The evening is over and you can't say what you did with it. You picked up your phone to check one thing. There was a second glass, or the rest of the bag, or three more episodes. You are not enjoying it much. You are not feeling much of anything. I feel numb.
It differs from shutting down, which happens in a moment with another person. Numbing is a standing habit, and it mostly happens alone.
01
What it looks like
There is always something in your hand or in your ears. I have my phone with me all the time. The quiet parts of the day get filled before they start.
It tends to arrive at the same times. After work. After the kids are down. After a conversation that went badly.
None of the things themselves are the strategy. A show is a show. The strategy is reaching for it so that something else does not arrive.
02
What it protects
Across the rules below, it may keep a feeling from showing up at full size.
Which feeling, and what would happen if it did, is the part the behavior can't tell you.
03
The rules it can serve, and what is under each
"Strong is the only version of me they know."
Feeling it fully might mean not being fine. Under it, the fear may be that if they see you struggle, you lose the only standing you have. Keeping it dull may be how the composure holds. During the day I push everything down far enough to get my work done.
Read about Strong →"If everyone is okay, then I'm okay."
What you would feel may be anger or disappointment at someone, and feeling it may lead toward saying it. Under it, the fear may be that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong. I tell myself let it go, it is what it is. I don't actually feel that way.
Read about Peace →These are not the only possibilities. Filling every quiet stretch can also appear under Output and Ahead, and the Staying Busy page covers that.
04
What it buys and what it costs
It buys an evening you got through. Some days that is worth having.
The cost may be that it does not choose what it dulls. I couldn't have told you I was unhappy. It was more that I wasn't happy, and I didn't notice for a long time.
There may be a cost to the people around you too. Someone sitting next to a person who is somewhere else can feel alone in the room.
If what you reach for has become hard to stop, licensed mental-health care is the right door.If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
05
How to tell which rule is under it
Protecting them, or protecting yourself?
Take a recent evening, and the feeling the screen dulled. Ask who the dulling was for. If it was to keep someone else from being upset, that is the Peace answer. If it was for your own sake, the candidates are Strong and Burden, a rule this page does not list, and one more question is for those two. If someone helped you and literally nobody would ever know, would you accept? Yes is the Strong answer. Still no is the Burden answer.
If neither question moves anything, there is not enough to tell yet, or it may be a rule this page does not list. Either way, that is a result.
One thing is not this strategy. Watching something to unwind, and enjoying it, is rest. What to look at is whether you chose it and whether you would say you liked it.
This is what subtraction does: drop the explanations the evidence does not support, and look at what remains.
What the same quiet looks like in the middle of an argument is on I Go Quiet When I'm Angry.