What this can feel like.
- You're going through your week and you can't quite tell whether you're enjoying any of it.
- You laugh, but it doesn't land.
- You can name what you should be feeling, but you can't quite locate the feeling itself.
- You're irritable in a low, baseline way that doesn't have an obvious target.
- You watch other people connect — at dinner, on a video call — and you feel one room over from it.
- Crying, when it happens, surprises you. So does not crying.
This is what happens when the emotional system has been pulled at for too long without rest. The body protects you by lowering the volume. That's adaptive in the short term and corrosive in the long.
How therapy can help.
The recovery isn't about making yourself feel things. That doesn't work. It's about giving the system enough safety, slowness, and recognition that the volume comes back on its own.
Some of that work is somatic — relearning what feelings actually feel like in your body, not as ideas. Some is relational — having a clinician and a small group of other adults stay with you through the dullness without trying to fix it. Some is cognitive — gently noticing the inner narrators that keep you a few feet away from your own life.
What we work on.
- Putting feelings back in the body before trying to put them in words.
- Sitting with people who don't need you to perform a mood.
- Recognizing the difference between numbness and peace.
- Rebuilding the small daily contacts that the year of running on empty cancelled.
