Tuesday 19th August 2025
As someone who has lived with DPDR for most of my life, my experience of love has always had to walk hand in hand with my symptoms.
One of the most common, and most painful, aspects of DPDR is emotional numbness.
For many people, especially those who experience a sudden onset of symptoms, it can be incredibly confusing. One day you feel deep love and appreciation for the people in your life, and the next… nothing. You still know you love your friends and family. You still know you care. But the connection to the actual feeling of love, warmth, and closeness seems to vanish.
I’ve been there too. When my DPDR was at its most intense, I felt an overwhelming sense of nothingness. No joy. No sadness. No love. No care. It was terrifying, because at my core I am someone who feels so deeply. To suddenly feel like I “didn’t care” about the people closest to me was unsettling, and it affected those around me too. From the outside, it looked as though something had changed in our relationships, as if I didn’t love them anymore. But that wasn’t the truth.
So, why does this happen?
- DPDR is the brain’s way of protecting you from overwhelming stress, anxiety, or trauma. Unfortunately, this protection often dampens all emotions, not just the difficult ones.
- Disconnection from self: When you feel cut off from your own emotions, body, or sense of identity, it becomes harder to connect naturally with others.
- Research suggests that the parts of the brain involved in emotion (the limbic system) and self-awareness (the prefrontal cortex) don’t communicate properly during DPDR. This creates the strange experience of knowing you love someone but not being able to feel it.
- Many of us become hyper-focused on our lack of feelings (“Do I still love them? Why don’t I feel it?”). Ironically, this self-monitoring pulls us even further away from the natural, spontaneous experience of love.
This numbness can feel deeply isolating and lead you to question yourself and your relationships. But here’s what I want you to remember:
✨ It’s not permanent.
✨ It doesn’t make you unkind or incapable of love.
✨ It doesn’t erase the truth of your relationships.
When I went through this, one thing that helped was focusing on facts rather than feelings. I wrote down, in my notes app, what I loved about each person in my life. Not how I felt in the moment, but what I knew to be true about them and our relationship. These reminders anchored me when my emotions were out of reach.
And over time, my connection to people started to come back. It wasn’t sudden, and it didn’t happen because I forced it or constantly checked in on my symptoms. In fact, the more I obsessed over whether I could feel love, the further away it seemed. What helped me most was gently shifting my focus away from monitoring my emotions, and back onto living my life and engaging with people as best I could.
Slowly, the numbness lifted. I began to notice little sparks of warmth and connection again; laughing with friends, feeling moved by music, appreciating the small quirks of the people I care about. It wasn’t an overnight change, but with time, the natural feelings of love and attachment resurfaced.
If you’re going through this right now, talk to your loved ones about what’s happening. Let them know how DPDR can affect your emotions and your ability to express them. Remind yourself that the love is still there, even if you can’t feel it fully in the moment.
You are not broken, you are experiencing a symptom of a disorder, and with time and support, connection can return.
Love, Kate x
Mostly Kate 