When you notice you are numbing more than you used to

It starts so quietly that you almost do not notice. An extra glass of wine on a Tuesday. Another hour of scrolling before bed. A growing preference for anything that takes the edge off, that fills the space between you and whatever you are not quite ready to feel. Individually, none of these things seem like a problem. It is the trend that matters, the gradual escalation, the way the numbing keeps expanding to fill a need you have not named.

If you are reading this, you have probably already noticed the pattern. That noticing is significant. It means some part of you is paying attention even while another part is working hard to look away. This article is not about shame or diagnosis. It is about understanding what the numbing is doing for you, why it is increasing, and what it might be protecting you from.

What numbing actually is

Steven Hayes, the founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, uses the term experiential avoidance to describe the attempt to avoid or escape unwanted internal experiences, thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations. Numbing is one of the most common forms of experiential avoidance. It is not about the substance or the behaviour itself. It is about the function it serves, which is to create distance between you and something painful.

Hayes's research shows that experiential avoidance is not just ineffective in the long run, it is paradoxically amplifying. The more you avoid a feeling, the more power it accumulates. The pain does not go away. It goes underground, and it takes more and more numbing to keep it there. This is why the pattern escalates. You are not developing a tolerance for pleasure. You are developing a tolerance for avoidance, and the required dose keeps increasing.

Why it is increasing now

Numbing behaviours rarely increase for no reason. Something has changed, even if you cannot immediately identify it. It might be a loss you have not fully processed. It might be a slow accumulation of stress that has exceeded your capacity. It might be that a part of your life that was providing meaning or connection has quietly fallen away, and the resulting emptiness feels dangerous.

Gabor Mate's work on addiction and its relationship to pain offers a compassionate lens here. Mate argues that the question is not why the addiction but why the pain. Every numbing behaviour is an attempt to solve a problem. The problem is not a lack of willpower. The problem is usually emotional pain that feels unmanageable, and the numbing is the best solution your system could find at the time.

Stephen Porges's polyvagal theory adds a physiological dimension. When your nervous system has been in a sustained state of activation, whether from chronic stress, unresolved grief, relationship difficulties, or simply the accumulated weight of modern life, it will seek ways to downregulate. Numbing behaviours activate the dorsal vagal pathway, which creates a kind of physiological shutdown. It is your nervous system's emergency brake, not a moral failing.

The cost of looking away

Bessel van der Kolk's research on how the body stores emotion reveals the long-term cost of sustained numbing. When emotions are consistently avoided, they do not disappear. They manifest as physical symptoms, chronic tension, digestive issues, fatigue, and a general sense of flatness. You might notice that you are not just numbing the difficult feelings. You are also losing access to the good ones. Joy, excitement, tenderness, and connection all become muted because the numbing does not discriminate. It turns down the volume on everything.

This is one of the most disorienting aspects of prolonged numbing. You are not in acute pain. But you are not really feeling anything else either. Life acquires a greyed-out quality, as though you are watching it from behind glass. Relationships lose their texture. Work loses its meaning. Even things you used to enjoy start to feel flat. This is not depression in every case, though it can look similar. It is the natural consequence of a system that has been suppressing feeling for too long.

What the numbing is protecting

Paul Gilbert's Compassion-Focused Therapy framework identifies the threat system as the primary driver of avoidance behaviours. When the threat system is overactive, which happens when you have experienced significant stress, loss, or emotional overwhelm, your system prioritises safety above everything else. Numbing is a safety strategy. It keeps you away from feelings that your system has categorised as dangerous.

The feelings being protected against are usually not mysterious. They are grief, loneliness, anger, fear, shame, or some combination of these. But they have accumulated to a point where approaching them feels overwhelming. The numbing is not the enemy. It is a guard standing at the door of a room full of feelings that your system does not yet trust you to handle. The work is not to force the door open. It is to build enough internal safety that the guard can step aside.

Turning toward instead of fighting against

Hayes's ACT model does not suggest that you stop numbing through willpower. It suggests that you develop a different relationship with the experiences you have been avoiding. This begins with willingness, the decision to allow a feeling to be present without immediately trying to fix it, escape it, or understand it. Just let it be there, in your body, for a few moments.

This is genuinely difficult work, and it should be approached gradually. You do not need to face everything at once. Start with whatever feels smallest and most manageable. Notice a moment of sadness and let it sit for thirty seconds before reaching for your phone. Notice a wave of anxiety and place your hand on your chest instead of opening a browser tab. These are not dramatic interventions. They are small acts of courage that, repeated over time, teach your nervous system that feelings are survivable.

Van der Kolk emphasises that the body must be involved in this process. Emotional experiences that have been stored somatically cannot be resolved through thinking alone. Movement, breathwork, and somatic practices help the body complete the stress cycles that numbing has been interrupting. A walk, a stretch, a few minutes of conscious breathing, these can do more than hours of analysis.

When to seek support

If the numbing has progressed to a point where it is affecting your health, your relationships, or your ability to function, it is worth seeking professional support. A therapist trained in ACT, somatic experiencing, or IFS can help you approach what is underneath the numbing in a safe, titrated way. This is not a sign of weakness. It is a recognition that some rooms are too full to enter alone.

Mate's work consistently emphasises that connection is the antidote to numbing. Not connection in the abstract, but genuine, honest relationship with at least one other person who knows what you are going through. Shame thrives in isolation. When you tell someone the truth about your experience, the grip loosens, not because the problem is solved, but because you are no longer carrying it alone.

A grounded next step

This week, try keeping a simple log. Each evening, note any numbing behaviours from the day, without judgement. Just notice them. Then, beside each one, write one word that describes what you were feeling in the hour before you reached for it. You are not trying to stop anything. You are trying to see the pattern, to understand the sequence of feeling and response that has been running on autopilot. Awareness, genuine awareness without self-attack, is the foundation of change. The fact that you noticed the pattern increasing is already the beginning of something different.