When Numbness Looks Like Strength
Understanding dissociation - and how we begin to return
I’ve hear people describe ‘dissociation’ as someone spacing out. Losing time. Going blank.
But it’s often much subtler than that:
It’s the high-functioning leader who can’t feel joy.
The exhausted parent who moves through life like a checklist.
The person who smiles in meetings but hasn’t cried in years.
The one who’s “fine”, until they finally stop.
Dissociation isn’t just a trauma response. It’s a survival strategy.
One we learn young. One that becomes normal. One that often goes unnoticed - even in ourselves.
A clients story
Recently, I coached a client who had every outward sign of success - articulate, composed, generous, fiercely competent. She didn’t complain. She didn’t “need” help.
But her language was disconnected. Her body was tense. Her eyes darted when I asked how she felt.
She was brilliant at naming thoughts. But when I asked where she felt something in her body - sadness, joy, even longing - she couldn’t locate it.
There was no “there” to come back to.
We haven’t started breathwork yet. But already, her system is revealing what years of responsibility and over-functioning have cost her: presence, softness, emotional availability - especially to herself.
This is dissociation. And it doesn’t mean something’s wrong. It means something went unacknowledged for too long.
Dissociation can also sound like this:
Another client once shared, “I just feel like my life is cursed. My body keeps letting me down. It’s like I’m always bracing for the next bad thing.”
He didn’t realise it, but he’d built his life around emotional shutdown: a belief that discomfort was too much to feel. So he stayed above it. In his head. In his story.
And yet, in our breathwork sessions, something else happened:
He cried. He released.
He let go - not in chaos, but in quietness.
And for the first time, he began to see that emotion wasn’t the enemy.
That surrender didn’t mean defeat - it meant softness. Space. A different kind of strength.
The body always tells the truth
You can’t talk your way out of dissociation.
Because it lives in the body - not the mind.
It shows up as:
“I don’t know how I feel.”
“I just need to push through.”
“There’s no time to fall apart.”
“If I slow down, I’ll collapse.”
“I’m fine.”
But here’s the truth:
Dissociation doesn’t always feel like absence.
It often feels like being productive, logical, competent - but strangely empty.
So how do we come back?
We don’t force the body open. We invite it back slowly, breath by breath.
That’s what using this innate and natural capacity does. It meets the part of us that left the body, and offers a way home, breath by breath.
No fixing. No prying. No overwhelming flood.
Safely. in rhythm. Spaciously, to feel again.
As we reconnect to the body, we reconnect to ourselves.
And slowly, we begin to feel things we didn’t even know we’d numbed: grief, hope, longing, intuition, joy.
An honest reflection
I’ve lived this, too.
In moments of deep stress - caregiving, professional pressure, even during personal loss - I’ve noticed myself detach. Stay composed. Push forward.
And I know now: that was my nervous system protecting me.
But over time, I’ve also learned how to return.
Through breath.
Through nature.
Through presence.
Through being seen by another, not for what I produce, but for who I am.
You don’t have to do it alone
If any of this sounds familiar, please know: you’re not broken.
You’re human.
And your body has done what it needed to survive.
But if you’re ready to soften, to gently return… I invite you to begin.
Not to “go deep.” Not to cry on cue.
But just to notice. To breathe. To feel what’s ready to be felt.
Because sometimes the most radical thing we can do… is to find our way back to our self.
To find out more about breathwork in group sessions or 1:1 check my website www.breathwithsamreen.com
Follow my Instagram @breathe_with_samreen