Emotional Numbness: Definition, Causes & How to Deal With It

By Nathalie Boutros, Ph.D.
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
What is emotional numbness? Learn what emotional numbness feels like, what may give rise to these feelings, and guidance for helping to overcome emotional numbness.
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Do you feel an all-encompassing sense of emptiness? Do you feel distant and cut off from other people? Have you lost interest in things that you used to enjoy? These feelings may describe emotional numbness, a state of generalized disconnection, disinterest, and detachment.
Emotional numbness may prevent you from experiencing the full range of emotions like pleasure, joy, and love. Emotional numbness may also reduce your capacity for feelings of sorrow, sadness, grief, fear, and jealousy. In this article, we’ll explore what it means to feel emotionally numb and consider research on ways to cope with and overcome emotional numbness.

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What Is Emotional Numbness? (A Definition)

Emotional numbness may limit your ability to both express and experience emotions and may cause you to feel disconnected from the world (Flack et al., 2000). These feelings can be present in many psychiatric conditions including depression, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Emotional numbness is distinct from anhedonia, which is a loss or reduction in positive emotions like joy and pleasure. Emotional numbness affects a broad range of emotions including negative ones like fear and sadness (Eskelund et al., 2018). 

Emotional Numbness Symptoms

Emotional numbness may produce any of the following symptoms (Palyo et al., 2008):
  • Diminished or complete loss of interest in significant activities.
  • Feelings of detachment or estrangement from other people.
  • Restricted emotional range.
  • Episodic or ongoing amnesia
  • A sense of a foreshortened future.

Signs of Emotional Numbness

Many of the signs of emotional numbness overlap with signs of depression (Ma et al., 2021). A loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, an inability to feel pleasure, a loss of motivation, and feelings of apathy may indicate either depression or emotional numbness. However, depression also often includes a loss of self-esteem, sadness, guilt, suicidal ideation, and a preoccupation with the past. Although these feelings can exist in a person with emotional numbness, they are generally not present while in a numb state. You may alternate between feeling depressed and feeling emotionally numb.

In a numb state, you may only be able to experience intense emotions like anger and rage. These feelings may emerge at inappropriate times when you are unable to access other emotions. For example, psychiatrist and emotional numbness specialist Hillel Glover describes a persistently numb patient who was attending the funeral of a loved one. This patient exploded into a rage at the funeral, likely because he could not access his feelings of sadness, grief, and mourning. In an especially intense, explosive, and long-lasting rage, you may lose all feelings of care and concern for others and for the consequences of your actions. Afterward, you may become withdrawn and unresponsive for an extended period. You may even experience amnesia and be unable to recall the event.

Some profoundly emotionally numb people cannot access even intense feelings of destructive rage and anger – you may be completely unresponsive with no facial expressions and monotonic speech.

Numbing may also lead to cognitive impairments such as mental blankness, periods of amnesia, loss of self-awareness, and an inability to monitor your own behavior.

You may have learned to mask your emotional numbness, pretending that you have feelings that you are not truly experiencing. If you don’t have cognitive impairments, you may be able to function well in workplace settings, especially in environments that don’t require empathy or personal connection. However, emotional numbness is generally more difficult to mask in personal or family settings that are defined by interpersonal relationships and emotional connections.

What Does Emotional Numbness Feel Like?

Emotional numbness may cause you to feel hollow, dead, shut down, or with an empty sense of not having any feelings (Litz & Gray, 2002). You may feel a profound sense of emotional withdrawal and a lack of relatedness to others. You may have difficulties falling asleep because lying still intensifies your feelings of “deadness”. These feelings may cause you to crave constant movement. You may self-medicate with alcohol or with illicit drugs to counteract this emptiness and to feel energetic and active.

A feeling of profound numbness may cause you to feel that your body is transparent, that other people can literally see through you, or that you can walk through walls because your body has no physical substance.

You may also feel disconnected from your own identity. You may wonder who you are. You may adapt to these feelings by creating a self-image or identity with clearly defined visual elements, such as “combat warrior” or “fashionista”.

Emotional Numbness Test

The Glover Numbing Scale (Glover et al., 1994) is a 35-item questionnaire that assesses feelings of emotional numbness by having you rate how often each statement has applied to you in the past week. You can see the questions on the scale here.

