Healing Emotional Numbness: How Your Brain Protects You

Your brain isn't broken—it's protecting you. That emotional numbness you feel? It's actually your mind's sophisticated defense mechanism at work. When we experience trauma, our brains literally split into two separate functioning systems—the logical left hemisphere and the emotional right hemisphere—creating a disconnect that manifests as difficulty feeling emotions deeply.

This neurological adaptation serves a crucial survival purpose. For those who had to show up, break generational patterns, or forge their own path without adequate support, the brain learned to suppress emotional responses to keep you functional. You could make decisions, advance in your career, and navigate life's challenges without being "crippled" by overwhelming feelings. But this protection comes at a significant cost: the inability to feel deeply connected to others or experience the full spectrum of human emotions—both painful and pleasurable.

The journey back to emotional wholeness requires understanding that integration is possible. It's about reconnecting these separate parts of your brain and learning to access both your logical and emotional capacities simultaneously. As one wise perspective puts it, the goal is developing "a soft front and a strong spine"—maintaining the ability to connect heart-to-heart while having the inner strength to carry life's weight. This balance allows you to be driven by emotions while being backed by logic, rather than being blinded by emotions or caged by logic.

The process of reconnecting with your emotions follows six essential steps: uncovering limiting beliefs, building resource anchors for safety, releasing stored emotions, working through forgiveness, reevaluating your values and beliefs, and developing new practices that support emotional awareness. It's not about flipping a switch but rather a gradual evolution—like water coming to a boil.

When you detach from pain, you inadvertently sacrifice life's pleasures too. The true power lies not in shutting down emotions altogether but in mastering them—learning to feel deeply without being controlled by those feelings. This mastery becomes your life's cheat code, allowing you to leverage emotions rather than being limited by them. Ready to take off that armor and experience life in full color?

Transcript

How Trauma Splits The Brain

Speaker 1 1:13

So I had a friend recently who was checking in on me. I lost another friend and have been grieving and I was saying to her just how deeply this was impacting me, just because she knows who I am and the fact that I would have an answer. And she said, jaina, what about us who feel non-emotional, us people who struggle to feel deeply? How would you approach helping someone, heal that? Am I broken or is it just repressed? And I really had a hard time hearing this because, god, I love this woman so deeply. So I'm going to go ahead and say this now. This entire episode is very much speaking directly to you, because it's hard to hear those words. Because you are not broken. Your brain is a supercomputer. It's just protecting you, that's it. So, yeah, it's, it's repressed, and that's okay, because I know you personally and I know you enough to know that this is just likely maladaptive coping mechanisms due to some childhood shit you went through, girlfriend, like it's just simply learned strategies. Your brain wants to keep you safe. Your brain wants to keep you safe. It's kind of like putting on armor as a child that no longer fits, and now it's causing more harm than good because it can't be comfortable wearing armor that doesn't fit. So the good news is, you can choose to change and it sounds like you are right on the edge of that transformation. So, because I know you and I know you like science and I know you like to know the details, we're going to go deep on this. Let's talk about what happens when we experience trauma. So our brain it literally splits itself into two hemispheres our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere. What happens is that our left hemisphere it's in control of more of our logical mind and our right hemisphere is in control of our emotional mind. So they split from each other in the process of trauma, because it's trying to protect you, it's an overwhelm of emotions and the brain doesn't know what else to do, so it'll literally split and once it does, then it struggles for each side to speak to one another. It just means that when the emotional mind is really lit up, the logical mind is more likely to shut down, and the same exact thing vice versa when the logical mind is in full force, the emotional mind has a hard time tapping in because of the split, because they're two separate things now.

Speaker 1 4:25

Now, you being someone who I know wants to survive and recognized at a young age that to be able to do so, you had to think logically. You had to be able to show up. Your subconscious mind decided in that moment to disconnect you from your emotional mind, likely out of fear of you getting overwhelmed and emotional and then shutting down and crippling you because people like you who are in positions where you don't have another option. You had to show up for yourself. You had to trailblaze your future. You had to break generational chains and you had to show up for yourself because you didn't have the support that a lot of us take for granted. So your brain decided to protect you. It said if you don't feel deeply, well, then you can go back to work more quickly and you can stay on task and that's good. And your brain says if you don't feel deeply, then you can lead with a level head and that's good because it's you know, promotions and stuff right. And if you don't feel deeply, then you can protect yourself from the pain of inevitable loss in relationship, both friendships and intimate relationships.

