When you feel nothing or everything feels off

I recently talked with someone who was going through a rough patch. Someone he trusted had referred him to me, and this was our first conversation, over the phone. What emerged was an introduction to self-care and therapy through the lens of my own life and experiences. A glimpse into what I struggle with, how I’ve learnt to cope, and how I see the journey of caring for one’s mental health. Here is an account of the conversation. 

The context  

After talking generally and getting to know each other for 10-15 minutes, I asked him what he wanted to talk about.  

He said that although everything was great on the outside, he wasn’t feeling anything inside. He wasn’t feeling happy nor was he interested, despite his business doing very well and despite being in a romantic relationship that felt right.

I asked him what he thought might be going on.

He said that maybe there was some low self-esteem at play, he’s noticed his fear of rejection coming up a lot. His girlfriend’s assessment was that he was emotionally unavailable, and he thought that wasn’t too off the mark. He wasn’t sure what to do.

I said I understood and that it didn’t sound like an easy place to be in. I asked him how he was dealing with it so far.

He said he was trying to get off technology and not be on his phone so much. He was trying to be more present. He was trying to process his feelings and be less emotionally absent but he wasn’t really getting anywhere.

He paused, not knowing what more to say, looking for answers. 

He seemed like an intelligent, proactive and sensible person and I felt like the best I could do is share my own experience and learning in case it resonated with him. 

I paused and asked if he wanted to hear my thoughts.

The struggle

Here's what I've learnt.

We get so used to pushing our feelings under the rug that we become emotionally shut down and don’t know how to open up the rug and access those feelings anymore. Or even if we know those feelings are there, we don’t know how to deal with them or process them.

On the outside, we are mechanical, sometimes even highly functional. We go out and socialise, we do the work required of us, so no one can tell anything is wrong. But we feel nothing inside, nothing feels pleasurable, nothing feels right, everything feels off.

From my own experience, some of these feelings can include sadness/grief, anger and anxiety/fear. Take anxiety for example. Just last week, I realised that I do not admit how much anxiety is present in my life. There is so much self-criticism, judgment, fear in my head. I really hate to acknowledge anxiety because it feels like the reasons are so juvenile, I feel like I know better than to worry about those things. Things like will I be accepted and liked, will I be understood, will I be approved of. Berating myself for making the smallest mistakes or not saying the optimal thing (because deep down these things affect my acceptability, desirability, likeability don’t they). I don’t take action on the things I care about because deep down, I’m afraid of not being good enough, failing, being rejected, being judged. Sometimes I go as far as not allowing to let myself feel excited, because deep down I’ll know excitement will lead to a longing for action and a fear of rejection and failure all over again.  

So all this anxiety and self-critical thoughts have been in my head all along, and I know they’re there but I don’t really acknowledge it as anxiety or know how to deal with it.

It’s as if there are all these painful darts being thrown at me in my head, and it all hurts, and I just keep walking. Because I know how to keep walking. But I don’t know how to take off the darts or protect myself from them. It’s fucking violent in my head sometimes, so of course I shut down.

It takes me a while to even admit there is this violence and become aware of it. I can easily convince myself and others that I am doing fine, that all is well – especially when often, it does seem like I’m doing okay most of the time. But okay means I’m functional. Okay means things look good on the outside. Okay means I’m not melting down, and that’s largely because I’m emotionally shut down. So of course, I seem okay, but I know deep down that I am not okay.

He seemed to resonate. I could tell that I was hitting a nerve. He knew I got it. And by sharing my own story in such clear detail, I had probably shed light on his own.

So what do you do?

My approach

Look, for me, it first involved becoming aware of what’s going on inside me and accepting it. As I said, its super easy for me to deny the presence of these emotions, and then to step over them and go into my mechanical, functional behaviour or addictive behaviours like binge-watching, binge-eating and social media binges. I’ve found therapy to be a helpful space to examine what’s going on within me and get some clarity around that.

