Emotional blunting / numbness
I mislike the use of the word "struggle" when I'm referring to my depression. To me, the word "struggle" implies equal but opposite forces. And that does not reflect the reality of my experience at all. I've been, frankly, getting my *** kicked by depression for half my life.
I started medication a few years ago, and it really did help for awhile. Until it didn't. And for the past two years I've been working with different doctors and therapists trying to find that sweet spot again with little success.
Over the past several months, I've noticed a change. I did a little web searching and found the term "anhedonia", which describes a state in which you feel numb to positive emotions but still feel negative emotions. I had a psychiatrist refer to it as "emotional blunting". I don't know if it's a result of medication or if it's all in my head, just misfiring brain signals and hormone imbalances. Or if it's emotional burnout. Or any number of combinations of the above.
Sometimes there's an odd sort of comfort to feeling nothing. After all, when you're already flat on the ground you can't fall any farther.
But right now, though, I just want to feel again.
@turtlePated
That’s fair. Everyone has
different preferences and experience. There so many different medications that
it is hard sometimes to find what works best for you. I hope you find that
sweet spot soon. Also, I have heard the term emotional blunting before. In a
way, I see what you mean by feeling comforted by feeling nothing. But, there’s
also so many good emotions that one can experience as well. So, I do hope you
can start to feel again soon too.💜
It's getting worse, so much worse.
I feel... fossilized.
And I use that word very deliberately. Because a fossil is a stone. But it was alive once.
Time and circumstances and processes beyond it's control transform it from living tissue into rock.
And once that happens, there is no changing it back to what it was before. There's no such thing as reverse fossilization.
That's how I feel. Like stone. But not just stone. Because stone was never alive while fossils were. Stone has no awareness (and fossils don't either really) but I feel dead, changed into unfeeling stone but still burdened with the memory of was it was like to be alive.
Stones and fossils, at least, have no awareness. No memory. They are incapable of mourning, of suffering.
I feel this, hardness, complete and total emptiness, and I can't help but wonder if they are indications that it's already too late. That I'm already too far gone and there is no way to fix it, to heal, to live.