Aware & Aggravated - 115. When Feeling Numb Starts To Hurt

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

In this episode Leo talks about when the feeling of numbness starts to cause you pain. He explains what he's learned is the cause of it, the cycle you can get stuck in, and how he's planning to break out of it himself.    ✅ FOLLOW ME HERE: https://www.instagram.com/theleoskepi https://www.tiktok.com/@leoskepi https://www.snapchat.com/add/leoskepi   👕 Clothing/Merch:  https://leoskepicollection.com   📱 MY APP POSITIVE FOCUS Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positive-focus/id1559260311 Google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.positivefocusapp&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1    🔒 MY PRIVATE FACEBOOK SUPPORT COMMUNITY  https://m.facebook.com/groups/851294735925522/?ref=sharehttps://m.facebook.com/groups/851294735925522/?ref%3Dshare&exp=7ffb&mibextid=I6gGtw    Business Inquiries: [e-mail]

Hi friends, this week the title is exactly what we're talking about. When feeling numb starts to hurt and when the numbness starts to become painful. This is something I'm going through right now. So how last week I talked about nothing in life resonating, now I want to talk about the numbness and I'm going to talk about some things that I've realized over the past week because y'all know I'm on like a little like Leo tour. I flew to New York, I booked the one way and I'm just like bouncing around at different hotels and just figuring life out, figuring myself out.

Recently I kind of realized what causes the numbness to turn to pain. And when I say the numbness of life, what I mean is all spark and enjoyment kind of go away. Nothing feels good, nothing's exciting, it's just a very numb. Like there's no anything. And we all know that's like a typical reaction that your body and your brain have when you're under too much stress or you feel too many things that are overwhelming to like everything going on

in you. Your body will numb out when there's too much going on. And while you're going through certain things, it does help. It feels better sometimes to feel nothing than the extreme pain that you're in. But living with that numbness when it hasn't kicked off is a bitch because the way I feel sometimes is like the numbness is here. So any happy positive emotion is like up. You can't feel it. And also with the numbness, it saves you from going down. Like there's no bad feelings, it's just numb. It takes the excitement out of life. It takes the joy out of life.

You don't want to do anything. You don't care about nothing. Things you used to love, you don't love anymore. They don't bring you enjoyment. You don't give a flying fuck about anything. And like I said, that can save you at certain times. But what I've been going through is the numbness and feeling numb has started to hurt. So when I talk about the baseline of numbness, it's like, I don't feel any positive emotions,

but it's kind of like the floor fell out. And I can't access the bad. I can't access the pain, but I cannot experience anything above the numb. So it's numb or pain. And that is a bitch because there's no like rebound. There's no happy moment. There's no like up. It's just up enough to be numb and neutral or down. There's no up.

And living with that and navigating that has been very, very hard and very, very difficult. And it's one of the hardest things I've like kind of faced because you have to live your life when things are numb, sheerly based off of willpower. There is no more excitement drive motivation. It's like you just have to grit through shit or you stop moving.

Like there's no helping hand it seems like. It seems like you just have to exhaust yourself and like any little ounce of energy you have is spent on just surviving and getting through shit and getting what you need to be done done. Like whether it's work or just taking care of yourself feels like such a task. And a lot of people experience this

and I finally wanna open up and talk about it because I deal with it too. I'm currently dealing with it and have been dealing with it for a few months now. But something I learned literally last night is it's not the numbness that hurts. Numb can't hurt. Numb is numb.

It's not the numbness that hurts. It's the loneliness that comes from the numbness that hurts. And there's a big cycle I was trapped in and I'm literally 24 hours into breaking it and like moving forward. But the cycle that I noticed with the numbness turning to isolation and that being what hurts is when you're fucking numb, anyone asking for things

or asking for anything from you is a burden. And it sucks to admit that. But everything and everyone in your life becomes a fucking burden. Anyone needing anything from you is the most draining and like gut-wrenching thing. Like I had days where I was like, can please? Nobody ask me for shit. Like I need everyone to just not need me.

