The short answer
Your boundaries kept you in the work when others burned out. But somewhere they shifted from protecting your energy to blocking the human connection that makes the work mean something. The good news: noticing the numbness is the first sign you haven't actually lost the feeling.
You've been in this long enough to know what it costs. The detachment crept in quietly — one hard shift at a time — and now you can get through a whole day without really landing on any one person. Research on workplace relationships shows that the boundaries we draw to manage emotional strain can, over time, flatten the very warmth we were trying to preserve. You protected the job. Now the job feels hollow.
Marcus wrote that the understanding — the mind — will not, on its own, lead itself into fear or cut itself off from what matters. The numbness didn't come from your mind deciding this is how things should be. It came from years of habit, of self-defense running on autopilot. That means it isn't permanent. It means there's still something underneath it that your mind can choose to turn back toward.
This week, pick one person you're meant to help and stay one extra moment after the transaction is done. Don't fix anything. Just be present — ask one real question and actually wait for the answer. That's it. One moment, one person. You're not rebuilding everything at once. You're just checking whether the feeling is still there. It probably is.