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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you go numb
Being told to open up rarely breaks it, because opening up in one go is exactly the risk the whole strategy exists to prevent. What breaks it is something small and specific, said to someone likely to respond well, at a moment that has been set up rather than stumbled into. One sentence about one thing. If the answer comes back warm, that is the beginning of evidence, and evidence is what this needs rather than encouragement.
Their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God (Quran 39:23). The verse has the skin shiver first and the softening follow, which is the order these things usually come in: something registers in the body before anything is decided.
الزمر
ٱللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحۡسَنَ ٱلۡحَدِيثِ كِتَٰبࣰ ا مُّتَشَٰبِهࣰ ا مَّثَانِيَ تَقۡشَعِرُّ مِنۡهُ جُلُودُ ٱلَّذِينَ يَخۡشَوۡنَ رَبَّهُمۡ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمۡ وَقُلُوبُهُمۡ إِلَىٰ ذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُدَى ٱللَّهِ يَهۡدِي بِهِۦ مَن يَشَآءُۚ وَمَن يُضۡلِلِ ٱللَّهُ فَمَا لَهُۥ مِنۡ هَادٍ
God has sent down the most beautiful of all teachings: a Scripture that is consistent and draws comparisons; that causes the skins of those in awe of their Lord to shiver. Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God: such is God’s guidance. He guides with it whoever He will; no one can guide those God leaves to stray
Qur’an 39:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Habitual avoidance does look like part of what keeps difficulty going. Combining 241 effect sizes, habitual rumination, avoidance and suppression were more strongly tied to anxiety, depression, eating and substance problems than reappraisal, problem solving and acceptance were protective. These relationships are correlational, so they show a pattern rather than proving the direction it runs in.
Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Only an actual warm response to an actual risk can contradict what the pulling back has taught you.
Choose the person and the moment carefully; a small risk taken with someone who cannot respond well tends to confirm the loop rather than loosen it.
When someone says they feel nothing, find out where the nothing reaches. All the time, or only towards good things, or only here, in this conversation, when criticism is in the air?
Ask what is happening in the body right now, in the moment it happens, rather than asking afterwards what the feeling was.
If a medicine has taken the edge off everything, including the good things, that is worth raising with whoever prescribed it. Taking the sharpness out of pain is one thing. Feeling nothing at all is not a way to live.