Can anxiety cause you to feel emotionless?

Feeling emotionally numb, like your emotions have somehow become blunted, or that you have no emotions at all are common symptoms of anxiety disorder. Many anxious, depressed, and stressed people experience feeling emotionally numb. It’s also a common symptom associated with sleep problems, such as insomnia.

Can suppressing emotions cause numbness?

A reduced sense of self (or “presence”) and emotional “numbness” is thought to be mediated by aberrant emotional processing due to biases in self-referent multi-sensory integration. This emotional “numbing” is often accompanied by suppressed autonomic arousal to emotionally salient stimuli.

What are the symptoms of being numb?

The symptoms of emotional numbness include:

• Losing interest in important, once positive activities you used to enjoy.
• Feeling distant or detached from others.
• Failing to access your feelings.
• Feeling flat, both physically and emotionally.
• Experiencing an inability to fully participate in life.

Can social anxiety cause emotional numbness?

Interestingly, in both cases, numbness may be caused by anxiety. Anxiety-related numbness is actually fairly common (both physically and psychologically) and is often made worse by the anxiety that many experience as a result of that numbness.

Can anxiety numbness last days?

Most emotional numbness with anxiety goes away after an extended period of time after an anxiety attack, but some have been known to linger. If you experience emotional numbness, actively try to overcome it, because long term numbness can be harder to treat.

Can you turn off your emotions?

Some people are able to turn off their emotions in order to protect themselves. For others, emotional numbing is unintended. It may even be part of a larger issue, like depression or a personality disorder.