Why Numbing Makes Sense Right Now

Minneapolis community brought luminaries out onto the frozen Lake Nokomis to share their voice of "ICE OUT".

What I’m Seeing in My Home, My Neighborhood, and My Therapy Office

I grew up in Minneapolis, went to Minneapolis public schools, and I am raising my kids here. I love the way this city loves its people. You saw it during the protests downtown on Friday.

My home sits in a neighborhood that is the access point for the Whipple Building, where ICE operations are headquartered right now. ICE vehicles packed with masked agents drive through our quiet South Minneapolis neighborhood all day. Last week, I was on the exercise bike in the window of my gym when they pulled up alongside the front window. My entire body froze knowing that they were just starting the day and heading out to look for people to abduct.

Our neighborhood is no longer safe for our kids. My elementary age child is known to walk, bike, or sometimes ski the mile long trek to school, picking up peers along the route. Now, we transport them out of fear that they will get caught in a scuffle with ICE and not know how to respond. Many of their black and brown friends are not at school, forced to stay in their homes, unable to play outside, missing their friends and their learning.

For the first few weeks of ICE activity in Minneapolis, I held tight to filtering it from my kids. We happened to have influenza the Thursday and Friday that the City of Minneapolis closed schools due to the uptick in violence, so I was able to keep our focus on chicken soup, endless episodes of Berm Peak on YouTube, and Gatorade. Lots happened, and it all felt like a blur.

And then Alex died.

It hit me harder than anything else that happened that week. We live six blocks from the Minneapolis VA. I have many close friends who work there, and we are involved in the same local mountain biking community that Alex was part of. My deep value of protecting and helping others as a mental health therapist kept pulling me back to his story. I could not get past how his body moved to protect, to de escalate, to stop the violence, to do the right thing. And it did not matter. He was shot in the back over and over again while trying to help a woman who was violently shoved to the ground. And then he was gone. That was it. The possibility for the positive impact of his work on our community came to a screaming halt.

I am part of our neighborhood Signal chat. Sometimes I take a break from it, and two hours later I will see that I missed over 400 messages just from immediate neighbors sharing caution and preparing for community mutual aid. That morning, I saw the notification come through my Signal app, “Someone was shot at 26th and Nicollet Avenue.”

I turned to my husband and, in a quiet whisper to avoid our kids hearing, asked, “Did you see there was a shooting?” He looked scared and replied, “It is horrible. A guy was held down by a bunch of ICE and executed.”

We were supposed to go to my 10 year old son’s Park and Rec 11U basketball game at 40th and Nicollet just hours after the murder, and my brain could not choose a path. Do we go? Do we stay away? I felt frozen in time. Earlier that morning, my son and I sat in the dining room chatting while I braided his hair for the game. He was so excited for his first game of the season. All youth games had been canceled the weekend before due to safety concerns in Minneapolis, so this was the big, long awaited day.

Standing in the kitchen, still in my pajamas, he kept asking why I was not getting ready to go. I felt frozen. Do I tell him an observer was shot? Do I say things are not safe? Do I let him into this horror? Through my personal and professional work, I know the impact of trauma on young people, the way it makes them grow up too fast. I do not want him to carry this stress in his body. But I also know he already knows something is wrong. He can see the elevated emotions all around him. He no longer walks to school on his own. We have gone to protests with his friends. Our time outside our house has gone way down. He knows. He is a smart kid.

I told him what happened. And it felt like the worst day for me in all of this unraveling in our community. It was the first day I realized we are really in this, in it. This is not a blip on the map. Somehow, I thought this would peak and we would get a breather, but I was too hopeful, or in denial, or both. We are in deep, and it is changing everything we thought we knew about safety, humanity, and community.

In my day job, I own a group practice and work as a mental health therapist for professionals who struggle with substance overuse. Client after client, I am witnessing the pull to lean on anything and everything just to manage the depth of grief, fear, and uncertainty we are experiencing in this country. I see people pushing through heavy emotions that do not have words yet and then reaching the end of the day with nowhere for those feelings to go. They are building inside us like a pressurized tank, and the pressure is not letting up. It feels incredibly uncomfortable and volatile.

When we feel flooded by this intensity, most of us scan for a way to numb. We desperately want the feeling to stop. That makes sense. Unfortunately, in the long run, we risk losing everything. We slowly drift away from ourselves and each other through numbing, becoming isolated and alone, stewing in the very emotions that scare the shit out of us.

Numbing can look like checking our phones over and over again, searching for new information that might help us feel better, help us prepare for the next trauma, or let us help just one more person.

It can look like barely getting through the day just to dive into copious amounts of food, alcohol, or drugs as a reward that offers a few minutes or hours of relief. It is a predictable reprieve from the horror and exhaustion that now feel constant.

It can look like watching TV while scrolling on your phone next to your partner or child, knowing they are hurting too, but having nothing left to give, just staring at the screen together until bedtime.

It can look like caring for everyone else while depriving yourself of food, water, sleep, or any nurturing at all. It is a complete disconnection from self as a way to regain control when everything feels out of control.

It can look like organizing, redecorating, or buying new living room furniture. It can look like ordering everything on Amazon and feeling a rush when the packages arrive. It is a quick way to feel alive, to feel okay, to feel like your space and maybe your life is complete.

I often say numbing is weird because we know it is not sustainable. It breaks down our bodies, our relationships, and our sense of belonging faster than almost anything. But it is easy. It is accessible. It works fast. Numbing is available to everyone. No one is immune. Trust me, my practice is full of us.

The pull to numb is real. It feels like the only pause in a fast moving, overwhelming reality that feels like a nightmare. The crisis unfolding in our community is threatening, and we are afraid our basic human needs for survival are at risk. Of course we feel frozen. Of course we feel panicked. Of course we are exhausted beyond belief. It makes sense that we are vulnerable to numbing when everything we rely on feels shaken to the core.

But we need to be vigilant about caring for ourselves. We need each other right now. We need to do the opposite of numbing, even when every instinct pulls us toward it. We need to encourage one another to slow down, eat, drink water, sleep, move our bodies, rest, and stay close to our people. This is how we keep going. This is how we continue to show up. This is how we stay in community and spread love and care. This is how we find the next right thing to do. This is the "through this shit" path.

The stories I hear in my office every day speak to the intense pull toward numbing, to cope with fear of the unknown, to grasp for the familiar, to manage the overwhelm in our bodies and minds. People feel deeply alone in how they are carrying this crisis.

We have not been here before. Stay connected. Do not go it alone. Reach out for support as we weather this mess together.

Bug me anytime,

Julia Hess, LADC, LPCC

Founder and Psychotherapist

Planting Seeds Recovery

Email: Julia@PlantingSeedsRecovery.com

Call or text: 612-758-0893

Schedule a consultation: https://plantingseedsrecovery.clientsecure.me/

We have two offices with in person and virtual options--

Bloomington Office

900 American Boulevard East, Suite 212

Bloomington, MN 55420

Long Lake Office

1850 Wayzata Boulevard, Suite 150

Long Lake, MN 55356

To read more of our blog posts-- https://www.plantingseedsrecovery.com/blog

About the AuthoR

Julia Hess is the founder of Planting Seeds Recovery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was inspired to design a recovery program, tailored to professionals who struggle with substance overuse, that is built on self-actualization, empowerment, relationships, and mindfulness.

She strongly believes that clients have the ability to increase awareness of patterns of use, explore ways to get their needs met through human connection, and develop a deep mindfulness of their wants and needs as a way to feel grounded in their world. She knows this process doesn't fit perfectly in a box. And that is why Planting Seeds Recovery looks a little different with a more open-ended, flexible experience.