Ep 3: Stealth Mode: When Numbness Takes Over

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Podcast Experts:

The Warning Signs You're Numbing Out

SharRon Jamison - Life Strategist / Founder, The Jamison Group / Minister & Corporate Leader / Author (“I Can Depend on Me,” “I Have Learned a Few Things”) / Justice‑Centered Speaker

Bill Simmons - Strategic Growth Coach / Fractional COO & CMO / 30+ Years Scaling Small Businesses / Founder & CEO, Thrive Business Operations / Certified Leadership Consultant (Quran Coach, Taqwa Transformation) / 15‑Year Professional Coach / NLP-Trained Coach

Louisa Havers - Transformational Coach / Creator of “Your Impassioned Life” Program / Former Senior Social Services Executive / Master Manifesting & Energy Alignment Expert (The Helix Method®) / International Business Coach

Peggy Oliveira - Trauma Therapist & Survivor Mentor / MSW / Host, Courageous Journeys® Podcast / Author & Speaker / Reconnector to Wholeness

Sharron: "If you realize you're starting to numb, if you are using food, sex, if you are shopping, if you're talking, if you're gossiping, if you are working out, if you are using religion, it could be a drug too. If you are doing, if you are overdoing something, trying to shut down, your emotions are quiet, what I call the demons in your head. I think that's a sign that you are using some type experience or external thing to make you feel good inside. That numbing is key.

And I think the third thing is when you start to change in how you interact with people, meaning you are highly irritable impatient. Bitterness. Are you cynic? You are very cynical. Are you? In the south we have this term called nice nasty in the south, and that means that I'm smiling on the outside, but I'm cussing you out in the inside it's called nice, nasty. And so I think that any type you have a behavioral change, numb, you are numbing, or if you change in your pattern. I think that should give you a sign.

My sign was I started seeing big shifts in my weight because I started using food. That's, I'm a number. And I would eat, eating. And one day I'm like, oh my God, 20 pounds heavier. I didn't realize it, or I stopped sleeping, right? Or sleeping too much.

There's a difference between being cold and being numb. Cold people don't care. Numb people care so much they had to shut down to survive.

If you've been wondering why you can't feel joy anymore, even when good things happen, this one's for you.

Bill: "We can't numb emotions in isolation if we are numbing our emotions. And what happens is then we don't feel anything. We're trying to numb anger and bitterness. We lose joy at the same time and happiness. And so I had to learn to not fear the fear. That feeling the fear was actually a good sign so that I could feel the joy as well and come out of that."

You Can't Numb Selectively

Louisa: "Emotional detachment when people feel. They are not feeling joy, so it's like it can come up as anxiety or completely cut off. From, and I, from an energetic perspective now, would describe that they're living so much in their head. They've had to completely detach them themselves from the feelings because they can't go there because they're just so busy and over and overwhelmed that everything is up here. And that they're thinking that they can't even connect with the people that they're providing the service with to anymore. 'cause it's just too much."

Living in Your Head to Survive

Taniya: "And that's pretty dangerous when they become so cut off from their emotions. As a social worker, I really need to feel what my clients are feeling. I really need to be empathetic, not sympathetic, empathetic. And when I feel like I'm not gonna be able to imagine what they think. I can't always understand, but if I can't even imagine what they're feeling or even try to feel it, that you'd lose your. When I say, yeah, maybe this is a bit too harsh, like your humanity, you become a like a robot. Like you're saying that you are just ticking the boxes. Yeah. And that is really dangerous. It's dangerous for you as a professional. It's dangerous. For the client. And it's, it is just dangerous all around because you're not giving that a hundred percent because you need to be there for your client or your patient."

When You Become a Robot

Louisa: "And whether you are feeling that being an angel at work or whether it's the mask you're wearing because you're having to protect everything underneath 'cause you're feeling so overwhelmed so you can do the acting, but the connection might not truly be there because you are having to protect yourself."

The Split: Angel at Work, Nightmare at Home

Taniya: "I hadn't actually stopped feeling within my work. I was still really very empathetic with my clients and being there emotionally, feeling that, feeling very sensitive. But at home I was a nightmare. I was taking out all my anger and all my bitterness to my family. I was a nightmare to live with. You are like being really giving and positive at work, but yet at home you're like constantly angry. And that is no way of. Of being, it's like two facing Batman, you know that mask? Yeah. The mask has to come off. Sorry. It's that is no way of being a person of integrity, that you are just so awful to your family, but you are being this angel at work."

Peggie: "When you see so much pain day in and day out, and you see it in so many different ways it can sometimes bring up guilt if then you go home at the end of the day and you get to enjoy your life. You get to enjoy your partner or your nice dinner or go get a massage. When the person that you were just with can't afford to feed themselves. There's a lot of guilt. I think that goes on almost like a survivor guilt that goes on for a lot of people and feel badly that they're living a very different life. And sometimes that guilt is because there's something that maybe still needs some healing for yourself.

And the second part of that, is also boundaries. Especially if we can empathize because of personal experience, again, even if it's just a similar feeling, sometimes it can be really difficult to leave that at the office, so to speak, and then come home to work. But sometimes it's also some boundaries and we can feel guilty even about having those boundaries, which again, is so incredibly necessary. Especially doing social work type stuff."

Survivor's Guilt: When Joy Feels Wrong

Bill: "I'm a big Brene Brown fan, she wrote a book called The Gift of Imperfection, and that was a critical book that helped me early on in my recovery to understand that I had to embrace imperfection. So that helps me as a person. It helps me as a business owner because if you're a business owner, you never arrive to satisfaction. You live in a constant state of frustration that things are never where you want them to be. So what you have to do is embrace imperfection and celebrate it, and lay your head down at night going, I didn't get it all done today, and it's okay, and my worthiness and my value is not wrapped up in all that."

Embracing Imperfection as Healing

Louisa: "There's so many clients that come to me saying they wanna change their jobs, they're hitting their jobs now, but actually through the energy work, when you reconnect the head, the heart, and the horror and be fully in alignment with your spirit and change the energy around it. People have said, oh my God, I love my job again. Yeah. And that wasn't, they came thinking okay, I need to find the courage to leave my job. Yeah. To do X, Y, and Z. But actually it was reconnecting with yourself. Find yourself again, the love and the joy in your own life. And then for some people they are in the right place. And for others, they've then got the courage. To take action. To go part with a plan to find out where is it that they really where should they be?"

Taniya: "Maybe that's where healing starts, not with fixing yourself. But with being a little kinder to yourself."

Finding Your Way Back to Yourself

Next episode: How your self-care routine might actually be exhausting you — when wellness becomes just another thing you have to perform perfectly.

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