How We Numb Ourselves—And What Happens When We Stop
The ongoing journey away from distraction towards presence.
We all do it. Drinking a bottle of wine or scrolling through endless feeds, drowning ourselves in work until we're exhausted, or browsing pages and pages of trainers, numbing is a default setting for many (all?) of us. In a world that’s always asking for more, it makes sense that we seek ways to feel better and escape churning thoughts or psychological discomfort. But what happens when we stop? What if we allowed ourselves to feel everything? Is that even possible? Desirable?
Lesson from Life:
Lately, I’ve been finding myself overwhelmed by all the things I want and need and have to do. Responsibilities + dreams + practicalities = HELP ME.
In the past, I would have drunk to comfort myself and get a break from the to-do list vibe of my psyche. Nowadays, I don’t do that, but I’m not especially zen as a result. I still have a bad habit of eating my feelings. I retreat into worlds of fiction, which is sometimes creative and sometimes avoidant.
I’m not on a quest to be perfect (I promise, Mum) but there are still habits I’d like to release. Internet searching every thought in my head, for instance, could probably go…
I only truly understood why I drank after I quit. Alcohol soothed me, gave me confidence and helped me to manage my emotions, as well as making me sexy (true story), more gregarious and social. Once I quit, I had to learn how to be these things without its support. Some of them (gregariousness, I’m looking at you, babe) are still a work-in-progress.
I remember those first times I didn’t reach for alcohol when I desperately craved it. How urgent and unpleasant my thoughts were! How heavy the burden of guilt of shame that had struck my heart! My mind, I saw, was desperate to escape. From what, though? The present moment?
In the process of getting sober, I learned a term that I still find illuminating and challenging ‘life on life’s terms’. When you unpack it, this phrase contains everything. It contains all the mistakes I have made, and all the mistakes I am yet to make, as well as all of the joys and pleasures I’m yet to experience. It contains death and illness and despair and success and glory and love and lust.
It was hard work to retrain myself not to reach for alcohol. Because it wasn’t alcohol I was reaching for. It was comfort and peace and rest and self-acceptance and joy and fun and company.
Making the change was uncomfortable and exciting. In the discomfort of not doing The Thing, I began to tune into the quiet voice of what I needed to address, rather than giving into the urge to distract from all the ways that my needs weren’t being met.
Numbing keeps us from hearing that voice, and stops us making the changes that discomfort facilitates.
Getting sober was a gigantic period of growth, but I still find ways to numb myself. Perhaps it is the most human of practices, and the real lesson is how to live alongside it, without the need for control.
Another key phrase from getting sober is ‘progess not perfection’ and now that alcohol is no longer an issue, I find myself applying this to my quest to do all the things I used to, without its sweet (and poisonous) support.
Things I’ve learned:
Aim small: Sometimes my procrastination is so out of control that I have to give myself the smallest goal possible, in order to make any progress at all. When I tell myself that 600 words is a noble goal, I often write 1000+ When I aim for 3000 or more insanely, to finish the whole novel, I often write nothing at all. This works for writing or exercise, and means that I can sustain in both.
Accept how you feel: fighting it only makes you more tired.
Rest is resistance: Work can be a numbing agent for me. Writing, research and reading are often soothing, but can tip into compulsive and avoidant. I’m trying to understand and honour the fact that rest is not only necessary and deserved, but radical and powerful. Even (especially?) if those around me don’t believe this yet.
Embrace the chaos: Accepting the complexities and contradictions of being a person with everchanging desires and capacity, is a lesson I’m still learning but I’ve made great progress with no longer pretending things (including me) are "fine" all the time, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
List of Good Things:
Fiction: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale — a fun and funny timetravel story that celebrates self-knowledge, self-love and self-acceptance by an amazing and hilarious late-diagnosed autistic writer.
Non-fiction: Unmasking Autism: the power of embracing our hidden neurodiversity by Dr Devon Price - a compelling and illuminating book that posits undiagnosed neurodiversity as a form of social exclusion and encourages and models a different perspective.
Quote: “You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.” — Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability
Meme:
Community: What do you turn to when life feels too much? Have you overcome certain unhelpful distractions? How do you navigate the urge to numb, and what happens when you allow yourself to face the discomfort instead? Feel free to share your thoughts — I’d love this to be a space for conversation.
Reflect: What have you been avoiding this week, and what might happen if you allowed yourself to sit with it for a while? It's not about resolving everything, but being willing to be present with what’s there (without having to eat a whole block of cheese [insert your own unhelpful not-coping strategy].
Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a literary memoir about getting sober and then finding out she’s autistic and her first domestic thriller.
Ally-mai! You articulate this so well. And me too! Keep moving towards this aim, as it will be so freeing. I'm very far from a perfectionist, and have gotten really good at what I call half-arsing things. : ) And also forgiving myself when I completely eff things up!
I find that I’m often too overwhelmed by the idea of something to start it, but by taking a bite sized piece of the thing and trying to do that, it makes it less intimidating and also starts the momentum of doing the thing. (I’ve seen people say that when you have ADHD, doing something small can be good because it gives your brain a dopamine boost of achieving the thing, which makes you want to do more of it to get more dopamine from it.)
I’ve been trying to relate that to perfectionism, because I think for me a lot of the reason I’m overwhelmed is because I have a need to do a good job at the thing, but that means I often don’t even do the thing, and if I do do the thing, I notice all the parts I did badly. I’m not very good at letting myself be bad at things (or even just letting myself be okay at things). Recently I’ve been trying to just do the thing, even if it’s done badly, then be okay with the outcome. I’m definitely not doing that consistently, but that’s the goal.