You’re Winning in Life… So Why Do You Feel Nothing?

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I’ve seen this question in forums where someone says that they’ve achieved their goals, they’re hitting six figures, they have a happy relationship, and they’re traveling the world. Some of them are mostly digital nomads or expats. They might be in Bali, Thailand, or some place in Vietnam, some exotic place, but they are achieving all those things, and yet they’re not happy

Actually, one of the common reasons or one of the common signs of emotional numbness is this: you are successful, you are overachieving, but you are not really happy. You can’t really feel that spark of joy. You can’t even feel that sense of celebration or excitement. Other people around you may be congratulating you on how you’re living their life.

Your partner and your friends are happy, they’re laughing, but for you, you just feel something is off. That’s one of the signs that you are emotionally flat. And when you are emotionally flat, however many achievements you achieve, you will not feel them. This is because your system is operating in a mode where feeling emotions is unsafe. It may have been operating like that for a very, very long time.

Numbness as the Motivator for Overachievers

And sometimes even this numbness or this being emotionally blunt may be the driver or the ‘motivation’ that drove you to overachieve. You see how it is, because the small achievements, like getting a job, being able to pay rent, or raising a family, were not really giving you any sort of spark. you now push yourself higher so that you can achieve higher goals with the hope or expectation that by achieving these higher goals, you’ll feel happy.

But now, when you achieve these goals, is when you realize that you’re not happy at all.

And for overachievers, they may get to the point where they achieve that high goal, but after achieving it, they want the next goal, and the next, and the next, to till point where they come back to reality and realize that something is off in their life.

This doesn’t also mean that achievements are really supposed to make you hysterical, but there has to be some spark or some difference in emotions. You could cry a little bit, just get excited a little bit, but when you don’t have those little bits, it simply means that your system has shut down any kind of emotion to keep you safe, and that’s what emotional numbness is all about.

Numbness = Emotions are Harmful

Your system sees emotion as something that is dangerous to you. And you may have developed this from past experiences. Let’s say in the past your emotions were invalidated, or you were told that you’re not supposed to feel emotions because it’s not manly, or you experienced some sort of abuse to the point where your brain or your mind chose to numb out or to blunt emotions so that you cannot feel more pain.

Photo by THE 5TH on Unsplash

The thing is when your nervous system shuts down, it means that the overwhelming pain you were experiencing in the that moment was not fully processed. So, your mind did the ‘right’ thing to protect you.

But long after that experience has passed, we have to process it.

So by processing it, it’s like you’re communicating to the mind that, hey, that experience is long gone, and now I want to feel. Now I have emotional boundaries. Now I can take care of myself. Now I’m an adult, and I can make my own choices and make good decisions about my life.

That’s basically what you need to do so that you can celebrate your wins and your losses. It’s just how it is

Safe is Predictable

So, your achievements may not make you happy or may not bring a spark of excitement or joy because you’re just emotionally numb, and your system has refused to let you experience those emotions because it’s keeping you safe. It’s keeping you in a predictable path. It’s keeping you in a space where it has gotten used to. When you’re in this state of being emotionless, your system gets used to it.

And when your system gets used to something, it doesn’t just leave it. You only leave it when you work on investigating the root cause of this belief. We can call it subconscious beliefs, this identity which is now being numbed out.

By working on that, it’s like you are making peace with the past experiences which led to the development of this numbing or being emotionally flat or emotionless as a coping mechanism to keep you safe.

Are you ‘Chasing’ Success Consciously?

So if you are in that state of being successful or you are a high achiever and you can’t seem to stop, to the point where being a high achiever is becoming addictive, and you are not even enjoying it, you’re not even giving yourself time off to celebrate, to relax, to bond with your family, or to look at how far you’ve come, it simply means that you’re not really chasing success consciously.

It’s like your mind or your system is using success as a distraction from yourself. And this doesn’t mean that achievements will make you happy. No, it simply means that at least there should be a small emotional reaction here and there. And another thing before I finish, sometimes some achievements may give you some extreme emotional highs or lows, but some may give you nothing at all.

Those moments may also be signs of emotional numbness because with emotional numbness, sometimes the peaks are so high, you can be so elated, and then you now experience a whole range of flatness. So it’s low and very high, there’s no in between.

And the good thing is, it is reversible as long as you acknowledge that something is off, and there’s nothing wrong with you.

You’re not broken. It’s just that your inner compass, the compass which you’re using to gauge your emotions or to perceive or interpret your emotions, is kind of distorted because of past experiences.

And by working on that compass, you’re able to guide yourself.

You are able to interpret life experiences and construct emotions which are pleasant or unpleasant.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.