It’s not always big stuff that causes these emotions. It’s the small stuff that’s easy to miss and to deny. It’s small stuff that is linked to our past childhood experiences and emotions, that triggers those emotions again. Even if you didn’t experience some obvious external traumas, you have certain experiences as a kid that shape your view of yourself and the world in unhelpful ways, in hurtful ways. Then over your lifetime, that story keeps growing and you end up as an adult who has some strong difficult and consistently returning feelings around certain subjects, feelings that you don’t want to or know how to deal with. So therapy is a process of many months and sometimes years, of unravelling the past influences, the stories you’ve built up, the ways in which you currently react, and finally, ways in which you could respond that actually help.

First there is the awareness of what’s going on within you and then there is the learning to feel the feelings, learning to work through them rather than shut them down.

Learning what works for you in particular. Writing helps me. I write to examine my thoughts and feelings and then to talk to myself and have a dialogue with those anxious voices. I’ve recently been exploring the use of arts – dancing and painting - to feel my feelings, and there’s something there. More than anything, I’ve been learning to be kind to myself. I know it sounds cliche or basic to ‘love yourself’ but this year the biggest skill I have focused on building is that of talking to myself kindly. Because how I am going to not feel anxious or unsafe if there is so much violence in my head?  

Therapy isn’t a magic bullet. It’s a starting point. It helps you become aware and over time, helps you learn some tools for being kinder to yourself. And then you have to do the work, the everyday work and practice of actually tending to your feelings and taking care of your needs.

My long-term perspective

He asked, with some angst – Does it ever get easier? Do you come out on the other side? Can you actually work through all of this?  

It gets easier. I can’t say that it ends and you never experience these lows again, because I’m certainly not there. And I don’t even expect it to all go away one day.

It’s more like a lifelong journey and skill you build of taking care of yourself. Now, I have phases when my anxiety or emotional shut down spikes. They don’t destroy me and nor are they prolonged. I know how to catch them, I know how to become aware, name my feelings and feel them, and do what I need to move through these phases.

I am becoming more at ease asking for help – for example, messaging a close friend and saying that I’m having a rough week and want to spend some time around them this weekend if possible because that helps me.

And because I allow myself these low phases, space also opens up for moments of joy and happiness. I truly believe that if you don’t allow for the hard feelings, you won’t be able to feel the good stuff either. You’ll be in emotional shut down, which doesn’t discriminate between feelings. So now, even when I go through these low phases, I’m still able to have good relationships and I’m still able to experience some good times.

I’m no longer waiting for the bad times to pass in order to start living my life. I’m living my life, which includes both the highs and the lows. I am getting more skilled at living life, that’s all.

Starting the journey  

I recommended therapy, but I reminded him to go for it only when he feels motivated to, when he’s tired of things being as they are and he thinks there must be some other way to live, when he’s ready to start that journey of dealing with himself and his emotions. There’s no quick fix. If not therapy, try books, courses, workshops, podcasts that might help with gaining awareness and working through your feelings. Maybe something around mindfulness.

I just find therapy to be the easiest way to start, because you have someone to collaborate with you on this journey, who helps you show up for the work of looking within, who helps you make sense of what you’re exploring, who shows you the mirror when you start getting muddled and chaotic and shut down again. You don’t need a genius therapist for that, you just need someone adequately competent at facilitating this process, because in the end the work is done by you.

He had shared earlier in the call that he had tried seeing a therapist before. He hadn’t been impressed and stopped going after a few sessions. To me, it sounded like a case of not finding a therapist who was a good fit. But something seemed to have shifted over the course of our conversation. He seemed more ready. For the journey, for therapy.  

He talked about how his current relationship was one of his key motivations – he wanted to do it justice. She was great, but he wasn’t able to enjoy the relationship or bring anything to it. He realised that he needed to work on himself and he didn’t want to let this one go and wait to sort himself out before seeing someone.

Bravo, I thought. What more can you ask of someone in a relationship, when they are willing to do the work, of working on themselves?

And maybe, you might even realise that you are worth putting in the work for, for yourself.