Turning Off the Pain

When I turned seventeen, I developed a mechanism to survive – a way to keep existing, but one that at the same time became my prison: I learned to shut off my feelings. At that moment, almost every feeling I had seemed negative: fear, shame, sadness, anger.

One by one, I learned to suppress them, to lock them away, so to speak. It was a way to protect myself from the constant storms raging inside me.

On the outside, it may have looked as though I was functioning.
I went to school, talked with friends, even laughed sometimes.
But inside, I was numb. I no longer allowed myself to feel joy, because joy always seemed so fleeting.
I didn’t allow myself to feel sadness, because sadness could completely overwhelm me.
I didn’t allow myself to hold on to hope, because hope had been destroyed too many times.

What I didn’t know back then was that those years had left deep scars: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The abuse, the bullying, the lack of support had carved themselves so deeply into my inner world that I carried the consequences with me for many years – even when I thought I had left it all behind.

Shutting off my emotions became both my shield and my prison. It protected me from the immediate pain, but at the same time it made life empty and cold.
I felt no real joy, no deep love, no genuine connection. Everything was neutral, muted, as if I was looking at the world through a thick pane of glass.

Yet, despite this emotional numbness, something kept burning deep inside me – a quiet spark of survival. That spark was weak, often almost imperceptible, but it kept me going.
It was the knowledge that, no matter how heavy everything felt, I was still breathing, still existing, and that maybe, someday, I could learn to feel again.

Those years of emotional numbness ultimately led to a greater understanding: that survival sometimes means protecting yourself by hardening, but that true strength also requires the courage to break down those walls again.
It was the beginning of a long journey of healing, a journey in which I slowly learned that my emotions, however painful, were not my enemies, but my guides toward recovery and inner freedom.