When You Feel Nothing but Keep Functioning

Feel nothing but keep going



There’s a version of burnout where you don’t crash. You just get blank. You still do what needs to get done. You nod through conversations. You make dinner. You keep showing up. But something’s cut. The signal’s faint. You’re not spiraling but you are behind glass.

There’s no panic. No tears. Just a weird silence where feeling used to live, and you hardly notice when it started. You just notice how quiet it is, and how long it’s been this way.

Some people call it emotional numbness. Others call it detachment. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how it works: your brain stops registering things that should hit. Moments that used to land now pass through. You forget what made you laugh. You forget how it feels to look forward to something.

This isn’t just “stress”

You’re not drowning in chaos. You’re drifting away from yourself. And that’s harder to name. Because everything looks fine on the outside. 

But you know the difference. You still go through the motions, but nothing really reaches. Music that used to move you barely touches the surface. Conversations blur. Even good news doesn’t feel like much.

Your body is still showing up to life, but it’s like it stepped back just enough to get through it.

The brain starts turning down the volume

When burnout drags on long enough, your nervous system starts making subtle tradeoffs to keep you going. You’re not registering joy the way you used to. Anticipation feels dulled. Not because you’re broken, but because your system is overloaded.

When the system stays in overdrive for too long, emotional responsiveness often gets muted. This isn’t dysfunction. It’s the body downregulating to preserve energy and avoid further overload. You might look fine on the outside, but internally, things are dimmed.

What’s left is a kind of flatness. Like you’re technically here, but not really in it.

You want to care but you are numb

You want to care. You want to be moved again. You try the things that used to bring you pleasure but they don’t touch you now.

You might notice that memories don’t hit the same. Someone mentions a trip, or something you shared, and you remember the moment, but you can’t feel yourself in it. Like the part of you that usually feels things just isn’t there.

When it catches you off guard


It comes out of nowhere. It might be something small. A loading screen freezes. Someone forgetting to text back. A tiny mistake at work. A microwave beeps. Your chest tightens before you even know why. You bark at the dog for whining. You start to speak, then forget what you were saying. Your jaw clenches at a question like, “Are you okay?” You want to scream and throw something across the room.

 These moments feel disjointed and out of proportion. But they’re not random. They’re the cracks. The little ruptures where flatness gets interrupted and something raw slips through.

They don’t feel good. But they matter. Because they mean the dullness isn’t airtight anymore.

The messy return of feeling

Then something hits different.

A song plays overhead and suddenly your eyes well up. You don’t know why, but it pulls up a version of you you forgot was still there. You’re watching a show and something in it gets to you. A line, a look, a moment, and suddenly you feel like sobbing. You can’t explain what’s happening.

Maybe you feel a flicker of excitement, then hours of blank again. Maybe something stirs, like happiness, but it doesn’t quite land. You know it’s supposed to feel good, but it slips by before you can catch it. 

That’s the thing about this part: it doesn’t make sense. You feel things in fragments. One moment you’re overstimulated, the next you’re numb again. There’s no logical sequence.

But this is what coming back feels like. You’re not just reacting anymore. You’re registering. Not watching your life, but feeling it.



This is what coming back feels like

There will still be days where everything feels too sharp. Where joy feels unreachable and noise is all you can register. That doesn’t mean it’s not working or you’re going backwards.

Because alongside the mess, something else starts happening. The food tastes like something again. You catch yourself humming without realizing. You feel a sense of satisfaction after finishing something. You reach for someone, not to feel less alone, but out of desire to share the moment.

This is what returning to yourself is like. You are no longer experiencing life through a glass. Numbing shielded you from feeling the full intensity of life but it also took away your ability to experience joy, excitement, and love. 

 Being able to feel it all again. That’s how you know you’re back. You are no longer just surviving; you are living.