Logic vs Emotion: Brain Hemispheres

Speaker 1 5:48

But here's the thing Part of tapping into your emotions is allowing yourself to open up to both the pain and the pleasure that comes with the emotional roller coaster. Part of tapping into your emotions is realizing they don't come and stay, they come and go. Part of tapping into your emotion is developing trust with yourself that you are safe and that you release control. Because, at the end of the day, healing is just integrating these two parts back to one another, rewiring your subconscious mind and your behaviors to support that new wholeness within. That's all you're doing. You're just reintegrating, rewiring. And when I say rewiring I mean literally creating new neural pathways in the brain that connects one side to the other, one hemisphere to the other. I'm not talking metaphorically, I am talking your literal brain, because integration at the deepest level is the ability to leverage both sides of your brain at once, because being driven by your emotions and backed by logic is so much better than being blinded by emotions or caged by our logic. I mean, who wouldn't want the best of both worlds? Left brain, logical mind controls the right side of your body and it leads with your head. Now, sometimes people report being a little bit more numb. When they are driven by the logical mind, they can make harder decisions. Yet the right brain, the emotional mind it controls the left side of your body that's leading with your heart. You're a bit more on the sensitive side of things and those decisions are usually driven by what's best for the community.

Speaker 1 7:58

Right Now, a quick and easy way to kind of see which one you are more dominant is just what your dominant hand is. It's more likely that your dominant brain activity or your dominant central location like my brother, for example, is very, very artsy, has always been an amazing graphic designer, artist, drawer, cartoonist. He is just hands down phenomenal, super creative, super, super right-brained. His left hand has always been the dominant hand. Now, on the flip side, I'm a right hand dominant person and while I'm not necessarily dominant on that side of my brain in the left hemisphere more logical I'm actually more in like the 50-50 range. So I think that because many people are right hand dominant, if you're 50-50 or you're again, remember the opposite side of the body to the opposite brain. It's like reversed. So if you are dominant on your left side of your brain means the right side of the body, so the right hand, left brain, same on the other, left hand, right brain.

The Armor We Wear

Speaker 1 9:10

So as you explore these things and as you do more reading and more research if that's something that you're into, then you'll get used to this a little bit more, but I'm just going to assume that most listeners are here because they're only continuing to listen this far into the episode. Because you are similar, right, you also probably have either the issue of being non-emotional or you have a family member or friend who's non-emotional. You're just looking to learn more about them, maybe, and how they see or feel the world around them. But if you're one of those listeners who is dealing with the non-emotional personally, then you may or may not be right-handed and very logical-minded, so you also probably likely struggle with being present. You probably struggle with meditating, sitting, still opening up to others, feeling deeply connected, even to the closest people around you your parents, your children, your wife or your husband. Right, these things are all connected, because all it means is that you're simply disconnected from one side of your energy channel. And the good news is we can just get you back online, up and running in no time at all, because when you work with the right people, especially if you're working with someone who's trained the same way that I am trained, then we can help integrate this process directly through the subconscious mind with change work very fast, and all it takes is a decision and a choice.

Speaker 1 10:52

So you know, just remember, when we experience trauma which is basically anything that we label as trauma, right? This varies person to person. What one person can make meaning that this is trauma and other person's like, oh, it's fine. Right, one person could have a very minor thing happen to them but associate it to a near death experience and now see that as massive trauma, while someone else could have gotten into a huge car accident and not see it as trauma. It is about the meaning we make, because the definition that is the easiest definition to go to really understand the word trauma is anything that permanently changes our behavior. Right, you get into a car accident. Now you drive more cautiously. Maybe you're hyper aware, right, those are the kind of things. It's how the activity changed your behavior, right? Maybe you were followed while you were on a run. Nothing happened, so other people might not label that as traumatic, but now you don't run at night by yourself or in the morning by yourself anymore. That is a change in behavior. That is technically what someone would call trauma. But again, it's up to you and if you label it that way. But the really good news is you are a highly adaptive human being. You have the ability to decide at any moment. To choose change. You can choose at any moment.

Speaker 1 12:30

So what happens when we experience trauma? Well, well, our brain goes into a protective mode and it adapts for survival, doesn't adapt for you being the most successful entrepreneur or the most successful, most fit mother. No, it adapts for survival. It splits and then we experience fight, flight and freeze and some people, as a result, become overly sensitive after trauma, unable to really truly access their logical mind, almost spiraling and allowing it to just ruin their lives, while other people experience the complete opposite they become overly logical and unable to access their emotional mind.

Speaker 1 13:20

Now, if you'd like to learn more about the actual brain chemistry and the details behind what's happening, one of the books that I use to continue to go back to and remind myself of these details is Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation, and this is by Jania I'm trying to say this right J-A-N-I-N-A, jania Fisher, and so far it's a great book to really just kind of remind you of what's actually happening on a physiological level. Otherwise, the basis of the book is this the brain disconnects the two hemispheres to protect you. That's it right. Your brain is just protecting you from losing control. It's protecting you from becoming overwhelmed. It's protecting you from breaking down and burning your entire career to the ground.

