Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you go numb
Going still and needing nothing is usually something a person worked out young, somewhere it was the sensible answer.
If reaching out met dismissal, or worse, then not reaching out is not a flaw of character. A child who stops asking, stops showing what they feel and puts their attention on tasks and objects instead of people has solved a real problem. The cost arrives later, in a relationship where the same solution is running long after the danger has gone. Naming where it came from takes the shame out of it, which is often what lets somebody try something different.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Those whose time was extended but whose hearts hardened (Quran 57:16), and then, immediately after: God revives the earth after it dies (Quran 57:17). Hardening is described as something that crept up over a long stretch, and reviving is the answer set beside it.
۞أَلَمۡ يَأۡنِ لِلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ أَن تَخۡشَعَ قُلُوبُهُمۡ لِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ وَمَا نَزَلَ مِنَ ٱلۡحَقِّ وَلَا يَكُونُواْ كَٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُواْ ٱلۡكِتَٰبَ مِن قَبۡلُ فَطَالَ عَلَيۡهِمُ ٱلۡأَمَدُ فَقَسَتۡ قُلُوبُهُمۡۖ وَكَثِيرࣱ مِّنۡهُمۡ فَٰسِقُونَ
Is it not time for believers to humble their hearts to the remembrance of God and the Truth that has been revealed, and not to be like those who received the Scripture before them, whose time was extended but whose hearts hardened and many of whom were lawbreakers
Qur’an 57:16read it in the library
ٱعۡلَمُوٓاْ أَنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحۡيِ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ بَعۡدَ مَوۡتِهَاۚ قَدۡ بَيَّنَّا لَكُمُ ٱلۡأٓيَٰتِ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَعۡقِلُونَ
Remember that God revives the earth after it dies; We have made Our revelation clear to you so that you may use your reason
Qur’an 57:17read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
There is modest evidence that this is partly learned. A meta analysis found that low parental care in childhood was associated with adult difficulty identifying and describing feelings, though the association was modest and the studies rely on people's recollections of their own upbringing. It is consistent with shutting down being learned, and it does not establish that it always is.
Thorberg FA, Young RM, Sullivan KA, Lyvers M. (2011). Parental bonding and alexithymia: a meta-analysis.. European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A strategy that once kept you safe keeps running until something shows you it is no longer needed.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When someone says they feel nothing, find out where the nothing reaches. All the time, or only towards good things, or only here, in this conversation, when criticism is in the air?
If a medicine has taken the edge off everything, including the good things, that is worth raising with whoever prescribed it. Taking the sharpness out of pain is one thing. Feeling nothing at all is not a way to live.
Rather than arguing with someone who says they feel nothing, say plainly what would ordinarily hurt about it. Hearing that the person you love is disappointed in you is a hard thing to hear.