Emotional, physical, cognitive, and identity-related dimensions of numbness are all measured with statements including “I feel love or affection for others”, “I act mechanically like a robot”, “nothing matters or means anything to me”, “my body feels paralyzed” and “I am able to pay attention” (Glover et al., 1994).

Opposite of Emotional Numbness

The opposite of emotional numbness is hyperarousal – feeling a sense of heightened, exaggerated or intense emotions. If you are in a state of hyperarousal you may feel extremely alert, vigilant, and irritable. Hyperarousal and emotional numbness are often experienced as part of the same disorder (King et al., 1998). In fact, emotional numbness may emerge as a way to cope with unbearable hyperarousal.

What Causes Emotional Numbness?

Living in a state of chronic and ongoing hyperarousal may deplete your cognitive, emotional, and even biological resources. Emotional numbness may emerge as a way to protect you from existing in a state of constant vigilance and anxiety (Malta et al., 2009).

Living through a traumatic event may put you in a state of chronic hyperarousal. You may first try to avoid triggering your hyperarousal symptoms by staying away from reminders of the trauma. If avoidance doesn’t work or is not possible, you may resort to emotional numbing to minimize the intensity of having to re-experience the trauma. Many people involved in rescue and rebuilding operations after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center reported that they initially tried to avoid reminders of the attack. However, continuing exposure to the site of the attack and ongoing media coverage made that impossible. Faced with such ongoing and uncontrollable exposure to reminders of their trauma, the disaster workers may have resorted to numbing as a way to manage their distress (Malta et al., 2009).

The extent of your post-trauma hyperarousal may predict whether you will later experience emotional numbness. Combat veterans, sexual assault survivors, and child abuse survivors who experienced ongoing and severe hyperarousal symptoms were all more likely to later develop symptoms of emotional numbness (Flack et al., 2000; Tull & Roemer, 2003; Weems et al., 2003).

Emotional Numbness in PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that develops after exposure to traumatic events like warfare, interpersonal violence, natural disasters, or other situations that may threaten your life or safety (King et al., 1998). People with PTSD may experience intrusive thoughts or flashbacks, changes to their memories, distorted thinking patterns, hyperarousal, avoidance, and emotional numbing.

Although PTSD is a complex disorder that can manifest in many different ways, emotional numbing may be the symptom that is most predictive of persistent and long-lasting PTSD (Malta et al., 2009).

Emotional Numbness in Depression

Major depressive disorder is a chronic psychiatric condition that is characterized by persistently low mood, loss of interest or pleasure in previously enjoyable activities, and feelings of worthlessness or guilt (Ma et al., 2021). Depression and emotional numbness share many of the same symptoms. Loss of pleasure, loss of interest in activities, and feelings of detachment are all associated with both depression and emotional numbness.

Many people report feeling emotionally numb after they start taking antidepressant medications (Price et al., 2009). Antidepressant medications may cause you to feel detached from your emotions and from other people. You may feel that all your emotions, positive and negative, have been toned down. You may feel a general sense of indifference, apathy, and amotivation. It may be possible to manage or even eliminate these side-effects with a change in medication regimen. It is advisable to speak with your physician about your experience of emotional numbness and any other medication side-effects you may be experiencing.

Video: Emotional Blunting With Antidepressants

How Long Does Emotional Numbness Last?

Emotional numbness may resolve relatively quickly. The support of a mental health professional may help you overcome feelings of emotional numbness in as little as five weeks (Sloan et al., 2018). In the absence of treatment and support, emotional numbness may last for years or even a lifetime (Ruscio et al., 2002).

How to Overcome Emotional Numbness

Overcoming emotional numbness can be a goal of treatment for underlying mental health conditions such as PTSD or depression. Several therapeutic techniques may be effective in helping you overcome your emotional numbness. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is considered the gold standard in treatment for many of the conditions that underlie emotional numbness (Foa & Meadows, 1997). CBT includes a range of talking therapies that address the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Effective CBT may be able to help you identify and address harmful and distorted thinking patterns such as those experienced in a hyperarousal state. CBT may also help you safely confront your fears and anxieties and overcome your emotional numbness.

