mechanism

Numbness is a circuit breaker. After too much input — stress, conflict, noise, sustained load — the system cuts the feeling channel to protect itself. Life goes on behind glass: you can describe what happened but not feel it. This is protection doing its job, and it lifts when the load drops, not when you push through it.

not to confuse with

empty: wanting is idle, but feeling still works · calm: quiet with contact, not behind glass · grieving: waves come and go, here there are no waves at all · bored: you still want something, just not this

in the body

muffled sensations, the sense of watching yourself from outside, hands doing things without you being in them, sound arriving as if through padding

feel it

Do not force the feeling back. Numbness is the answer to overload — arguing with it adds load. Small sensory contact works better than any attempt to feel deeply: cold water, texture, smell, temperature.

what to do

Lower the input and find one physical sensation you can actually notice. Then let time do the rest: the channel comes back on its own once the system stops being flooded.

don't

do not stack more input to «feel something» — that is what caused it · no important conversations while behind glass · do not read this state as «I don't care about anything»

if you do nothing

The glass stays and relationships thin out through it: people read absence as indifference. Meanwhile the load that caused it keeps running, because from behind glass it does not feel urgent.

after

note what flooded you — numbness always has an upstream · the first feeling that returns is often irritation, and that is progress, not a relapse

your track

3 episodes · median 6 → 4 · usual upstream: a month without days off · best tool: cold water and texture ✓2

keys

0–9 set the scale · enter = next step · d = tool done · esc = close dialogs

+ add your own · open in Library: practices →