of this swirls around in our heads and ends up getting stuck. It’s too much to process at once, and as a result our minds go “See ya!” and shut down.

Another cause is lack of human contact, especially if you tend to supplant real-life encounters with virtual ones. I went through a stage a few years back where I’d go entire weekends without talking to another human being. And because I was spending so much time alone, I began to feel embarrassed. Which made me more self-conscious, and less inclined to go out and talk to people. Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again!

When you don’t interact with other humans, you have no frames of reference. You lose context. You start to think that eating a dinner of cold spaghetti straight out of the can and wiping your mouth on your sleeve is normal. (I wish I could chalk up that example to a creative imagination, but I was actually that schlubby.)

So, how do you shake off the haze and reconnect with these human emotions that other people seem so capable of expressing? Here are a few strategies that can help:

  • Express yourself. You know those repressed feelings that are rattling around your body? Lay ‘em out on the table. I’ve often been fond of encasing mine within a core of concentric spheres and burying the resulting Megaball of Emotions deep in the backyard. But that’s a really dumb idea. Just be straight-up with people and tell them how you feel. It’s scary, but ultimately incredibly rewarding.
  • Bring on the music. Play a song that makes you giddily happy or desperately sad. Sing, scream, dance or cry along. Oh hi there, feelings. It’s been a while.
  • Be with people. And don’t put any pressure on yourself to be funny or entertaining or smart. Pick a few friends and do something low-key. Have a picnic. Or make dinner together. If you all suck at cooking it’ll make it more hilarious. Just have a local take-out joint on speed-dial.
  • Get naked and let someone touch you. Not like that. I’m talking massage, especially of the hardcore Tui Na variety. If your Tui Na practitioner is anything like mine, you will feel pain, then relief, in muscles you never knew you had. And he/she will likely be sitting on your butt at the time. Which is, you know, confronting. But in a strange way, the casual intimacy of this makes you feel like you must be okay. There’s a sense of self-acceptance that comes with having a small Chinese lady digging her elbows into your cervical vertebrae while sitting on your naked ass.
  • Add a degree of difficulty to your day. Throwing an obstacle or challenge into your own path is a quick way to jolt yourself into a better frame of mind. Go harder at the gym or force yourself to make an unpleasant but necessary phone call. When it’s done you’ll feel pretty heroic.
  • Take a break from technology. Yes, yes, I know — you are receiving this anti-technology advice from Internerd McHypocrite. I am a poor role model. But it makes such a difference, I cannot even tell you. Try having a tech-free day once a week, or make your home an internet-free zone after, say, 6pm.
  • Find something to care about. It could be an artistic project, or an adorable kitty. Whatever it is, just make it something that requires your energy and attention. That way you feel needed and involved in nurturing something important.

I try to do these things often. But sometimes emotional disengagement still happens. (It’s inevitable when you live in crazypants New York.) I continue to have periods of numbness. Quite frequently, actually. But within that I get these extraordinary moments where a deep-seated feeling will lurch to the surface. Sometimes it feels like grief; other times it is closer to exhilaration. The strength and suddenness takes me by surprise. But instead of being unnerved by it, I try to be comforted. It’s wonderful to have such feelings. They prove that I’m a warm-blooded human who is affected by the world around me.

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Conversing is a riot

I lived alone for several years. I also spend freakishly long hours bathed in the comforting glow of my laptop monitor. These two factors — combined with a few other behavioural quirks — turned me into what you might call “a socially awkward hermit”. Observe a journal entry from early 2008:

I need to call the real estate agent today and set a time for her to come over. Hopefully that will spur me into action on the domestic maintenance front. There are things about her visit that I’m going to ponder for absolutely no good reason. Like: do I offer her a cup of tea? I don’t even own a kettle. Will she find me inhospitable? Will we sit on my slightly-too-small sofa and discuss property prices? These are the trivialities that clutter your mind when you suck at being social.

It’s great to have time to yourself for chilling out and reflecting, but spending great stretches alone can make you feel out of sync with the world. You become self-centred. You develop animalistic domestic habits, such as eating meals out of cans and spending half-an-hour scrutinising your nasal blackheads in the bathroom mirror. It’s not good.

Then there’s the guilt. You skipped that party on Saturday night to stay home in bed with your laptop. You didn’t call that person back because it all felt too awkward. These things pile on top of one another and leave you feeling defeated.

What’s worse is that when you do actually make the effort to go out with friends, your focus is not on them. It’s on you and how awkward you feel. “Am I making too much eye contact? Is that weird? Oh crap, I’ve been silent for too long. What can I say that would sound normal?”

I used to find all of this stuff really troubling. I thought I was the only person in the world to be plagued by such inadequacies. The out-of-sync feeling had me convinced that I was heading down the road to Crazyville. One day I got fed up and spilled all of this to a good friend. I was ready for him to call the local sanitarium and have me committed, but he simply looked at me and said “Relax”.

From then on, I started talking to more people about it and found that being self-conscious and hermitty is actually pretty common, especially among fellow internet addicts. It’s amazing how a little external reassurance can make all the difference. With that in mind, here are a few things I try to remember whenever I start to feel reclusive and awkward.

  • Relax. Seriously. Constantly telling yourself that you are a crap socialiser creates anxieties that play on your mind the next time you converse with someone. You then focus on said anxieties, and the whole thing becomes one big cycle of self-fulfillment.
  • Understand that some people won’t get it. While it feels amazing to dazzle people with your quick wit, sometimes you will meet someone who just doesn’t get you. They’ll look at you quizzically and ask you to clarify what you thought was a cuttingly observant pop-culture reference. Doesn’t matter. What’s fascinating about humans is that they are so diverse. Senses of humour vary wildly. If you’re getting blank looks, just be polite, excuse yourself, and chronicle any embarrassments later in a stand-up comedy routine.
  • Don’t just think about it — do it. It’s all very well to read books and blogs about self-improvement, but you have to actually get out there and apply the theories that resonate with you. Do it! It’s scary but so, so invigorating. Who knows who you’ll meet and what they might be able to offer you? (Fun, intellectual stimulation, a pony ride, a job…)
  • Smile. I am a habitual, unrepentant over-smiler, but every grin is genuine. If you smile when you meet someone, you instantly appear confident, friendly and relaxed. Confident, friendly, relaxed people are much more appealing than their uptight compadres.
  • Trust your friends. There’s a reason they hang around you. The personality traits you despise in yourself may be the very quirks they find endearing. Let them decide instead of presenting an incomplete version of yourself to the world.
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