When We Stop Feeling at Home in Ourselves

I’ve experienced that feeling of numbness before. I’m not talking about feeling down or depressed, or even about substance use. I’m talking about a state where we’re functional—even engaged—but everything seems to skim the surface without ever really reaching us.

We pause and try to remember the last time we truly felt pleasure. And nothing comes to mind. Then we try to remember the last time we felt sadness, and again, nothing comes. We think about the projects on our plate, and none of them genuinely excite us, but none of them discourage us either. We go through our days without really questioning much anymore. Life isn’t difficult or painful, but it isn’t entirely satisfying either.

There’s nothing particularly alarming about this kind of state, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. Because when life starts to lose some of its flavour, it’s often because something inside us has quietly fallen asleep. A spark, a dream, a passion, or even just one facet of who we are. A part of ourselves that we initially began neglecting out of obligation, necessity, or lack of time or energy, and then gradually abandoned altogether over the months or years.

When the Body Sounds the Alarm

I realized I was in this state of numbness the day it dawned on me that I barely had a libido anymore. I had been single for several months, and sexuality had plummeted so far down my list of priorities that it no longer seemed to matter at all. Without even realizing it, I had gone from being a fulfilled, sexually active woman to an asexual being. And that realization made my head spin.

At first, I convinced myself this was simply the natural order of things for a single woman in her mid-thirties who was an entrepreneur and a mother of three: no longer feeling sexual desire and, consequently, no longer having a sex life. My schedule and my brain were already full. There simply wasn’t room for that particular slice of the pie that was my life. But something deep inside me didn’t believe that rather simplistic explanation for a second.

So I came to a frightening conclusion: if drying up like this wasn’t normal, then I had to do something about it. But what? Sign up for a dating site? Find myself a lover? Make a desperate call to someone I used to see? Everything felt burdensome, complicated and dishonest (to myself).

Awakening the Senses

So I slowly began making seemingly insignificant changes to reconnect with this body that had apparently detached itself from my mind. I started taking long showers, letting the water run over me without rushing, doing nothing but standing beneath the stream. Then I began washing myself with a shower puff soaked in a deliciously scented soap that awakened my senses. I gave myself moments outside just to feel the wind against my skin and the shivers that made the hairs on my body stand up. I started buying sweaters and blouses made of soft, delicate or silky fabrics, letting them caress my skin—something I had never considered before, having never paid much attention to how my clothes felt against my body.

A little later, I booked an appointment with my massage therapist so I could feel someone’s hands on me again. Just the contact, with no ulterior motive. To feel my body touched by hands other than my own. And eventually, I began to feel that same body beneath my own fingertips. Fingers perfectly capable of caressing like a lover’s, yet which had never lingered over my own body.

Feeling at Home in My Body Again

Over the course of a few months, I began to inhabit my body again. And little by little, without even noticing it, desire returned. I suddenly caught myself admiring a man’s sculpted shoulders, a defined forearm, full lips or a nicely rounded ass. The rest happened naturally. Because the more fully I inhabited myself, the more I radiated the complete woman I had stopped embodying: dynamic, cerebral and intellectual, but also intuitive, sensual and sexual. And other people could sense all of that too.

When One Spark Rekindles Another

And while I was working to pull myself out of that numbness, I began writing a work of autofiction. A crazy project I had dreamed about since childhood, and one to which I religiously devoted one day a week for a year and a half.

I’m not sure whether reclaiming my sexuality sparked my creativity or whether it happened the other way around, but I have a feeling the two magically fed off each other.

Which just goes to show that magic does exist. But rarely unless we consciously invite it in.

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Does this state of numbness feel familiar? Would you like to explore what might help you reconnect with the version of yourself that once felt fully alive? I’d be happy to support you along the way.