Numbing or falling away? Listener question

I have  a question about the difference between depression, numbness, and what you sometimes call 'intelligence'.  Life has been hard recently. Sometimes I have felt some relief, when the stories about what 'should' be drop away and there is just the bareness and rawness of what is there. The thing is that I don't know whether this is 'me' seeing through the stories of the self, or just giving up and lapsing into a kind of numbness or spiritual bypassing, since when it happens it feels like a kind of relief, which suggests it may just be another escape? How do you know the difference?

I hope my questions makes some sense. It is hard to articulate.