Six Steps To Reconnect With Emotions

Speaker 1 14:16

Your brain just simply built a belief that you can't pause, that you can't slow down, that you must keep pushing through. It's just a belief. It does not have to be true for you, but right now you're choosing it. Because right now your brain associates feeling these emotions to the threat of death. Because instead of learning how to move through emotions, your brain decided it was easier just to numb you out from them altogether. Your brain decided decades ago it was simply safer to just pick up and put on your armor. Now our armor is our masculine, it's our protector energy, it's our logic, the strategist, the doer right. Meanwhile our heart? It may be protected and it may be hard to penetrate, but it's also hard to be seen, heard, felt and even hard to be loved on the other side of that armor.

Speaker 1 15:26

You know I was having a deeply profound conversation over the weekend with Brian Brogert and Susie Albert Miller, and Brian was saying to us that he realized years ago that he was walking around with his armor on all the time to protect himself. Then one day he had an epiphany when he thought about his wife, his children children attempting to lay their head on his chest. Now, if he keeps his armor on, then they're laying their head on a cold, hard metal and no one feels connected to that. He said he realized he needed to take off the armor and since doing that work of integrating, since doing that work, he's been able to. Well, I'll share with you what he shared with me and he I believe he coined this it was to have a soft front and a strong spine. God, what a beautiful visual metaphor. A soft front so that you can still connect heart to heart, and a strong spine so that you can still carry the weight and be strong for himself and his family. So, as we had yet another interesting discussion, I'm still digesting all of this because it was so profound to me.

Speaker 1 17:06

Now, I knew I had been told before I was wearing an armor and it was an armor of anger. This is something you need to work on and it's so hard for me to see it, but when I'm with the right people in the right rooms, who can see past all the bullshit and see through the lines, they always tell me the same thing. And so something Brian was mentioning was that if we have a powerful energy to us and we're wearing our armor, that energy going out to the rest of the world is getting filtered through the armor, which makes it super tough for other people to interpret. It can leave people, you know, feeling a little off about you. Eh, something's up with her, I don't know Quite a little intimidated by her, or she's hard to approach, or I don't know. I just don't quite click, I didn't quite connect. But if you take off that armor, then people can get a hundred percent clear reading, because they're getting pure energy and light from you. So I hope what you're hearing from me is that the work that you're looking to do is to allow yourself to just feel safe enough to finally take the armor off, because I would argue that you are even more sensitive than I am, which is why you protect yourself so much. That is 100% okay, because I have developed strategies for moving through emotions and finding the lesson quickly, which means that you, too, have the ability to do the exact same thing, because I know just how intelligent and capable you are. So, when you choose to do the work, embrace both sides, integrate them together, and then you will experience a more dynamic and full life.

Speaker 1 19:17

It's all about the ups and the downs, so let's talk about her follow-up question. Let's talk about how I would help a client reconnect to their emotions in six steps. Well, the first thing that I would do with a client is got to uncover the underlying limiting belief. There is something happening here, a belief that is holding you back, a belief that you can't slow down If you do this, this and this will happen. Like whatever the belief is, there is a limiting belief that is holding you back, a story, there's a secondary gain, there's something happening here, and once we uncover that and once we shift that belief, then the rest is just going to fall in place. So step one is noticing if there are any limiting beliefs, uncovering those and dealing with them accordingly.

Speaker 1 20:07

The second thing that I would do is I would build a resource anchor for safety. What that is? I would essentially set someone up with a physical, mental and emotional anchor or something they can do with themselves. For example, I like to kind of the emotion of cracking my first knuckle. It doesn't always pop or crack, it's okay, it's just pushing down on that. That, for me, is an anchor for confidence, for showing up, for being louder. That's an anchor I've worked on for many years. Some people have anchors like tugging on an ear, some people have anchors there's all sorts of ways to do this. Now I use the word anchor kind of like a boat anchor, but not because what it is is just a connection to, an association to, so it's an ability to do something physically to trigger a thought and a feeling, right. So what can you do physically that triggers a thought process that lets you feel safety? So I would build a resource anchor. Now, something super simple that you could do with yourself is I may build a resource anchor of someone hugging themselves, because I can stack multiple memories of them hugging a person they love and feeling that infusion of love and gratitude and all of those things into that and help them feel safe. So maybe do that, maybe allow yourself the process of sitting and hugging yourself and thinking through different times in the past where you've hugged a loved one and really felt a deep level of safety. Doing that multiple times will allow you to anchor into that feeling and then that is something I would tap into and utilize if that client gets into a really tough spot while doing the next few steps of work. So we always build that resource anchor first. That way we can rely on it if something comes up.

