The “Sunken Place”: What Happens when an Empath Goes Numb?

The “Sunken Place”: What Happens when an Empath Goes Numb?

 By Carol L  Hill

I am a feeler. I feel almost everything around me at a vibrational level so high sometimes that it’s hard at times to differentiate between what’s an internal experience verse what is an external experience. Some days it is simply madding to keep up with all of the various vibrational energies I encounter on a daily basis. If I absorb too much external energy  I can physically feel myself getting sick and that is when I know it’s time for a brief retreat.

Thankfully for me, this is something I have been able to now  easily identify and manage. However, it didn’t happen overnight, I went through a number of very dark periods in my life and wrestled with a great number of emotions before realizing that, I, and I alone, have the power to turn it all off by initiating a simple self reboot. If you are an Empath like me and you have ever felt out of control over yourself and your emotions you will probably identify with everything that I am saying…this information is really nothing new. To be Empathic is to learn very early on ( or not so early on, which was my case) that these are just the ebbs and flows of our vibrational pull to and from the world around us.

But what happens when an Empath stops feeling all together or feels like they are on the verge of separating themselves completely from their environments ? What happens when we are, for a time, have simply gone numb? I suppose these are not easy questions to answer because, well, I guess these experiences are probably different for each one of us. For me, it brings me to a place I try extremely hard to avoid, it brings me to my "Sunken Place", let me explain...

The Void of the “Sunken Place”

Have you ever seen the movie “Get Out”? In the movie one of the main characters, Missy Armitage, is a physiologist who has the ability to hypnotize the main character, Chris Washington. She uses these little but rhythmic clickings of a spoon on the sides of a tea cup; in addition to the use of very low vocal tones to render Chis under her “spell”. Once she does this she essentially ends up banishing him to what is known in the movie as the “Sunken Place”. As Chis is in his hypnotic state he is forever falling further and further into a deep dark hole of nothingness. He can see what’s happening around him, yet, he can’t get himself up and out of the pull of the “Sunken Place; he becomes stuck between two worlds of reality and feeling. 

Whenever I see that movie, I think about myself as an Empath and how it feels when I go numb to my internal and my external emotions. It feels like I am Chis, watching everything around me just happen, but not being able to control any of it or participate in it. I feel as if I am free floating and falling deeper and deeper into the void of my own personal Sunken Place. Its’ seriously not the best palace to be in and even with all of the sometimes overwhelming feelings I have over feeling ...well like everything! …somehow this void, to me anyway, is twenty times worse then simply feeling and experiencing the world around me.

Hence, anyone that knows me probably knows that I am a woman of action and if I am not able to actively participate I feel lost and/or somehow strangely disconnected to my self and my surroundings. So, it’s even more important for me as an Empath to stay connected. Yes, it is true even Empath's need to take time for and make time for mental and emotional breaks, that is true. But I also have come to realize that I cannot long survive the nothingness of my own personal Sunken Place. Nor, do I want to for that matter.

I never want to be so down the rabbit hole that I stop feeling. Why? Well, because when we get to a place where we are void of feelings, we risk becoming both egocentric and callus in our dealings with the world around us. We risk becoming robotic in our dealings with people and we risk evolving into nothing more than narcissistic drones who live only for the goal of self-serving gratifications. Furthermore, we risk straying further away from our communities, and we risk becoming less in tuned with the feelings of others; in short we risk becoming painfully misanthropic.

To be empathic you have to have a love for people and the world around you. You have to be able to feel and you have to want to care. If we lose, as Empaths, our ability to feel  and care, or if we go numb for to long, we lose what humanity is about; which is, above all, our divine and beautiful connectivity to others. 

My advice to other Empath’s is simple. YES! take breaks, go on vacations, get some rest, but never forget at the root of everything is your ability to vibrationally  connect and heal a sometimes very sick and unfeeling world. Believe me... form one Empath to another, your presence is needed and vital to all inhabitants of our beautiful wonderful home we call Earth! Feel on my fellow feelers!

 

Carol Hill is a certified life coach and self-proclaimed happiness ambassador. For more information about Life coaching and to schedule a coaching appointment call 607-423-2650. A New Booking site will be available after August 15^th, 2020.

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