“I Don’t Know If I’m Healing or Just Numb”
“Some days I think I’m making progress. I don’t cry as much. I’m not checking my phone obsessively. I can get through the day without falling apart. But other times, I wonder if this isn’t healing at all—just numbness. Just a shutting down of feelings. I don’t know if I’m actually healing or if I’m just becoming numb.”
Dear Ravi,
That’s one of those deeply honest confessions that stops me. Because what you’re asking isn’t clinical—it’s existential. It’s not about symptoms. It’s about the shape of becoming, and whether you can trust what you’re becoming.
There’s something so quietly painful about not knowing whether to trust your own stillness. You’ve gone through something—something that hurt, something that broke you open. And now, with time and distance, you’re not falling apart the way you once were. You’re not crying every day. You’re not chasing closure, not reaching into the dark hoping for some sign or reversal.
And that should feel like healing. But it doesn’t always.
Because sometimes what comes after grief or loss or heartbreak isn’t peace. It’s dullness. A flatline. A sense of emotional gray. And you start to wonder, “Am I getting better? Or am I just shutting down?”
That uncertainty is brutal. Especially when you’re doing the things you were told would help—giving it time, breathing through it, showing up for your life. You’re functioning. You’re stable. But part of you feels… not fully here. Like healing was supposed to bring lightness or clarity, but what you feel instead is detachment.
Let me say this clearly: you are not doing it wrong. And what you’re describing is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of depth. Of presence. Of being awake enough to notice that even “progress” can feel hollow sometimes.
What you’re sitting in is the ambiguity of emotional transformation. Because healing isn’t a straight upward line. It doesn’t always feel like energy returning or joy rising. Sometimes, it feels like a numbed-out middle. Like a quieting that you didn’t choose. Like someone turned down the volume not just on the pain, but on everything.
And that’s not nothing. That’s a state of in-between—one your nervous system often creates on purpose. Because the body doesn’t always know how to go from anguish to aliveness in one leap. It needs a buffer. It needs time in the in-between. That time is not always vibrant. Sometimes it’s hushed. Foggy. Emotionally padded.
This is especially true when your pain came from intensity—an anxious relationship, a loss that came suddenly, a period of emotional overdrive. After that kind of overwhelm, your system may dull itself to protect you. And yes, that can look like healing: fewer tears, less panic, more routine. But internally, it may feel like you’ve turned into someone observing your life from behind glass.
That feeling deserves compassion, not judgment.
And yet—it’s also okay to want more than just survival. To want to feel like yourself again. To feel joy or desire or anger or hope in their full textures. That longing is healthy. It means part of you is still reaching toward wholeness, not just maintenance.
So here’s something tender to hold: maybe you are healing. And maybe part of that healing includes a season of numbness. Not as the final state. But as a necessary middle ground. A nervous system pause. A quiet rebuilding that doesn’t show itself right away.
The key is not to rush out of this space. Not to demand color from a gray sky. But to stay curious inside the flatness. To ask—What softens me, even a little? What do I notice, even if it’s small? When do I feel a flicker of realness, even if it doesn’t last?
Sometimes healing is dramatic. And sometimes, it’s like thawing—slow, subtle, with no clear finish line.
You’re not broken. You’re not numb because you’ve failed. You’re in a transition state. You’re between collapse and vitality. Between protection and presence.
And just because your emotions aren’t loud doesn’t mean your healing isn’t real.
You’re not alone in this.
–RJ