Journaling Prompts for Emotional Numbness
Emotional numbness is often the mind's way of protecting you from something that was too large to feel all at once. It can arrive after trauma, after prolonged stress, after depression, or after a sustained period of simply needing to function when functioning required pushing everything down. The absence of feeling can be almost as frightening as acute pain—it can feel like something essential is broken. But numbness is usually temporary, and writing—even writing about the numbness itself—can be one gentle way to start feeling the edges of things again.
Journaling Prompts
Describe the numbness as specifically as you can. Is it flatness, disconnection, a feeling of watching yourself from outside, exhaustion, the absence of something that used to be there? What does it actually feel like?
When did you first notice it? Was there a specific period or event before which things felt more alive? What happened around that time?
What do you remember enjoying, caring about, or feeling moved by, before the numbness settled in? Write about one of those things in detail—not to force feeling, just to stay close to it.
What are you protecting yourself from feeling, if you let yourself guess? Is there a grief, a fear, an anger that might be underneath the flatness?
What is one small thing—a sensation, an activity, a person—that has created even a flicker of feeling recently? What would it mean to go toward that, even a little?