There was a time when I didn’t know how to name what I was going through.
I couldn’t explain why I felt numb, disconnected, or spiritually dry, especially while doing everything “right.” I loved God, served people, lived with integrity… and yet found myself emotionally shut down.
No one prepares you for that wilderness.
Even with all the sermons, books, and classes in the world, nothing fully prepares you for emotional paralysis. That slow, quiet crisis doesn’t always come from one dramatic event. It arises from a series of painful, disorienting moments. These moments stack up like bricks around your heart.
The tools may exist, but in the middle of the fog, it’s easy to forget where they are. It’s easy to forget that they were ever meant for you. If we’re being completely honest, most of us don’t think we need them until we’re already unraveling.
Looking back, I realize now:
I wasn’t broken.
I was protecting something sacred inside me.
A Defense Mechanism, Not a Defect
In the language of trauma, what I experienced was not rebellion. It was self-protection.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says it best: “The body keeps the score.”
Unprocessed emotional, relational, or spiritual trauma doesn’t just disappear. It embeds itself in our nervous system. It dulls our senses. It walls off emotions. It subtly rewires how we show up in the world, and in our faith.
And in many spiritual environments, we don’t really know what to do with that. So we wrap it in a well-meaning spiritual bypass:
“Just pray more.”
“Have more faith.”
“Let go and let God.”
But as Dr. Daniel J. Siegel teaches, healing (true integration) is not about bypassing pain. It’s about making sense of your story. It’s about reclaiming the full spectrum of what it means to be human.
I didn’t know that back then. I thought numbness meant I was failing.
Now, I see it differently: as a mercy.
A hard heart, I’ve learned, can be a signal. It tells us that something needs attention. It says, “I’ve carried too much for too long without help.”
And that’s where healing begins.
The Subtle Signs of a Hard Heart
These aren’t abstract ideas to me. They were real symptoms I came to recognize in myself and now, years later, I notice them in others too:
- You stop celebrating—or crying.
Numbness replaces joy and sorrow alike. You don’t feel highs or lows. You just… function. - Empathy feels like work.
The things that once stirred your heart now barely register. You don’t mean to become detached. But compassion is hard to summon. - Meaningful start feeling mechanical.
Relationships, hobbies, spiritual practices, and even conversations that once lit you up now feel mechanical. You show up, say the right things, go through the motions… but your soul feels far away. - There is very little passion…for anything.
There’s no sense of urgency, no driving desire. You meet expectations, but your heart’s not in it. You’re coasting, not out of laziness, but out of emotional exhaustion. - You become cynical, cautious, and callous.
You find yourself distrusting people. Institutions. Even God. Bitterness masquerades as wisdom. But it’s really armor.
What’s important to remember is that emotional numbness isn’t a personal failure, it’s often a capacity issue. Mullainathan and Shafir remind us:
“We do not have a single, fixed supply of cognitive resources. Scarcity uses up bandwidth—it taxes the mind.”
The mind doesn’t separate emotional stress from any other kind of scarcity. Your heart carries pain when it hasn’t had time or space to process it. It reallocates your energy toward survival. Relationships, reflection, even faith, start to feel like burdens instead of gifts.
Peter Scazzero wrote, “You can’t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.”
I used to nod at that quote. Now, I understand it deeply. Sometimes the most honest thing we can do is admit where we’ve become emotionally disconnected. Then, we can begin the slow work of coming back to life.
What Softens the Heart
When I was in it, I thought I needed to push harder. Be stronger.
But healing doesn’t begin with more effort—it begins with more honesty.
Brené Brown puts it like this:
“We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
This is where scarcity shows up in its most deceptive form. When you’re protecting yourself from hurt, you’re also unconsciously protecting yourself from hope.
As Mullainathan and Shafir put it:
“Scarcity is not just a physical constraint. It is a mindset, one that changes how we see the world, how we make decisions, and how we behave.”
That mindset shrinks your world. But healing expands it again.
What changed for me wasn’t a single revelation. It was a slow, grace-filled process. I started noticing what I’d been carrying. I began naming what I needed. I gave myself permission to feel again. And that’s what I want to offer to others now: not answers, but safety.
Because hearts don’t soften by force.
They soften when they feel safe.
And grace makes them safe again.
If This Is You…
If you find yourself numb, tired, cynical, or guarded; please hear me:
You’re not alone.
You’re not defective.
And you’re not beyond healing.
This may not be the end of your story. It may be the turning point.
Where you stop performing and start healing.
Where God meets you; not in your polished faith, but in your honest ache.
Holiness, I’ve come to learn, often begins in heartbreak.
Let that heartbreak be holy.
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