The Ways We Numb and the Courage of Waking Up

Numbing rarely looks dramatic from the outside.   Numbing can look like scrolling just a little bit longer, pouring a second glass because the first softened the edges, overworking until the body is too tired to feel, or staying endlessly busy so silence never has time to speak. It can look like joking everything away. It can even look like “being fine.” What unites these behaviours is not self sabotage. It is our beautifully wired nervous system doing what it evolved to do: protect us from overwhelming pain. Numbing is not the villain of the story. Numbing is what we do when our inner world feels like too much, too fast, or too long. It is a nervous system strategy and biological attempt to regulate stress, fear, grief, shame, and loneliness when our available tools feel insufficient. In that sense, numbing is intelligent. It works, doesn’t it? It works until..... it doesn’t The challenging concept is that the same strategies that protect us from pain also mute our access to aliveness, to creating connections, to seeking help. As a result those very same strategies that our brains learn soothes our pain, also dampen joy right along with sorrow. They shrink the emotional range of experience to something narrow and controlled. Life becomes more predictable but also less vivid, as if we’ve turned down the dimmer switch on our own existence and forgot how alive we really can be. Many people hear the word “addiction” and picture extremes. But the human side is subtler, and much more common. It’s the drifting into habits that slowly replace presence. It’s the moment we stop asking, “What do I really feel?” and replace it with “What will make this feeling go away?” Behind every addictive pattern lives an unmet need. A nervous system that never felt safe enough to rest. A heart that learned love had conditions. Childhood where emotions were “too much.” A trauma that was survived physically but not yet integrated. Experiences that exceeded our capacity to process at the time. When we numb, we aren’t intentionally running from life but we’re running from specific sensations that once overwhelmed us which is deeply human. Modern neuroscience affirms this. The brain’s reward circuits are designed to repeat whatever reduces distress and increases relief. Stress hormones narrow attention. The prefrontal cortex the seat of long-term perspective and wise choice goes partially offline when we feel threatened. So our biology nudges us toward quick relief rather than long-term healing which you could say is neurophysiology doing a good job in the moment. Awareness is the turning point Awareness sounds gentle and perhaps not so effective, but it is radically courageous. It asks us to see and do something very counterintuitive: feel what we’ve been trying not to feel. What’s really present for us behind the scenes. It asks us to look at our habits with honesty rather than judgment. It invites curiosity. Curiosity is powerful medicine. Shame shuts the door but curiosity opens it a crack and lets in air. This breeze of fresh air allows us to ask ourselves questions. A helpful question is not “Why can’t I stop?” but “What is this behaviour protecting me from feeling right now?” Loneliness? Unworthiness? Grief that has no words? Unprocessed stress locked into muscle and breath? When we bring attention to the body and notice our breath, heart rate, tight jaw, held stomach, we begin to see that numbing is often an attempt to regulate sensations. The body is the stage where these dramas are happening. The mind merely narrates. Waking up from numbing is not about suddenly becoming someone who never escapes. Humans will always seek comfort; the brain is built that way. Awakening is about choice returning to the conversation. Instead of being pulled by an invisible tide, we start to notice the water we are standing in. This process is tender. Awareness does not instantly fix though. It’s the first step. It deepens contact with reality. Sometimes that means more feeling, not less, at first. But in that honesty something else awakens: compassion for the part of us that has been coping the only way it knew how. One useful practice is incredibly simple: pause. Not a dramatic pause. A two-breath pause. A micro-moment of noticing. Before the scroll, the drink, the email, the online shopping pause and feel the body. There is a dignity in choosing to awaken. Meeting ourselves honestly. Allowing uncomfortable truths to surface. Letting the frozen parts thaw at their own pace. None of this means rejecting pleasure or comfort. The invitation is subtler: move from unconscious relief toward conscious nourishment. Relief numbs. Nourishment restores. Relief suppresses signals. Nourishment listens and responds to them. The body knows the difference, even when the mind is on autopilot. The human story beneath numbing is not about bad habits. It is about nervous systems shaped by experience, longing for safety, contact, and meaning. When those needs