Speaker 1 22:01

The next step that we do is release all of those emotions. We would go through the process of releasing, with mental and emotional release, and we'd go through anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt, shame. Anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt, shame. Imagine your life without those six emotions Now, not without meaning. Never again. Yes, you will feel these emotions again, but without meaning. That cup that you have for each one of those, how full to the top is it? And how would it feel to just dump all of those out? So you have empty cups across the board and more capacity for things to happen without going straight from anger to rage or sadness to depression. Right? This is what you get when you release those emotions, is? It makes everything feel so much lighter, so much easier. So that's absolutely the third thing that we would do is release those emotions.

Speaker 1 23:02

The fourth thing that I would do is walk you through a forgiveness process so you can forgive everyone involved, anyone that came up in the MER process, the mental and emotional release process, forgiving yourself, forgiving all involved and, through that process, allowing you to just cut all of those emotional ties to people in your past so that you can only focus moving forward. The fourth, fifth I don't even know what number I'm on now, my goodness Fifth thing that we would do is we would reevaluate your life values, your beliefs and your identity, because that's the core of everything who you are, what you believe and what things are valuable to you and how are they valued to you. Because these values in your life and these beliefs all of this is going to determine the reality that you experience in life, and shifting those thus makes your reality shift as well. So, after releasing all of those emotions, after going through the forgiveness process, oftentimes, naturally, our values, beliefs and identity shift, even just a little bit. But if there is a more desire, like a more desirable shift, we can always move things around then and lock them in place.

Speaker 1 24:23

The one thing I will say is you would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever change your number one value in life. It will always be your number one value in life. Integrity will always be my number one value in life, and if I were to change that for anything else, even if it felt like it would be a good change? It will not. It will make me completely go off the walls because I wouldn't know who I am, because it's a foundation of who I am. So never change your number one belief. But any other value and any other values and beliefs can be adapted, can be changed, that you can actually get where you want to go. And that's what we would do. And then, the very last thing that we would do, a sixth step we would develop new behaviors, new routines around meditation, visualization, movement practices all of these things to help you continuously and daily tap into the emotional spectrum so that over time you can increase your level of sensitivity, because it's not just going to click on like a light switch. One day. It's probably going to be like boiling water. It's going to take a little bit while a light switch. One day it's probably going to be like boiling water. It's going to take a little bit while to get to a boil. But as you go, as you tap in, you'll be more and more connected to those emotions.

The Path To Emotional Mastery

Speaker 1 25:35

So you are not broken. Especially if you have been on this journey for a while with little success. I need you to know that you are whole. You're simply living in two parts because your mind is trying to protect you from some pretty heavy pain. But if you can accept that together, we have to break the bone to be able to heal it back. I don't know if you've ever heard that before, but if you heal a bone in a cast for many months and they take the cast off and it's crooked, they have to re-break the bone to be able to get it to heal back properly. And sometimes after years and years and years, we have healed in a way, but we've healed a little crooked because it's not giving us the desired result. We still got a little limp, a little wobble. So working with me in a container is going to be painful because we have to re-break the bone to heal it back properly.

Speaker 1 26:57

But I'll tell you, it is so worth it because when you are detached from pain, that often means that you probably struggle to tap into pleasure too, because not feeling emotions means the positive ones and the negative ones. To avoid the lows, you are also sacrificing the highs of life. So here's the truth. It is so much wiser to simply learn to master your emotions than to shut them off altogether. It's a much, much easier process when you have a guide to walk you through it all. So find a coach, find a practitioner that you resonate with, someone who speaks to your soul and allows you to feel safe enough to let down that armor.

Speaker 1 27:59

If it's me, I would adore walking you through our Her Breakthrough experience, as it is the perfect place to let go and tap into your emotional mind. And if it's not me, I am happy to offer you free resources and referrals to get you at least one step closer to your desired outcome. So if you're interested in more details about coming to an upcoming retreat, you can always go to JanusJuancom forward slash retreats, that's with an S retreat. Just join the waiting list there. It'll be a very quick, short application. We'll jump on a 15 minute call, get you some more details. And for those who are more interested in a virtual one-on-one container, I do actually have one coaching spot opening up for quarter two of the year and you can apply at breakthroughwithjanacom.

Speaker 1 28:54

Because here's the truth the true power of coaching and mentorship is the ability to compress time, the ability to take what it may have taken months and months and months or years and years and years to figure out on your own and instead get to the root of the problem faster, so you can get results in days or weeks.

Speaker 1 29:19

Because, as a guide, it's my job to simply hold the frequency and the vibration being grounded and healed and allowing you the space to simply match my vibration and raise to the frequency of being healed through co-regulation. Now, it's not that you can't do it on your own, that's not what I'm saying. It's the question of why would you want to? A burden shared is a burden halved, so let someone else help carry the weight until you decide that you're finally ready to just put it down altogether and rise. Because the moment you cut ties with that anchor, the moment that you rise to that next level easily and effortlessly, that you rise to that next level easily and effortlessly, because we are all emotional beings and learning to master your emotions. That way, you can tap into them and leverage them anytime you want. That. That's the true cheat code of life.