What It Means if You’re Wholly Numb Right Now—And How to Cope
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If you asked me before the election how I might feel if Donald Trump were to win, I imagine I might’ve said any number of negative things: horrified, angry, disturbed. And I don’t doubt plenty of people are feeling these ways right now. But when I attempted to answer the question Wednesday morning, I came up…empty. It’s not a common occurrence for me as a person who translates feelings and concepts into words for a living. And yet, there it was: A mental paralysis, a deep and utter sense of numbness that, in the hours since, I’ve had mirrored back to me by friends and colleagues: “I don’t even know how to feel right now.”
This kind of shutdown might seem like a lack of emotion, but it turns out, it’s more likely a response to a rush of different feelings happening at once. Numbness is a defense mechanism to emotional overwhelm, Gail Saltz, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, tells SELF. Rather than spring into fight or flight, you enter the third and lesser-discussed stress response of freezing, wherein your body and mind suspend typical functions amid full survival mode. Any number of negative sensations might be the cause, from anxiety and fear to grief, loss, or horror, but the common denominator is just that there is simply too much of everything. Rather than feel it all, your brain opts to feel none of it, at least as best as it can.
It’s an especially common experience in response to shock, Dr. Saltz notes. If you’ve been anticipating a bad result for some time, your mind and body can gear up for it—something she likens to navigating a slow-motion car wreck. But if it comes out of the blue, it’s more likely to hit so hard, you wind up dissociating to protect yourself. That’s not to say that everyone feeling numb was surprised by the election’s outcome; deep down, you may have known that, logically, this was a possibility (a likely one, even), as I did. But if you hadn’t really wrestled with it, you could still feel stunned by it, to some extent, and shut down.
A few things might be beneath your feelings of numbness after the election.
Disbelief and denial
There’s a reason denial is the first stage of grief: Much like feeling numb, mentally pushing back on bad news can be a mode of protection and is perfectly normal, Helen McKibben, PsyD, a board-certified psychologist and author of Drop: Making Great Decisions, tells SELF. And plenty of factors might make it easy for your brain to glom onto disbelief right now—namely, things like bomb threats at polling locations or just how quickly the race was called. As a result, you could be missing closure, Gina Moffa, LCSW, a trauma-informed psychotherapist in New York, tells SELF: “You might feel like you don’t even know what to grieve yet because you’re in this state of emotional suspended animation.”
The tricky thing is, if you try to turn off that sense of denial for any length of time, you might feel swamped by the feelings that surface, and then go numb again as a result, Dr. Saltz says. The process of slowly letting in the upsetting emotions bit by bit until it doesn’t feel like too much is, to some degree, the process of grieving a big loss, she explains.
Helplessness
Beyond functioning as an immediate defense mechanism, feeling nothing at all could be a symptom of a deeper sense of despair—that you’ve done all you could do and it wasn’t enough, or that things will only get worse from here. And for plenty of people, that may very well be a reality, Dr. Saltz concedes. There’s a kind of anticipatory grief that sets in when you start thinking about all you might stand to lose in the future, Moffa explains, particularly when the stakes are as high as they are now, with things like basic human rights and the continued functioning of our democracy on the table.
The toll of repetitive trauma
A disconcerting thing happens in your brain when you experience a loss: “Every time you’ve felt a similar loss before can jump on board,” Dr. McKibben says, “which can leave you flooded with feelings from the past as well as the here and now.”
In the present scenario, it’s all too easy to draw parallels to Trump’s first win in 2016, if only because he won against a woman then too. As Moffa puts it: “We keep thinking we’re going to shatter that glass ceiling, and it keeps crashing back down upon us.” Rather than cope with the depressing feeling of an additional loss made even more poignant by the traumatic memories it resurfaces, your mind might understandably choose to block out the whole shebang. All to say, repetitive blows can erode your sense of hope for the future, leaving you stuck in the stupor of disenchantment.
How to feel your way through the post-election numbness
Feeling empty may be deeply unpleasant—or it could just be weird or uncomfortable. “Some people have this sense that frankly, the numb feeling is better than what’s to come,” Dr. Saltz says, “particularly if it’s defending against an onslaught of bottomless sadness or out-of-control anger or off-the-charts panic.” So if that’s you, there isn’t anything you necessarily need to do about numbness, she says. But if this emotional reaction—or lack thereof—isn’t serving you or feels disturbing, there are some things you can do to push through it.
Ground yourself using your senses.
If it feels like you’re moving through the motions of your life in a daze, you might need a gentle tug to reacquaint yourself with the present. That’s where your five senses can come into play, Dr. Saltz says. Holding an ice cube, smelling a lemon, or looking at something beautiful are all grounding techniques she recommends. (Might I suggest seeking out your local sunset?) The goal is to find something that elicits such a strong sensation that it cuts right through the numbness, she explains.
A similar idea from Dr. Saltz: Find a quiet place in nature, like in a nearby park, where you can sit down, and then tap into each of your senses, naming to yourself something that you can see, feel, hear, smell, and potentially taste (even if nothing is in your mouth). The practice can make you intimately aware of just how alive—and full of feeling—you are.
Tend to your physical body.
Shutting down can make you forget basic elements of caring for yourself—which will only pull you further away from your normal self and routine. It sounds obvious, but you’ll want to focus on things like drinking water, eating nourishing meals (at least three of ’em!), and, especially, moving your body, Moffa says. (She’s carving out time for plenty of midday walks over the next several days.) “These sound like super generic recommendations, but when we’re dissociating, we really need the reminder.”
Talk to people you feel safe with.
It can be especially tough to access your feelings when your thoughts are bouncing around in the echo chamber of your own mind. But connecting with others whom you suspect may be in a similar boat can be cathartic, helping you get in touch with and process the emotions that might be just beneath the surface. According to Moffa, there’s also something protective about sharing with loved ones when you’re in a numb state—the anxiety or fear or distress that arises when you make space for it might not be something you want to face alone, and those friends or family members can help you cope.
Find momentum with something you can control.
The truth is, much of our collective future is uncertain and out of our control, regardless of who is president (or in any public office, for that matter). To bring yourself back to your own life, consider paying more attention to the things that are explicitly within your power—like how you show up at work or in your community, or as a parent or significant other—to the extent you can. “Try to focus on one day at a time,” Dr. Saltz says, “and on the ways in which your life may remain unchanged.” (Again, though, it’s essential to acknowledge that some people’s lives may be changed drastically and irreparably by the incoming administration, so it takes a degree of privilege to put this practice into action, even right now.)
Along the same lines, it may help to channel some time into a constructive activity that aligns with your values, if you have the energy and resources to do so, Moffa says. Can you join an advocacy group? Volunteer for a nonprofit? Putting a little effort into a worthy cause can spark a sense of agency and make you feel something good again.
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