I don't have even enough energy or effort to take care of myself and make sure I'm okay much less take care of everybody else and I felt like Everyone around me was like chipping away at me without realizing it But the way it felt for me It was like every single person who needed anything whether it was like a text back or like a phone call Was like chipping away at me like I said earlier It's like just to do your basic things that take care of yourself and do what needs to be done for you and your life, like work or whatever, just surviving.

You have limited capacity and energy to put toward yourself and it's so fucking draining and exhausting as it is. But then other people needing absolutely anything, needing any of your focus or attention or like needing a favor or needing something. It's like, it just chips away at you and you feel like pieces of you are just getting like ripped off. And the best words I've found in a song recently, it's Golden Age by Ethel Cain. She literally talks about, I'm getting the chills.

She talks about in the song, she's like, I feel like I'm holding out like a dog. They've just yet to put down. That's exactly how I've been feeling for a while now, like a little too fucking long. And there was also a couple other lyrics like, I'm so beautiful and it's wasted on me, because you feel defective, you feel like, because you have everything that you have and your life might be going good or going great, or you have more than others, like it's just wasted on you because of that you have and your life might be going good or going great or you have more than others. Like it's just wasted on you because of how you feel. And I very much resonated with that.

And the whole, I got everything I ever wanted, but it was never enough. That's my song right now. So the other thing that pushed me in this spiral of the isolation aspect with the numbness is I felt like every single thing and every single person was such a goddamn burden. and I knew how I felt when people asked me for things so the last motherfucking thing I was gonna do is burden them with what

I'm feeling and going through or asking for anything like I feel the weight of what I experience and feel and go through. And sometimes it feels like too much for me to even handle. So you get kind of trapped in this mindset that you think that everybody feels the same way that you do or they're going through the same thing that you are and your brain will kind of convince you everyone is as drained as you and everyone's gonna see you as a burden

if you ask for anything. So you feel the weight of what you're going through. You don't want to put that on anybody else because you feel the resentment you have when people ask from you. You don't even have enough to give to you and then people would just want and you feel like you're deteriorating in front of everyone's eyes and no one can see it and the asks don't stop. And that's when I talked about just wishing everybody would leave you the fuck alone. You don't wanna put nothing on them

and you damn sure don't want them to put nothing on you. So the immediate thing to do is just, all right, I'm gonna isolate and deal with my shit and this will fuck up your relationship to letting love in. And this is what I realized recently and it's like part of this whole cycle. This numbness feeling will literally fuck up you feeling loved and letting

love in because of a sense of obligation that comes when you let someone love you or care about you. When you feel like you have nothing left in you to give and you feel like pieces of you are just being taken nonstop and you can barely like keep your head above water for you to let anyone do something for you or care about you or show you love. There's this subconscious obligation a lot of people have and it's something I realized. I feel obligated to take care of you when I care about you or when you care about me. So what do you do in this situation when you got nothing left to give and you feel nothing but obligated and it's not like a bitter obligation.

It's like you just want to care about people that care about you. You want to love them, but you just have nothing left in you to be able to care. Like the numbness, you wish you could care. You want to care. You see why you could care, but you just don't have anything left.

There is no care. And that's when you stop letting love in because you feel guilty for letting it in because you have nothing to give. And this is when the numbness turns to pain. I can literally look back and see when this all started taking place without me even realizing. Like I was just subconsciously going through all this shit and this is how I was adapting to it and like maneuvering it. But the loneliness and feeling like you have nothing to give

and also not letting love in or letting anything in is what's painful. It's the loneliness that's painful. It's not the numbness. So when I talk about you feel numb so long that it starts to hurt that you're numb, it's because of what you do when you feel numb and how it makes you feel like you have nothing to give

and you don't feel comfortable taking anything you can get. That's a bitch. It's a real bitch. And I'm so happy I realized this because this is one of the things that was like making me revisit feelings of not waking up and being relieved. But this cycle does get worse because when you feel stuck in a weak version of yourself, you then start to question, why would people even care about this version of me?

