I Don't Know What I Feel
Someone asks how you feel about something that just happened - a breakup, a job loss, your father's cancer diagnosis - and you go blank.
Not the blank of being too overwhelmed to speak. Not the careful blank of choosing not to say. Just... nothing there. A genuine "I don't know."
You can tell them what you think about it. You can analyse the situation, explain the context, describe what happened. But how you feel about it? The question makes no sense. It's like being asked to describe a colour you can't see.
So you say what you think you should feel. Or what would be normal to feel. Or what won't make the conversation awkward. "I'm fine." "It is what it is." "Could be worse."
And here's the thing - you're not lying. You actually believe you're fine. Your life might be falling apart in slow motion, but you're convinced you're coping. You show up to work, pay your bills, maintain your friendships. From the outside, you're managing.
It's only when someone asks "but how do you feel?" that the emptiness becomes obvious.
How you got here
This didn't happen overnight. You didn't wake up one day unable to access your emotions. It happened slowly, reasonably, with good intentions.
Maybe you learned early that feelings were inconvenient. That being upset made things harder for everyone. That crying was dramatic, anger was dangerous, sadness was self-indulgent. Better to be rational. Better to cope. Better to be fine.
Or maybe feelings just felt too big, too unpredictable. Easier to stay in your head where things make sense. Where you can think your way through problems instead of feeling your way through them.
So you learned to suppress. Not dramatically - just a steady, persistent dampening. Every time a feeling started to surface, you explained it away, rationalised it, told yourself it wasn't that bad. Every time someone asked how you were, you defaulted to "fine" before you'd even checked.
Years of this, and something changes. The feelings don't just get suppressed - they stop arriving at all. The capacity to detect them atrophies. You become emotionally illiterate, not through choice but through practise.
You've become blind to the very things that used to guide you.
The compensation
When you can't feel what matters to you, you have to look outside yourself for answers.
You become obsessed with what you should want. The right career, the impressive achievements, the relationship that looks good on paper. You poll your friends before making decisions. You check reviews, seek validation, measure yourself against arbitrary metrics.
Not because you're insecure - though it might look like that. But because you've lost your internal compass. When you can't feel what you want, external markers become the only available navigation system.
This is why "just do what makes you happy" is useless advice. You have no idea what actually makes you happy. You know what's supposed to make you happy - success, relationships, experiences that photograph well - but whether any of it actually does? You couldn't tell them.
You hit the goals you thought you wanted and feel nothing. You end relationships you thought were fine and feel nothing. You keep moving forward because stopping would require knowing what you want instead, and you don't.
The exhaustion isn't from the doing. It's from doing without wanting. From living a life in third person. From being constantly productive but never purposeful.
The dangerous bit
Here's what makes this properly dangerous: you can be falling apart and not know it.
Your body knows. It's keeping the records you won't. The panic attacks you insist aren't anxiety. The chronic pain that has no medical explanation. The exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch. The illnesses that come in waves.
But you? You're convinced you're fine.
"I'm not depressed, I'm just tired." "I'm not anxious, I'm just busy." "I'm not struggling, everyone feels like this."
And then, sometimes, the disconnect becomes stark: "I'm fine, but I want to stop existing."
Not suicidal thoughts exactly - you're not planning anything. Just a persistent wish to not be here. To stop having to show up. To be released from the obligation of continuing.
But you report this like a weather update. Factually. Without affect. Because you genuinely don't understand that this means something's very wrong. You've lost access to the emotional information that would tell you you're in trouble.
This is when people end up in therapy saying nothing's wrong while everything demonstrably is.
What happens in therapy
The work isn't about learning to name emotions from a feelings wheel or practising mindfulness exercises. It's slower and stranger than that.
It's learning to tolerate not knowing. To sit with "I don't know what I feel" without immediately reaching for an explanation or a should.
Because the replacement feelings - the ones you think you should feel - are blocking access to the real ones. All that explaining, contextualising, rationalising you do automatically? That's the suppression mechanism still running. It feels like understanding, but it's actually avoidance.
Your therapist might ask "how do you feel about that?" and you'll want to tell them what you think about it instead. They'll notice. They'll keep bringing you back. Not to be difficult, but because the redirect is the problem.
Gradually, in that space where you don't have to perform competence or certainty, something might shift. You might notice a tightness in your chest and not immediately explain it away. You might feel irritated and not instantly talk yourself out of it. You might cry and not know why.
These moments feel like failure. Like you're being irrational, dramatic, out of control. Everything you learned not to be.
But they're not failure. They're the beginning of something.
The feelings come back gradually
Not in a redemptive rush. Not with sudden clarity about what you want and who you are. It's messier than that.
You might feel angry about things you thought you were fine with. You might grieve losses from years ago that you'd convinced yourself didn't matter. You might want things that make no sense, that contradict what you thought you wanted, that upset the careful life you've built.
This is destabilising. It's meant to be.
Because those years of being "fine"? They weren't stability. They were numbness. And numbness only feels safe until you realise what it's costing you.
The alternative isn't chaos, though it might feel like it at first. It's having access to the full range again. Not just the difficult feelings, but the good ones too. Actual joy, not performed enthusiasm. Actual desire, not what you think you should want. Actual connection, not just the appearance of it.
But you have to go through the difficult ones to get there. You have to feel the anger you've been swallowing. The grief you've been postponing. The terror you've been explaining away.
Your body's been holding all of it. Now it wants to give it back.
If this is you
You don't need to arrive at therapy with the right words for what's wrong. "I don't know what I feel" is enough. "Something's not working but I can't explain it" is enough. "I'm fine but I'm not fine" is enough.
The work is about rebuilding access to your emotional life. Learning to feel again when you've spent years learning not to. It's uncomfortable, sometimes destabilising, occasionally frightening.
But it's also the only way back to yourself.
Because you can't live a life that matters to you if you don't know what matters to you. And you can't know what matters if you can't feel anything.
The feelings aren't the problem. The absence of them is.
If you're struggling to access your feelings or living on autopilot, therapy can help. I work with people in Croydon and online across the UK. Email hello@talktoluke.com
