Maybe you’ve known someone like this. Someone who, in the beginning, was sensitive, thoughtful, and deeply attuned to you. The connection felt real because it was real - or at least, it felt that way. But then something shifted. The warmth faded, the tenderness disappeared, and in its place was coldness, detachment, maybe even cruelty. It’s disorienting, like emotional whiplash, leaving you wondering, - was any of it real? Often, when you object to their cruelty or name the harm, they’ll flip it back on you, accusing you of the very thing you’re pointing out. It’s not self-awareness - it’s deflection, a way to avoid accountability while keeping you tangled in doubt.
Here’s the hard truth: it was real. But for some people, emotional closeness triggers something they don’t know how to handle. It’s not that they lack feelings; it’s that they’ve learned to suppress and repress them when those feelings threaten their sense of control. Whether they do this consciously or not, it’s not about the absence of emotion - it’s about shutting it down because vulnerability feels too risky.
For someone like this, vulnerability can feel like a threat, not an opportunity for deeper connection. When emotional intimacy becomes uncomfortable - when it requires accountability, genuine presence, or the risk of being affected by someone else - they flip an internal switch to shut it down. It’s a form of emotional self-protection, but it comes at a huge cost: disconnection, emotional distance, and the struggle to sustain meaningful relationships.
What’s striking is that they don’t just turn off their feelings - they often turn them into something else: anger, contempt, dismissiveness. That’s because repressed emotions don’t disappear; they resurface in other forms. For someone like this, tenderness may feel too vulnerable, but anger feels like control. So rather than sitting with emotional discomfort, they transform it into something they can dominate - aggression, blame, or coldness.
But here’s the thing: turning feelings off isn’t the same as not having them. It’s avoidance. And avoidance isn’t strength - it’s a response to fear, often mistaken for indifference. The connection you felt was real because you were real in it. Their inability to hold onto that connection doesn’t diminish its reality. It’s not a reflection of your worth; it’s a reflection of their limitations.
And this is where your work begins - not in trying to understand them, but in how you choose to meet yourself. We must not absorb their cruelty as a reflection of who we are. If their behaviour touches an old wound, a part of you that has known rejection or harshness before, let it be an invitation - not to collapse into that pain, but to heal it at its depth. Meet that tender, hurting part of yourself with the love and compassion it was denied. This is the opportunity: to give to yourself the very tenderness, safety, and care that they refused to offer. You deserved it then. You deserve it now.
If this resonates with you and you’d like support navigating these feelings, I offer one-to-one sessions where we can explore this together. You don’t have to carry it alone.