Why would anyone even care? Why would anyone even love me? Why would anyone give a fuck? Like, it's not that you have to give things to people and everything's an obligation and like transaction, but this is just something that will start happening in your head. You'll start to question because you only are seeing

the weak part of you that is just drained and so easily like thrown off and can barely like do shit. It's like when you've been a strong person and you've like seen that strong side of you, you see why that version is lovable. You see why that side of you is like worthy of everything and a contribution to people. Then when you meet this weak side of you, you're going to start to question because you haven't sat with this side. You haven't learned this side of you. You haven't learned the side of you with the numbness and the one that can't get the fuck up and do shit and just wants to push everything and

everyone away and just has no enjoyment and no love and no anything for life. Like this part of you you haven't met and this part of you you're gonna wonder and you're gonna see all the limiting beliefs you have around your relationship to love and what it is and feeling cared about and caring about people. But when you're feeling weak and you start questioning your worth and who you are, it just further plummets it. It just makes everything worse. But hiding this weak side of yourself or the side of yourself you feel is weak and the

side that you haven't spent time getting to know yet is going to feel safe. So that's going to encourage you to push people away again. You're questioning why you deserve love, why you're lovable, isolating, makes you not have to question it, makes you not have to worry about it. And you feel justified in it because you're like, for me not to keep up with these relationships and these connections in my life, why the fuck would I like I'm damaging to other people. I'm hurtful to other people by being how I am and feeling how I feel because you know how much of a burden it feels when other people. I'm hurtful to other people by being how I am and feeling how I feel because you know How much of a burden it feels when other people come to you when you don't have the bandwidth to hold space for them or To be there for them or care about them and be how you usually would be

But this is where I hit a point of like what the fuck do I do? One, how do I continue forward with fucking anything and two? One, how do I continue forward with fucking anything? And two, what the fuck do I do with this? Because isolating no longer feels good. Cause like I said, that's the source of the pain. And when I hit this point of saying what the fuck do I do, I realized I've been resisting everything going on. Living with this feeling of numbness and just trying to live my life as normal.

That's not realistic. And all that did was make things worse. So this is the process that I'm about to put myself through. And it's going to be another period of letting go of a version of myself because I have to accept the numbness is there. It's not going anywhere. I've tried to numb out the numbness. I've tried to get rid of it ain't no no get rid of and resisting it is not gonna work. It's not doable.

So the first thing I have to do is sit down and face. This is my new life. This is something I now I'm gonna have to deal with. It's like if somebody gets in an accident and their arm gets cut off, you're gonna have to change the entire way you've been living. And if you just keep trying to live like normal how you did before

It's not gonna work. You have to adapt and Change your life to how you change and the first thing I have to do and I'm talking about this because I realized this Process and I sat down and like listed it all out except so I'm gonna take a couple hours ago So I'm gonna talk about the process I'm gonna do and then I'll catch you up next week about how it goes. I have to turn toward the numbness because this is visiting me and I'm experiencing it for a reason.

So the way I'm gonna turn toward the numbness is stop trying to run from it, stop trying to bullshit it, stop just trying to force through life and look at the numbness and try to understand what does it need from me. But the other things I'm going to go into is with this numbness, it's kind of like part of myself. I'm looking at it like it's a visitor of like a numb state. And I also take on the perspective of it's a part of me that I now have to address, see is real, understand, give attention to, and then go forward with that

part. Like it's about to change the way I live and maneuver life. But the next step is figuring out how does my life need to look for me to continue forward in any way? Like for me to continue forward, what does life need to look like? How does things need to change? What I need to set up? What I need to do different? And with that is looking at, what do I wanna do with the little bit of energy that I have? With the amount that I know I can do. What am I gonna do with that energy?

