Episode Overview

Episode Title: Am I Emotionally Numb? Signs Of Emotional Numbness and What To Do Next
Podcast: What Your Therapist Thinks
Hosts: Felicia Keller Boyle, Kristie Plantinga
Guest: Arianna Wheat (Ari), Licensed MFT & Drama Therapist
Date: September 10, 2025

In this insightful episode, the hosts and guest therapist Arianna Wheat dive into one of the most common, anonymous mental health questions: “Am I emotionally numb, and what do I do about it?” Together, they unpack the true meaning of emotional numbness, explore its roots in trauma and neurodivergence, and share practical strategies for getting reconnected to your feelings. Through clinical wisdom, Reddit case studies, and personal reflection, they aim to dismantle the myth of “brokenness,” explain the science of numbing and dissociation, and offer real hope for healing.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding “Emotional Numbness”

[04:20–08:00]

• Emotional numbness is not a lack of emotion, but an overwhelmed system:
  • Ari: “People think that they have gone numb, but they are actually feeling so so much that the system is overwhelmed, pushed beyond its threshold. So you’ve activated the fire blanket, but the fire is very much there...” [04:37]
  • Emotional numbness typically results from unreleased or unprocessed feelings, similar to the way depression can result from suppressed anger, sadness or grief.
• Felicia: “There’s always emotion underneath...You might not be—yes, I guess you’re numb in that it’s like you’re not feeling it right now, but it’s not like it’s not there.” [06:25]

2. The Spectrum: Numbness, Sensitivity, & Survival

[10:25–13:41]

• The panel discusses how being highly sensitive can leave someone susceptible to developing numbing as a survival strategy.
• Kristie: “I just like exhaust myself emotionally to the point where I’m just like, oh, you know, and then I just kind of can’t feel anymore.” [09:42]
• Numbing can develop as a shield, especially in neurodivergent people who receive more emotional input (“porousness”).
• Ari: HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) can fit under the neurodivergent umbrella, often requiring special coping mechanisms because “they’re literally getting more information absorbed into their systems on a regular basis.” [10:35]

3. Socialization & Triggers for Emotional Numbing

[17:55–20:01]

• Numbing is often a response to unsafe environments and/or implicit societal feedback.
• Ari: “...the lens cap is formed by generational trauma, social societal trauma, parent trauma...they forgot to check it...Didn’t have access to support a feeling.” [17:58]
• Felicia: “If you’re not safe to, like, walk around [emotionally open],...you’re going to learn to, like, gum up the system so you don’t get that much information.” [18:27]
• Repeated messages—explicit or not—that “having full access to your emotions… makes people uncomfortable...that could then lead to an issue of your safety” push people to learn to mask or numb. [18:40–19:52]

4. Trauma, Dissociation, & the Nervous System

[20:04–29:33]

• Ari and Felicia dissect a Reddit post describing rapid shutdown during trauma processing, identifying dissociation and hypoarousal.
• Felicia: “This is very, very old technology. This is like evolutionary biology.” [22:57]
• Concepts explained:
  • Window of Tolerance: Where we are alert and present but calm; outside it, we become hypoaroused or hyperaroused.
  • Hyperarousal: Fight or flight.
  • Hypoarousal: Freeze, shut down, play dead (dissociation).
• Felicia: “With therapy, we try to increase the window of tolerance so we can feel more without plummeting into shutdown.” [28:00]
• Ari: “It’s a mirroring that’s happening in that co-regulation, right? You’re bringing your story forward and you’re so afraid...So then therapist is leaning in...Look, I’m not scared. You don’t have to be scared.” [29:33]

5. How to Move Through Emotional Numbness

[31:17–34:34]

• Felicia’s advice: Somatic (body-oriented) therapy and grounding practices to expand awareness of one’s own arousal states and bodily sensations:
  • “...help them just learn how to monitor their arousal...if you do get into hyper hypoarousal, you’re like, okay, I know what’s happening here.” [31:17]
• Ari’s drama therapy lens: Use simple “feelings vocabulary,” externalize the experience, imagine what someone else might feel in your situation, and then gently notice where that emotion might live in the body.
  • “There’s a part at which you’re, like, there’s a sweet spot between I’m so emotionally overwhelmed...and too deep in the process…I’m too far removed.” [34:22]

6. The “Shoulds” and Societal Pressures

[40:29–44:54]

