Sometimes when someone asks me how I am feeling I have no clue what to answer, because I feel...nothing. I don't feel sad, angry, happy, I don't feel anything. This lack of feeling does not happen often, I am nearly always feeling a lot of emotions all at the same time. But once in awhile, usually after I have exhausted myself with feeling so much, I go numb, without warning and without me having a choice in the matter. When you are used to feeling so much pain and pleasure, when you are used to experiencing a rush of emotion several times a day, it is weird, disconcerting and scary to feel nothing. It makes me feel broken, like my emotion buttons got pushed off and I feel like I'll never be able to turn them back on. The sad thing is, not only do I feel numb to pain and sadness during these times, but I also don't react with happiness and excitement to things that usually make me feel those emotions, like being with people I love, getting a sweet text from a friend or hearing of some good news. Instead of feeling satisfy or joyful, I feel, flat...numb...nothing. And then if I feel numb long enough, I do start to feel something; frustration, at my lack of emotion. After analyzing myself during these rare weird times of numbness, I have realized that this is my brain's way of coping with the fact that I am normally an extremely deep feeling individual. My brain, heart and body get worn out and exhausted from feeling so much all the time, so I sometimes they just turn off their sensors. This nearly always happens after I have been battling with an especially painful, overwhelming or frightening occurrence. When life throws a huge amount of emotion at me for an extended period of time, I start to have these times of nothingness. My heart and mind get tired of having to battle with things that are very hard to accept and so my emotional sensors just take a break. Sometimes I get out of these numb times calmly and gradually slip back into feeling things normally. But other times, I come out of it with sobs and a sudden feeling of extreme sadness or anger and it is clear then that I was feeling numb because I was in denial of some hard fact of life. Another reason I feel numb sometimes is because of my immobilizing fear of losing people, and of being hurt by people. After an especially hurtful encounter with someone or after a relationship goes sour and leaves me aching and grieving, I have these periods of numbness toward other people I am close to. This too, is a disconcerting experience to me. I am used to feeling extreme rushes of pleasure when I am near those I love or when I receive some sweet sign that they care about me. But sometimes my insecurities and fears of losing people make me go numb as a method of trying to protect my heart. Last fall, I was feeling very disturbed by these periods of nothingness, and one of my mentors said something like. "I noticed that you have been kind of numb lately," and when I nodded, she said something like, "Well don't worry because it is a perfectly normal response to what you are going through and just remember this, it is always possible to turn those knobs back on, and start to feel again." I soon came to realize that she was right and some of my worry about my periods of nothingness went away, because I've realized that I don't stay numb very long. It's just my brain's way of taking a time out.