When I Was 7, I Stopped Feeling Any Kind Of Pain. Years Later, I Finally Learned Why.

Yahoo

4 days ago

I got my wisdom teeth pulled without anesthesia or laughing gas. When the dental surgeon sent me home with a packet of prescription-strength Advil, I didn't take it. Instead, I drove to the community center and taught my weekly guitar class, my cheeks swelling into grapefruits as my students practiced their D-G-A chord progressions.
Ego-wise, calling out wasn't an option (I was only lovable because I was reliable, I told myself) and this didn't warrant a sick day, anyway. I barely felt a thing.
I also don't remember feeling discomfort when my knee popped out in gym class, or when I fainted during a sweltering marching band parade, or when my appendix almost exploded.
My high pain tolerance didn't just apply to physical wounds, either; it also dulled the emotional ones. Fear, guilt, awkwardness, jealousy, grief, heartache — I could numb it all.
I learned this skill when I was 7 years old.
My older brother had undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Emotions swelled inside of him, too big to contain, so he'd punch holes in the walls, or burst into our rooms at 3 a.m., or threaten to end his life. Reactions only fueled the fire — my mother's anxiety and my father's guilt like kindling below the log.
Coaxing my brother up from a low or down from a high required a calm, collected presence — someone who could stifle their reactions and use logic to mediate the situation. Someone whose own emotions didn't get in the way. I was the ideal candidate.
By middle school, my parents had started relying on me to deescalate his episodes. When I succeeded, I was called all of the things I wanted to be: a good girl. The easy one. Such a blessing. Twice, the dispatchers on the other end of the 911 call complimented my maturity and bravery. So did the cops who took my brother to yet another inpatient facility.
Eventually, I wore my robotic mask into the world to see how other people responded. Teachers loved that I got straight As and never spoke out of turn. Friends stopped calling me bossy. Adults deemed me 'one of the most well-mannered children they'd ever met.'
It seemed that everyone else liked me better when I had no needs of my own, so somewhere along the line, my emotional suppression went from a temporary tactic to a permanent state of being. By the time my best friend died by suicide when we were 19, I felt almost nothing.
This skill had its perks, but it also had its detriments: all logic and no emotion makes Maria an abysmal girlfriend. The only thing I could feel was the hit of dopamine that accompanied a new love interest, so I sabotaged relationship after relationship in pursuit of it.
Yes, I was incapable of feeling pain — but I was also incapable of empathy, vulnerability, and connection.
At 28, I ended a three-year relationship with a good guy so I could pursue an impulsive fling with a not-so-good one. Something had to give. I was tired of being a romantically inept robot. Desperate to figure out what was wrong with me, I booked an appointment with a psychologist who specialized in childhood trauma.
Right off the bat, she diagnosed me with a dissociative disorder.
If I were capable of feeling anything, I would've felt relief. My high pain tolerance suddenly made so much sense.
According to WebMD, 'Dissociation is a break in how your mind handles information,' and that includes sensory inputs from your body. One study in The Journal of Pain found that those with PTSD-induced dissociation exhibited hyposensitivity to pain. Basically, the higher the dissociation, the higher the tolerance. An overload of trauma can cause the nervous system to shut down entirely.
In one of our intake sessions, I asked my therapist why I felt so addicted to my numbness. Her response was fascinating.
'Your body has its own pain-relief system, and it actually produces opioids,' she said. 'When you're dissociated, the endogenous opioid system is in overdrive. You're pumping out endorphins all the time to protect yourself from emotional or physical pain. Like any drug, it's addictive.'
In other words, I didn't need anesthesia because I was constantly making my own.
I wanted to be human again. I wanted to feel love, joy and gratitude — but, like a bottle of Vicodin, dissociation was my coping mechanism.
So much of my identity was tied up in my numbness. I believed I would no longer be fiercely reliable. I'd have to call out sick from work. I'd have to stop answering my phone at all hours of the night for the people who loved me because I lacked boundaries. I'd be susceptible to illness, anxiety, stress, and worst of all, heartbreak. I would no longer be the girl who could handle anything.
I didn't know who I was without my dissociation, but I wanted to find out.
Four weeks after my diagnosis, I started Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR. It's a psychotherapy technique that uses bilateral eye movements to stimulate memory processing, which helps the brain recover from trauma. Essentially, you focus on your worst memories and move your eyes back and forth.
My hopes were not particularly high. How could something as small as eye movements fix something as big as depersonalization-derealization disorder?
But EMDR worked, and it worked fast.
In my first EMDR session, my therapist told me to focus on my earliest negative memory while I watched a blue square bounce back and forth on my computer screen. I did it once: Nothing. Twice: Nada. Three times: Nope. And then the dam broke open. Sensations poured into my cells. I could feel everything, all at once.
One emotion loomed especially large, casting a shadow over the rest: I was terrified of being unlovable. That's why I left everyone else before they could leave me — before they could sense the messiness underneath the cold, polished armor.
This odd therapy technique completely overrode my body's hyperactive pain-relief system. Over the next 48 hours, I experienced all of the hurt, grief, abandonment and heartache I had blocked out for the past two decades. It was excruciating, and I wanted nothing more than to turn back into a robot.
But with the help of EMDR and this knowledgeable, compassionate therapist, I kept going. We spent the next four years sifting through these memories and emotions, finally processing them so I could let them go.
When pain arose, I felt it. I let the messiness settle in my body, making peace with its presence. Despite the raw discomfort of vulnerability, the hurt of rejection, the guilt of past mistakes, and the occasional panic attack, I resisted the foggy, familiar lure of numbness.
I'm still tempted by it — I'm sure all addicts are — but I've never gone back.
Now, I'm in a healthy relationship with a kind, supportive man. He slept over one night two years ago and never left, but I don't feel the urge to jump ship. I no longer want to chase the dopamine hit of someone new. I want this man to know and accept every part of me, the way I've come to know and accept every part of myself.
While I'm not cured (healing is a nonlinear, never-ending road), I've learned that pain is a fundamental part of life. Without it, you're not truly living. It's the catalyst for transformation. It's the compass that leads you toward growth. It's the contrast that illuminates all the beautiful parts of being a fractured, feeling human being.
Maria Cassano is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Bustle, CNN, Food & Wine, Allure, NBC, The Daily Beast, Elite Daily, and YourTango, among dozens of other publications. Represented by Emma Fulenwider at WordServe Literary, Maria's memoir about healing from dissociation, 'Numb, Party of One,' is currently out on submission to publishing houses. Learn more about it at mariacassano.com/numb.
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