Why do I feel numb in a job I used to care about?

You came to this work to help people, and now you reach for that feeling and find nothing there. That numbness frightens you because it seems like you have lost who you are. You have not. What you are feeling has a name. It is what happens when caring is spent faster than it is renewed, for a long time, without relief. The numbness is not the absence of a heart. It is a tired heart protecting itself. It went quiet because feeling everything, every day, with nothing coming back, was more than any person can sustain. That is a wound from giving, not proof that you stopped caring. So treat it like the injury it is. You would not tell someone with a broken leg to run harder. Rest the part of you that has been carrying everyone. Step back where you can, even a little, and let something outside the work fill you. The care is not gone. It is buried under exhaustion, and it comes back when the exhaustion lifts.