Overcoming Emotional Numbness After Betrayal: How Brainspotting Can Reconnect You

February. The month of love. Heart-shaped cards, flowers, romantic dinners, and all the pressure to feel connected. For many of us, February can also bring up feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, and the ache of past divorce and betrayals. If you’ve experienced betrayal trauma, abuse, or divorce, this time of year can be especially hard. The societal focus on love can feel like a reminder of what’s missing in your life, fueling a sense of disconnection and, often, emotional numbness.

I see this so often with my clients—especially those who’ve been through the pain of betrayal. After enduring trauma, it’s natural to want to escape that pain. The problem, though, is that many people try to numb the pain by rushing into new relationships or seeking out external validation, hoping that someone else will fill the emptiness. Real healing doesn’t come from rushing into romantic relationships. It comes from reconnecting with yourself first.

If you’re feeling emotionally numb after betrayal, abuse, or divorce, it might feel like the only way to feel something is to seek out a connection with someone else. But what you truly need right now is a deeper connection with yourself. This is the foundation for any healthy relationship—whether with a partner, friends, or even your family. That’s why this month, as we move through Valentine’s Day, I want to highlight how Brainspotting and my Intimacy Within course can help you heal, reconnect, and build the foundation for love—starting from within.

Emotional Numbness After Betrayal: Why You Feel So Disconnected

When we go through betrayal or abuse, the emotional pain can be so overwhelming that it literally shuts us down. Emotional numbness often becomes a coping mechanism to protect us from the intensity of the feelings we’re not yet able to process. It’s your brain’s way of saying, “This is too much for me to handle right now. Let’s turn off the emotions.” The problem is that, in doing so, we disconnect from the very parts of ourselves that we need to heal.

This emotional numbness can manifest in many ways—feeling detached from others, disconnected from your body, and unable to access your feelings. For many of my clients, this leads to feelings of loneliness and anxiety, especially in a month that emphasizes love and intimacy. The urge to rush into a new relationship may become overwhelming, because loving and being loved can seem like the solution to the emptiness. But the truth is, when you’re emotionally numb, you’re not in a place to offer or receive true love. Real intimacy starts within—and healing the emotional numbness is the first step to creating that connection.

Why Healing the Numbness Matters: The Connection to Self

I’ve created my Intimacy Within self-paced course for just this reason: to help you reconnect to yourself, to reclaim your own sense of self-worth, and to guide you toward the emotional healing needed to build a healthy connection with others. The work we do in the Intimacy Within course is grounded in the idea that before you can create intimacy with anyone else, you must first build intimacy with yourself. This involves understanding your needs, setting healthy boundaries, and learning to trust your own voice.

What’s often missing after betrayal trauma is the ability to feel safe with ourselves—to allow ourselves to feel the painful emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them. This is where Brainspotting comes in. Brainspotting is a somatic (body-based) healing modality that works with the deep, subconscious parts of the brain where trauma is stored. It helps you reconnect with your body, release stored emotional pain, and process the shock residue that has been keeping you numb.

How Brainspotting Helps Heal Emotional Numbness

The emotional numbness you feel is often caused by trauma being stored in the body—specifically in areas of the brain responsible for survival, like the amygdala and brainstem. When trauma occurs, our bodies store the emotional pain and shock as a defense mechanism. Over time, these unresolved feelings can result in a kind of emotional “shutdown,” where we can’t access our true feelings. This disconnect keeps us from engaging in healthy relationships and truly feeling the love we deserve.

Brainspotting allows us to process that trauma in a safe and effective way, helping to reconnect you to your emotional self. By targeting specific eye positions, Brainspotting accesses the deep parts of the brain where trauma has been locked away. As you focus on these "brainspots," you are able to safely bring the trauma to the surface and release the numbness. This allows for the healing of both the mind and the body, so you can reconnect to your true self and begin to feel again.

The Healing Power of Loving Yourself First

February may remind you of the love you feel you’ve lost or the connection you feel you’re missing, but it’s important to remember that the first step to loving and being loved is reconnecting with yourself. The emotional numbness and trauma you’ve experienced need to be acknowledged, processed, and healed before you can enter into a healthy relationship with anyone else.

My Intimacy Within course offers a path to self-love and self-connection, but Brainspotting is a key part of the healing process. The combination of these tools can help you feel safe in your body, process old emotional wounds, and build a solid foundation of self-love and self-trust. This allows you to move forward, not from a place of numbness or fear, but from a place of wholeness and empowerment.

Reconnecting to Yourself: The Key to Healthy Intimacy

This Valentine’s month, rather than rushing into a relationship to avoid feeling pain, take the time to reconnect with yourself. Healing the emotional numbness after betrayal or divorce is the key to building healthy relationships in the future. With Brainspotting, you can break free from the past, process the trauma that has kept you emotionally stuck, and step into the love you deserve—starting from within.

A Personal Invitation

If you’re ready to heal from the emotional numbness and reconnect to yourself, I invite you to reach out for a Brainspotting consultation. Together, we can explore how this powerful modality can help you release the trauma stored in your body, allowing you to feel more whole, present, and connected.

Also, if you’re ready to begin your journey of self-love and self-connection, I invite you to start the Intimacy Within self-paced course today. This course will guide you through the steps to reclaim your own sense of intimacy and build a healthy relationship with yourself, which is the foundation for everything else in life.

You don’t have to wait for love to find you. Start your journey of healing today. Click  HERE to get started.