Dear Strong One: You’re Allowed to Feel Nothing
There is a kind of exhaustion that does not announce itself. You still wake up, still answer messages, still complete what needs to be done, and from the outside, everything looks steady. Functional. Responsible. Yet somewhere inside, the volume has lowered. Not into peace, not into clarity, but into something flatter. You are not overwhelmed, but you are not moved either. Joy doesn’t quite land. Anger doesn’t fully rise. Even sadness feels distant, like it belongs to another version of you. For a long time, I misread this state. I thought it meant I had become detached or avoidant. I thought maybe I was failing to process something important. Therapy eventually helped me see it differently. Emotional numbness is often not absence but protection. When the nervous system has been overstimulated for too long, when stress has accumulated quietly, when vigilance has become normal, the body sometimes conserves instead of collapsing. It narrows the bandwidth so you don’t fragment under...
