I Spent Decades Numbing. Here's What I Learned About Feeling.
Why we need to feel our feelings has always been elusive to me. Growing up in a chaotic household, we had to numb to survive. In my house, feelings were ignored, we didn't have time to be sad, angry, or curious. That took away from our ability to be productive, and being productive was necessary to get to the next day and more importantly to have value and worth in the family. Competence was the currency of power, the more mistakes you made, the less your opinion mattered, the less you mattered. Sound familiar?
Imagine a ship caught in a storm. Someone wants to talk about how they're feeling, and they most definitely will be met with, "No! There's no time. Button down the hatches, there are more important things to attend to!" In a storm, there's no time to think about whether you're capable, how you’re feeling, or if you have the resources. You just have to try your best and hope it works out. Gratitude to our amazing nervous systems to be able to function that way to get us through storms. But it becomes a problem when there's always a storm and the nervous system never gets to relax. When we feel like there is no room for mistakes or slowing down, because something bad will happen or we will be labeled as not good enough.
Many people, myself included, struggle with equating their self-worth with productivity. And it makes sense, with a government that does not provide basic needs like affordable housing, easily accessible healthy food, universal health care, adequate public transportation, our income determines much of our well being. But that’s a whole other can of worms I won’t dive into at the moment.
What was I saying? Oh yeah… it can be confusing as to why there is a benefit to feeling the feelings when you feel the feelings. I get it, I was confused for decades too. But here's what I've learned…we don't have to be fueled by anxiety and disconnected from our emotions in order to feel safe. We don’t have to be productive in order to be loved. We don’t need to be competent in order to be valuable. In fact, those actions don't allow our nervous system to rest. And while it might feel like safety to continuously be stressed, productive, and right, the truth is that when we are not in touch with our feelings, safety often comes from something feeling familiar, regardless of whether it's actually safe or not.
Ruth Culver's Survive to Thrive Spiral (check it out if you haven’t already) has been such an eye-opener for me. I realized I was consistently living in the yellow zone, staying busy and active as a way to feel safe. The spiral is basically a map that shows how we move through different emotional states, and the key thing is that healing isn't a straight line. We go up and down in cycles. Sometimes we get overwhelmed or shut down, and then, with the right support and care, we gradually move back toward feeling more present and integrated. Here's the really important part, setbacks or dips aren't permanent or proof of your value. They're just part of life.
It's not about avoiding failure or discomfort, it's more important how we treat ourselves before, during, and after we stumble (real or perceived).
When we can't feel and process our emotions, we often end up in what the spiral calls the yellow and red zones. In the yellow zone, we use coping strategies that keep us a bit disconnected, staying super busy, scrolling on our phones, working nonstop, or using food or substances to numb out. These behaviors can look totally fine from the outside, but they stop us from actually processing what we're feeling.
In the red zone, things get more intense. We might snap at people, completely shut down, or turn to more extreme ways of numbing like bingeing, risky behavior, or addictive patterns. These strategies might help us avoid pain in the moment, but they keep us disconnected from ourselves and stuck in survival mode. We might feel like we are keeping ourselves safe but it comes at the cost of intimacy, connection, and trust.
But don’t fret! There is another option!
In the green zone, we have more resources and can actually be with our emotions instead of running from them. Instead of numbing or reacting, we notice what we're feeling with curiosity and kindness, and we let those feelings move through us. Maybe that looks like pausing to take a few deep breaths when sadness hits, journaling when you're frustrated, or calling a friend when you're lonely. In this space, our coping strategies actually help us, things like grounding exercises, comforting ourselves, or saying what we need out loud. The more we practice this, the stronger we get at interacting with our emotions, the more we trust ourselves, and the more room we create for actual growth.
And this connects directly back to what we talked about in the previous article, expanding your capacity to feel. The gratitude practice, the Window of Tolerance, Santosha (contentment), they're all about building that green zone. When we practice feeling gratitude, we're literally training our nervous system to stay present with emotion instead of shutting it down. We're expanding our window, creating more room to feel joy and sorrow, contentment and longing.
We're moving from survival into thriving, one feeling at a time.
This isn't just theory for me anymore. It's become a daily practice of noticing when I'm slipping into old patterns, when I'm staying busy to avoid feeling, when I'm equating my worth with my productivity. And in those moments, I try to pause. To breathe. To remember that I don't have to weather every storm alone, constantly buttoning down the hatches. Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is simply feel what we're feeling and know that we're enough, exactly as we are. We are exactly where we need to be, being exactly who we need to be at this moment.
