One of the most remarkable healings I've experienced through somatic therapy was awareness of how trauma has made me numb. Being numb is not something we often think about - it is just a coping mechanism that "is." It often becomes "just who I am" or "I don't get angry/sad/etc." The numbness can also show up in the ways we self-medicate ourselves with substances or screens.
It was highly vulnerable (and a weepy time) to realize that I had spent decades solidly super capable/high functioning and blocked from much of my range of emotions and sensations.
In the "Wild Edge of Sorrow," Francis Weller writes about the two primary sins of Western Civilization: amnesia and anesthesia. We both forget, and we go numb.
We do this on many levels, including the relational level. We forget the young part of us that our parents didn't meet perfectly. We forget the defenses we formed to cope with that wise exiling of our whole selves because that part of us could not safely exist in our family system. We often believe we just became who we are, and there's no going back. Then we often think we should find a partnership/friendship/horse etc., that accepts this version of "who I am" and never triggers the part that wasn't perfectly met. A cold war, a loud war, a passive-aggressive war, so many possibilities to fire up should that part feel a hint of the old wound.
That battle launch hooks our partner(child/friend/family member/horse etc.), and then we are dancing in escalating self-righteous triggers of our protective self. A noble battle, really - the parts of ourselves raging against anyone who would dare trample on the delicate, sacred, silent parts of ourselves that have long been left behind. The parts we don't want to be woken because we want that pain locked away.
The great relational myth is that our partner(child/friend/family member/horse) can heal this part of us. They can support us in it and witness us in our therapy or work, but they cannot be the adult that reclaims the self.
When we are any version of tight, rigid, self-righteous, certain, black and white in our relational interactions, we are likely living in the part of us that has forgotten and gone numb. It was wise once upon a time, but if we get stuck there, our relationships suffer, and we suffer.
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