If you have been looking for psychotherapy tips, how to make therapy work, or why you feel numb in therapy, you might relate to my story. When I started therapy, I had some information about how the process was supposed to go. I knew some basic ideas about psychology and how the mind works. I thought this knowledge would help me get better faster. However, I found out that knowing these things actually created problems for me. My brain used what I knew to stop me from feeling my actual emotions. I want to talk about why this happens and how I experienced it.
My Experience with Intellectualization
In psychology, there is a term called Intellectualization. This is when you use logic and analysis to avoid feeling difficult emotions. I found myself doing this a lot. In the beginning, I did not really understand how important it was to just feel my emotions. I spent almost all my time in therapy analyzing things with my head.
I would take one small feeling and use it to explain everything else in my life. For example, I would look at a situation where I was avoiding something and think, “I am doing this because I did not get enough love in the past.” I would tell myself that there was probably a much bigger sadness inside me because of that lack of love. But the problem was that I could not actually feel that sadness. I was just thinking about the fact that I should be sad.
This is why knowing the principles of therapy can be a problem. When you should be feeling a direct emotion like anger or grief, you start thinking about the “reason” for the emotion instead. I would tell myself, “I feel this way because the therapist is triggering a memory from my childhood.” By the time I finished that thought, the actual feeling was gone. My knowledge was acting like a block. I was treating my emotions like a puzzle to be solved rather than an experience to be felt. I realized that if I keep analyzing why I feel a certain way, I never actually get to the part where I feel it.
The Constant Presence of the Observer Self
In therapy, it is often said that you need a balance between the part of you that feels and the part of you that observes. In my case, this Observer Self was already the default state. I wasn’t trying to be analytical; I just naturally looked at myself as if I were a stranger or a project to be fixed. This was simply how my mind operated most of the time.
Because this observer part was so dominant, I was usually in a state of checking my own progress or diagnosing my own thoughts. I wasn’t intentionally trying to stay cold; I was just so used to watching myself that it was hard to actually be “in” the moment. My actual emotions only came out in very small flickers.
I had a specific experience that showed me how this worked. During one session, I noticed a very faint sensation of intense shame. Because I was always observing, I caught that tiny feeling immediately and reported it to the therapist. I just said, “I am feeling some shame right now.”
But as soon as I said it out loud, I felt a shift. I suddenly felt like I was no longer on my own side. It wasn’t that I chose to block the emotion. It was more that, once I spoke it, the internal disconnect was so strong that the feeling of shame just vanished. I didn’t “shut it down” to stay analytical; the emotion simply disappeared, and I was back to being numb. The observer self didn’t leave any room for the feeling to stay. I was back to watching what I was doing, but without any emotional connection to it.
Analyzing the Therapist Instead of Connecting
The relationship between the person in therapy and the therapist is usually called the Therapeutic Alliance. Most people say this human connection is what actually makes therapy work. But because my observer brain was always active, I had a hard time just “being” in that relationship.
Instead of just talking to my therapist, I was constantly analyzing their intent and their moves. I would find myself thinking things like:
- “They are just saying that right now because they are trying to build rapport with me.”
- “I can tell they are trying to make me confront something I am avoiding.”
- “Why are they suddenly insisting that they are right? Are they trying to establish their authority as a therapist?”
Because I was so focused on these thoughts, I never felt a real, honest connection. I didn’t see them as a person who was simply there to help me; I saw them as someone performing a job using a set of professional tools. It was hard to feel a deep sense of trust when I was always looking for the “logic” or the “strategy” behind every word they said. This made the sessions feel cold. I wasn’t experiencing a relationship; I was just observing a process. I was so busy figuring out what the therapist was doing that I couldn’t feel much of anything about the actual topics we were discussing.
Wanting Fast Results and Feeling Impatient
I also realized that I wanted very fast, clear results. I wanted to feel a big change that I could measure. I thought that because I understood the theories, I should be able to change quickly. I was looking for a “once and for all” kind of result. I wanted to see the effect of the therapy immediately after I understood a principle.
But the truth is that emotional change does not happen all at once. It is a very slow process where the change slowly soaks into you. It is not a fast or sudden thing. It happens over time as you stay with your feelings.
Because I was so focused on the results I had read about, I would often decide that the therapy wasn’t working. If I didn’t feel a big change immediately, I would reject the small changes that were trying to happen. It was like I was clearing away the small bits of progress before they had a chance to really get deep into my mind. I would decide that a certain approach was wrong just because I didn’t see a huge effect right away. My knowledge of how therapy “should” work made me lose patience with how it actually works. I was using my expectations as a way to judge myself and my therapist, which only made me feel more frustrated.
The Limit of Logic
The irony was that I could explain my situation very clearly, but I wasn’t actually experiencing the emotions behind it. I understood the psychological reasons for my behavior, but I remained completely numb.
I realized that I can’t think my way out of a feeling. No matter how many theories I understood, I was just running in circles while my emotions stayed locked away. I knew I couldn’t keep analyzing my way toward healing—I needed a way to get out of my head and back into my body.
In the next post, I’ll share how I finally stopped only thinking about my problems and started actually feeling them.
Note: This post is based on my personal experience and perspective. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.