There are many different ways that CBT can proceed but it is important to have the guidance of a trusted and trained mental health professional. Treatment may involve confronting deeply-held fears and this process may be extremely frightening. The guidance and support of a trusted and trained mental health professional may protect you from continuing and worsening traumatization during this process.

How to Deal With Emotional Numbness

In the absence of systematic treatment under the guidance of a mental health professional, there may be other techniques and procedures that may help you cope with your feelings of emotional numbness.

Mindfulness and Emotional Numbness
Mindfulness is the ability to experience the present moment without judgment (Berceli & Napoli, 2006). When you are mindful, you accept and acknowledge all of your thoughts and feelings, even the negative ones. Practicing mindfulness may help you become more aware of your emotions and better able to regulate emotions.

Mindfulness training may decrease symptoms of  both hyperarousal and emotional numbness (Stephenson et al., 2017). Mindfulness may help you stay aware of the present rather than getting lost in the past or worrying about the future. Being able to ground yourself in the here and now may help you reconnect with the world and overcome your feelings of numbness.

Mindful breathing is a simple, safe, and non-invasive way to practice mindfulness (Berceli & Napoli, 2006). By attending to your breath, your mind may become more connected to your body, calmer, and less likely to succumb to intrusive thoughts.

Art or Art Therapy and Emotional Numbness
​Creating artwork or participating in art therapy may help you create a coherent and comprehensible narrative of your emotional numbness and the conditions that may have led to it. You may find it very difficult to use words to express the upsetting emotions and memories that may underlie your emotional numbness. Visual forms of expression such as art may help you process these difficult and upsetting emotions and construct a coherent narrative of any underlying trauma (Collie et al., 2006).

Emotional Numbness Quotes

Novelists, poets, and memoirists have for centuries described feelings of disconnection and estrangement. Below is a selection of quotes from a range of authors describing feelings of emotional numbness.

“Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.” 
 ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)

“Numb the dark and you numb the light.” 
 ― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2012)

“I guess I should have reacted the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.” 
 ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

“But I felt that it was my heart which was broken. Something had broken in me to make me so cold and so perfectly still and far away.” 
 ― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956)

“I think that certain emotions can compromise you when you’re at war. If you stop to mourn the dead, or even to breathe in what you’ve done, you’ll be dead as well. Your brain goes to a primitive region, one inaccessible to feelings beyond pure anger and pure fear. Your brain is reduced to two impulses: fight or flight. Kill or be killed. No room for more delicate feelings. No room for a soul. All you’re thinking about is how to maneuver your body in space so it will survive.” 
 ― Willa Strayhorn, The Way We Bared Our Souls (2015)

“You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person. There is no feeling anymore, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defense mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more.”
― Jake Wood, Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War (2014)

“I was enveloped in numbness, and absence of feeling so deep the bottom was lost from view.” 
 ― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994)

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” 
 ― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

 “I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

 “This moment would define my memory of that night, and of the many nights like it, for a decade. In it I saw myself as unbreakable, as tender as stone. At first I merely believed this, until one day it became the truth. Then I was able to tell myself, without lying, that it didn't affect me, that he didn't affect me, because nothing affected me. I didn't understand how morbidly right I was. How I had hollowed myself out. For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I had misunderstood the vital truth: that its not affecting me, that was its effect.” 
 ― Tara Westover, Educated (2018)

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes – 
 The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – 
 The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
 And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
 …
 This is the Hour of Lead – 
 Remembered, if outlived, 
 As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – 
 First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –” 
 ― Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

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Final Thoughts on Emotional Numbness

Emotional numbness, the state of feeling disinterested, disconnected, and detached, may emerge in response to emotions that are overwhelming and extremely upsetting. Emotional numbness may protect you from thoughts and feelings that may be unbearable and re-traumatizing. 

However, if allowed to persist, emotional numbness can cause distress in your life. Feeling emotionally numb may stop you from feeling pleasure or joy. Emotional numbness may also prevent you from feeling connected to your friends and family. Treatment for emotional numbness, ideally under the supportive care of a trusted and trained mental health professional, may help you move past your feelings of disconnection and emptiness. This process may be difficult, especially if you are required to confront painful and uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. However, emerging from a state of emotional numbness may allow you to once again feel and express a full range of emotions.

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