With that time, with that focus? What am I gonna start doing with it? I have to look at it like it's more, like a valuable thing, cause there's less of it. And like I have to be a lot more strategic of what is worth my focus and time and energy. Cause like I have to be a lot more strategic of what is worth. My focus and time and energy because bitch it ain't a lot and something already coming up is that I need to be a fucking asshole and I need to start being really mean. Not really mean but I need to

start being mean and being a lot more considerate of myself even at the expense of others like Being a lot more considerate of myself even at the expense of others like there is no more Pieces of me that can get pulled off. There is no more room for consideration of others at the expense of myself So that's one thing that just popped in my head and the other thing is meeting this version of me Like the version of me that I've known and been for so long It's like I'm meeting the next version of me but it's like a version of me with multiple parts and a part I didn't see or know before. So I gotta spend time getting to know this part of me. Seeing how he's okay. Seeing what he likes. Seeing what he doesn't like. Seeing what he needs. Seeing what he needs from me. I gotta look at how does this version of me need

relationships to be with people? How does this version of me need to be loved? How does this version of me love others? How does this version of me have a relationship to people just being in my life? And what does he need from them to be there? And the biggest thing is figuring out what boundaries this new me has. I already know I'm gonna become a motherfucker. I already know it's time for me to just be mean. I can feel it. I'm just like, I'm excited.

I'm feeling a little boost right now. But this is the process I'm about to go through with discovering myself, meeting this new part of me, meeting this new version of me, meeting this new version of me, and then kind of reconstructing who I am, how I think, the way I live, and what the fuck I do, and what I lend my energy to. And then the next part of that,

because I said isolation is the cause of the pain with the numbness, is I have to let this next version of me start to meet people. I need this other side of me to meet the people in my life and see what the fuck happens. He needs to be cared about, he needs to be loved, but I am gonna address this all with myself first. I have to understand him first, how my life needs to go.

And I feel like this is a gift, weirdly, that the numbness is visiting because it's making me very aware of what I want life to look like and feel like and how I need to be living with this new thing I have about me. But that is the process I'm going to put myself through and spend the next few days diving into learning and exploring. It's like meeting this whole new version of me also the limiting beliefs and the guilt and the shame and the judgments I have over

Being a certain way or being weak or feeling weak like I'm gonna have to address a lot of shit So that'll be fine. Now we're gonna take a second to talk about the sponsors of today's podcast The first one is ship station. So if you have a business where you do anything with shipping They're gonna make things a lot easier. So with orders you get, ShipStation has a dashboard where you can manage all your orders at once. They have automations that allow you to print shipping labels at the click of a button and it's able to be integrated

no matter where you sell. So if you sell on Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, there's a bunch of other places they can integrate with too. Those are some of the main ones. But shipping a lot of the times is like the maker break of a sale because I've been online plenty of times I'm like shopping for something and if shipping takes too long or if it's too expensive I'm just over it and I'll just leave things in the cart. Bye But ship station has industry leading discounted rates from USPS UPS

DHL and global posts with discounts of up to 89% off USPS and UPS rates. So if you need to buy one label or a thousand label today, they'll help you get the best rate, but they can also help you manage however many orders you need. So as your business grows or things get better, make a lot more sales, it's easy to stay in one spot and the dashboard is really straightforward, easy to use and can handle the growth of whatever you get to, which is a perk. So if you're interested, you can use promo code AWARE at ShipStation.com and sign up for a free 60-day free trial at ShipStation.com promo code AWARE.

And our next sponsor is LUMI. And LUMI is a game-changing whole-body deodorant designed by an OB-GYN that you can put all over your body. So your feet, your private parts, wherever you want to put deodorant, wherever you want to smell better, you can use it. When you use their full-body deodorant on anywhere you get odor, Lumi is clinically proven to block odor all day long because it has a one-of-a-kind pH optimized formula and they have over 275,000 five star reviews. It's also baking soda free and paraben free and pH balance. Sorry to talk about that so you can use it down there.

