Do your moments of intense anxiety seem to be accompanied with a strange feeling of detachment, as though you’re living someone else’s life? Has it ever occurred to you that some aspects of your life just don’t seem as important as they’re supposed to? Have you ever chastised yourself because your emotions don’t seem to function normally? If so, there’s a good chance your anxiety issues are pushing you towards detachment. You may be somewhat relieved to learn this is actually a defense mechanism, one that you can overcome.
A life without feelings is like food without flavor; but fortunately, you really can make a choice regarding your fate, and reclaiming your well-being is very much an option. Understanding what you’re going through will take you a long way towards recovery; feelings such as detachment and unreality are frequently triggered by anxiety, and there are valid reasons why. Being afflicted with anxiousness for too long, you are likely to feel so confused and threatened for no apparent reason that dissociation will ensue, between the logical and emotional aspects of your being. This is just what you’re going through at the moment.
You can think of it this way: you felt so threatened all the time that your feelings kept overwhelming you and actually hurting you. After a while, you decided you couldn’t live with those painful feelings, so you gathered all your emotions inside a box, trying to protect yourself. You then closed the box and you put it in a safe place, and placed the key somewhere else entirely. And then you forget about the whole thing (both the key and the box and having hidden something), and after a while you don’t quite recall what emotions felt like in the first place. This is probably what you’re going through right now. What you must realize is that over-sensitivity was never your real problem- anxiety was, and it still is.
If you want to overcome your sense of detachment and reclaim your emotions, you must go back to the root of the problem: why did you feel so threatened in the first place, that made you want to shut down your emotions? Quite likely, you will realize it was nothing other than your anxiety. And that’s just where you have to focus if you want to overcome your detachment and all your other symptoms- you need to manage your anxiousness.
It’s not quite enough to remember that anxiety brought about your detachment; that’s only the start of your journey. You must realize there is no reason to keep your emotions hidden away: despite being a defense mechanism, detachment really won’t help your case- because positive feelings will play a strong part in helping alleviate your psychological problems.