• Emotional numbness is often tangled up with expectations about how we “should” feel.
  • Ari: “The loudest thing that I heard in there was the shoulds…When you’re shoulding all over yourself, usually that means some sort of like, shame response is present.” [40:30]
  • Notable Reddit Example: Woman gets a raise at work but feels nothing; feels she “should” be ecstatic.
• Ari’s Suggestion: Practice radical acceptance; celebrate in your own way, no need to “perform” a specific emotion. Even giving yourself a sticker can be enough. [43:36]
• Felicia: “I don’t like performing a certain emotion...that should quote-unquote be genuine.” [43:55]
• Kristie: “It’s almost like—who told us this narrative of, like, you should feel this way in these situations?” [44:57]

7. “Am I Broken?” and Challenging the Brokenness Myth

[47:44–50:03]

• Recurring listener fear: “Am I broken if I don’t cry or don’t feel?”
  • Kristie: “I think people just really want to know, am I broken? Like, is there something wrong with me that I am not crying?” [47:44]
  • Ari: “You’re not broken, but society is trying to break you.” [48:47]
• Therapy challenge: Get curious about and “thicken” the narrative—maybe it’s not YOU that’s broken, but the expectation or situation.

8. The Path to Healing: Radical Acceptance and Present-Moment Awareness

[51:41–52:25]

• Felicia: Change starts with “radical connection to the current reality.” Be present with what is. This is the foundation for change, even if it’s uncomfortable.
  • “Let’s just be here and connect to a basic sense of okayness…because at that point, really, fundamentally, there is a sense of okayness.” [52:05]
  • “When we start on our healing journey, we’re like, I want it to be this way…Let’s just be here together for a moment...[that] is the foundation of real change.” [52:14–52:25]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you touch fire, you feel pain. Well, it’s not wrong to be in pain.”
  — Arianna Wheat [00:06] & [47:52]
• “There’s always emotion underneath… you might not be—yes, I guess you’re numb in that it’s like you’re not feeling it right now, but it’s not like it’s not there.”
  — Felicia Keller Boyle [06:25]
• “You’re not broken, but society is trying to break you.”
  — Arianna Wheat [48:47]
• “When you’re shoulding all over yourself, usually that means some sort of like, shame response is present.”
  — Arianna Wheat [40:30]
• “Let’s just be here and connect to a basic sense of okayness. Because at that point…there is a sense of okayness.”
  — Felicia Keller Boyle [52:05]
• “Part of being in your window of tolerance is not just that you can be present, but that you can also be in the seat of the observer of your own internal landscape.”
  — Felicia Keller Boyle [34:34]

Important Timestamps

• 00:00–00:54: Hosts set up central question: “Am I broken if I feel numb?”
• 04:20–07:49: Ari and Felicia define numbness as an overwhelmed—not absent—emotional system.
• 10:25–13:41: The link between being highly sensitive, neurodivergent, and numbing as survival.
• 17:55–20:01: Generational and societal trauma as foundation for learned numbness.
• 20:04–29:33: Reddit PTSD example; deep dive into dissociation, hypoarousal, and co-regulation in therapy.
• 31:17–34:34: Strategies for healing: somatic therapy, grounding, drama therapy techniques.
• 40:29–44:54: The “shoulds” of emotional expression; challenging societal narratives; case study about feeling numb even after positive events.
• 47:44–50:03: Challenging the myth of “brokenness”; therapy as a place to re-write old narratives.
• 51:41–52:25: Foundation for healing: radical acceptance and being present.

Tone & Style

The mood is candid, supportive, and conversational. The therapists blend humor and clinical wisdom. There’s warmth, vulnerability, and reassurance to listeners that “emotional numbness” is a fully human, understandable response—not a flaw. The tone is never pathologizing; instead, it’s filled with permission to be present, gentle, and curious with oneself.

Takeaways for Listeners

• You are not broken for feeling emotionally numb. It’s a coping system, not a character flaw, and it often means you are feeling too much, not too little.
• Therapy can help you expand your window of tolerance—so you can process more emotion safely, at your own pace.
• Somatic awareness (noticing your body) and grounding practices are key tools.
• Challenge the “shoulds.” Don’t measure your feelings against external or societal expectations.
• Healing starts with radical acceptance of the present moment, not rushing to “fix” or bypass it.

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