Emotions are a fundamental part of life. Without them, we’d lose our sense of humanity. We can’t truly know the depth of our highs without first experiencing some lows in our life. It’s natural to go through all sorts of emotions in a lifetime. But for some people, it becomes a habit to dwell on the negative spectrum of emotions for a multitude of reasons. Maybe you’ve gone through more difficult or painful situations than the average person or your personal psyche leans into focus more on the negative aspects of your life. Whatever the reason might be, it is important to diagnose the symptoms before it manifests itself in a more serious manner such as depression & anxiety.
Here are the 3 most prominent ways in which you could be numbing your emotions today:
YOU FEEL LESS GENERAL HAPPINESS
When numbing your options,it is critical to understand that the brain doesn’t exclude positive feelings from those of a negative repercussion. We begin to progressively start to feel less joy in our daily lives and just feel a sort of detachment from reality and everything just feels the same.
It is easy to get caught up in the cycle of negative emotions but the most vital step in stopping this from happening again is to first realize it is happening. As it is often said, “ A problem is 90% realizing that there is one.” If you want to experience more joy, gratefulness, etc. in your life, you must consciously train your brain to actively pursue these feelings and rebuild the neural pathways that you lost in the process. Actively practicing gratefulness in your daily life is a good first step to recovering yourself from the sea of numbing emotions.
YOU’RE CONSTANTLY LOOKING FOR A DISTRACTION
One of the huge things that pinpoints a problem in our coping mechanism is when we are in constant need for the next thing to distract us. This is just being obsessive on completing everything on your daily to do list, planning the next event, it’s that endless pursuit of distraction that really shows you how you can’t really be with yourself or your emotions. This makes you pursue perfection in things that you have completed long ago just to find something to do. This causes a major increase in anxiety in your life & pushes you further away from truly being able to love yourself and process your emotions.
To combat this, it is necessary to come in terms with your emotions. While you may feel an overload of different emotions drowning you at times, the best method to make sense of them is to label them. What is it exactly that you are feeling? Process your emotions thoroughly and really give yourself the time to solve any loose ends you may have in your mind that are weighing you down. Take time to really have time for yourself. Relax. Put some soft music or make yourself your favorite meal. Whatever it takes to really enjoy this time to yourself is crucial. The better you understand your feelings and yourself, the more at peace you will be in the future. This new found knowledge of yourself gives you confidence, pride and serenity which are powerful allies in fighting any sense of mental unwellness.
YOU STRESS OVER THE LITTLE THINGS
Ever feel like you’re blowing up something arbitrary that stresses you out & eventually ruins your whole day. It’s a common theme in many of our lives. Maybe it’s the way your husband doesn’t clean his dishes after dinner or the annoying breathing pattern of your co-worker that you are forced to hear when he is around you. These small nuances vary in the degree of emotional importance to us and are often quite harmless. That is until they are not. It’s those small things that make you feel clogged up with emotions that really affect your health. You start to suppress & withhold these emotions, fearful they will get out of control or what people will say of you since we are so in need of the validation of others. Parodixcally, holding these emotions back only causes them to come back stronger and fiercer than ever.
The first step to fight this is to identify the underlying cause of your affliction. What is it that you truly want? In the case of your husband, it may not be the simple fact that he washes dishes but rather the fact that he doesn’t help around the house and takes for granted the work you do. There, that’s the real problem. You then have to figure out how to meet these needs in a realistic manner. If you expect your husband to do all the housework overnight, you are putting yourself in a position that is bound to cause disappointment and friction within your relationship. Instead, choose to fill these needs with small & realistic solutions until you feel you have solved the issue at hand.
In our modern society, there is no shortage of methods to numb ourselves. No longer are the days that required us to numb our pain only through alcohol or reckless behavior. Today, we have much more deadly methods of distraction that are disguised as forms of harmless diversion. These are the ones that are the most dangerous to the human psyche and hold innumerable damage to our emotional wellbeing. These could include social media, television, consumerism. You name it. It has been ingrained in our culture to the point where we normalize this behavior. We make jokes about our depressive state and laugh it off while we hurt deep within ourselves.
The only true method to solve the problem is to heal ourselves from within. Nothing else will solve our issue but merely treat the exterior symptoms. Please take the time to educate yourself and seek the betterment of your emotional health. With it comes a true sense of purpose & joy in your life that is unmatched by any form of senseless numbing.