And we got a little special offer. So new customers get $5 off Lumie Starter Pack with code AWARE at lumideodorant.com L-U-M-E-D-E-O-D-O-R-A-N-T dot com. And their starter pack comes with a solid stick deodorant, a cream tube deodorant, and two free products of your choice like a mini body wash and deodorant wipes and free shipping. So if you're interested in trying it out, then go to lumie.com and use promo code AWARE. Now back to the podcast. But one of the biggest things I learned about the numbness that is helping me live with it now and kind of use it as a tool is I was talking to my friend Tefi.

If you don't know Tefi, I fucking love her. Look her up on Instagram and TikTok. It's just hello Tefi. I'm pretty sure. But if you just type in Tefi, I fucking love her. Look her up on Instagram and TikTok. It's just, hello Tefi, I'm pretty sure. But if you just type in Tefi, you'll find her, TEFI. I asked her, because she's someone that I look to for guidance a lot, because she speaks in a way that makes me like, ugh, like she gags me sometimes with her perspective.

She's very fucking smart. And I look to her a lot for guidance, because she's a couple years older than me, and she feels a lot of the things that I feel and she's talked about them but I literally text her like I finally just cracked and was like Leo reach out to people and I reached out to her and I asked her about the numbness because I'm like I know she fucking feels it too like I no way she's not feeling the same shit I'm feeling especially with the social media crap because we're both on social media

Like it just expedites the process of the numbness sitting in but I asked her I was like does the numbness ever go away? And if not, how the fuck do you deal with it? That's all my text said and she knew exactly what I meant and what she said was the numbness doesn't go away, but you start to learn to use it as a compass and you let it guide you to people who make you not feel numb. That really struck a fucking chord,

like using the numbness as a guide. And since she told me that, it's made me feel a lot better. And we talked way deeper about everything going on. But with using the numbness as a compass, things that don't feel numb are very obvious when everything is numb. There are things that still don't make you numb. There are still things that bring you excitement and if you haven't found them it's not it. Trust me I was banging my head against the wall for a while but letting the numbness guide you to people who make you not feel numb is the

best fucking advice I've ever gotten in my life, but I've also flipped it and looked at it like, anything else in life that makes me feel less numb is what I'm meant to be doing and where I need to be spending my time and the energy that I feel like I have. Your sense of direction in life gets very easy to find. Anything that brings you any slight little like boost, lift up anything, any kind of stimulation is like where I've been going. And I've been lining up with more and more shit

that makes me feel less numb and makes me feel like I'm cracking past that threshold of like feeling nothing. Like I'm finding little excitement again. I'm finding things that are like bringing a little life back to me. I just love that perspective of letting the numbness be a compass, letting it guide you. Cause I did talk about in my last podcast episode, this version of my life is just gonna be one of shit I feel guided to.

And the numbness is like a very good guide. It's just a bitch when more things make you feel numb than not. Like I said, my podcast now, until I fucking feel like it, is just gonna be me talking about this journey. So if you like this and you like how this is going and you like this episode, leave this video a thumbs up and definitely leave me a comment on YouTube.

If you're listening to the audio version of this on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, leave me a five stars rating. Duh, but also please go to the audio version of this on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, leave me a five stars rating. Duh. But also please go to the YouTube version and leave a comment because there's like over a thousand something comments on my last episode. And I love that everybody is like getting to connect in the comments because me talking about what I'm feeling and going through made all of you feel less alone. And then you started finding each other and it's like so calming and reassuring and comforting for me to be

able to go through and read the comments. So I'm asking you to be there for me right now. Leave me comment what you think. I'm also having to learn how to be a needy fuck. I'm needy sale. And I'm no longer hiding that. I'm a goddamn Pisces. What do you expect?

I'm fucking needy. If you want to keep up with me on a more day to day basis, I've been posting a lot on Snapchat. I love Snapchat. They pay me good. So I be posting there like every single day. I post like 20 to 40 times a day on there. So go at me. It's LeoSkeppy.

And I'll also leave my other social media in the description, Instagram, TikTok, all that shit. That's all I got for this episode. So everybody be safe. Take care of yourself. I fucking love you guys. And I'll talk to you guys next Sunday.