Waking Up from Numbness
For many people living with chronic illness, the experience of being “in the body” feels distant. Perhaps you feel numb, disconnected, or unable to feel sensations and emotions clearly. It’s not that you don’t want to feel – it’s that your body feels shut down, frozen or hypervigilant – almost always in a state of survival. Often the only thing you feel when you have a chronic condition is symptoms, and the need to distract from the discomfort or pain of them. If this resonates with you, you’re not alone.
Feeling Like Nothing
Chronic stress, hidden patterns and suppressed stressors can lead to a breakdown in communication between the mind and body. Over time, the nervous system learns to suppress feelings and emotional pain by shutting down sensation altogether.
The human system begins this process of disconnecting early on as a survival response. You are wired to have this capability to help you survive; when something is too much, whether it’s painful events, unbearable overwhelm or buried stressors, the system blocks it out from your awareness so that you don’t have to feel it in that moment. It allows you to function and is designed as a temporary mechanism (so that you don’t have to feel your wounds while you escape from a tiger, as an example, and this allows you to run away and survive).
What begins as a survival mechanism that is designed to help you disconnect for a few minutes at a time can become chronic. This means that over time, you are left feeling detached from yourself, disconnected – in a state of dissociation and unable to access your internal world.
Understanding the Freeze Response
When we talk about nervous system regulation, brain rewiring and chronic illness, we must understand the freeze response. Unlike fight-or-flight, which aims to mobilise the body to respond to danger (like my example above of running away from a tiger), the freeze response is a shutdown state. It also begins as a response to danger, but it feels very different. We go into a conservation mode, numbing things, lowering energy output, and keeping in a suspended state of “not feeling” or “living in the mind”.
For many people with chronic illness, as more time progresses this freeze response becomes the dominant state. You might experience:
Emotional numbness (difficulty feeling emotions or expressing them)
Physical dissociation (feeling disconnected from your body, parts of your body going numb, or struggling to sense things)
Extreme fatigue and brain fog
A feeling of being “stuck” in life, relationships, and the healing path
These are signs of a nervous system and brain that has adapted into the freeze state for protection.
How to Rewire out of Freeze
The good news is that neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change – allows us to shift out of this Freeze nervous system state. This happens through safe reconnection, step by step, with consistency and repetition.
Here are a few ways to begin:
Start Small with Sensory Awareness – Begin by noticing sensations: the weight of a blanket, the temperature of the air, or the pressure of one of your hands on the other hand. This helps the nervous system register that your body is present and safe.
Somatic Healing Practices – Orienting or gentle touch practices (such as placing a hand over your heart) or self-regulation healing exercises like the Havening Technique send cues of safety to the nervous system and brain.
Compassionate Awareness of Numbness – Instead of trying to “fix” numbness or dissociation, acknowledge it as a protective mechanism. Understand that your Mindbody system is trying to keep you safe, and remind yourself that it is okay to take small steps toward feeling again. You can put your arms around yourself in a hug and gently squeeze.
Reconnection: A Path to Feeling Again
Just as the nervous system and brain can learn to shut down, they can also learn to open back up. This recovery path is about creating conditions where moving out of freeze becomes possible again.
If you resonate with this, know that your body, your mind, your system has not failed you. In fact your system has adapted to help you survive. Now, by moving in the right direction, you can begin to reconnect, one step at a time.
Next Steps for Real Recovery
It this topic resonates with you, you might like to explore one of these next steps:
Explore the recovery resources on this site for practical tools, somatic practices, and brain rewiring support.
A Guided Somatic Healing Practice of The Butterfly Hug – There are short somatic exercises in the resources of this website, designed to help you shift out of freeze and into a parasympathetic nervous system state.
When you’re ready for deeper, personalised support, book a Mind-Body Recovery Coaching session
With warmth and care,
Amari 💗
