A dorsal vagal shutdown is one of three primary autonomic states.
It occurs when one can't exist in their ventral vagal safety
state, and when sympathetic flight and fight haven't worked.
The body collapses or plays dead at the extreme.
It's a normal biological reaction in the face of a life threat.
But we can get stuck in a dorsal vagal shutdown.
Day to day, it shows up in our emotions, our thoughts, our behaviors,
and even our connections with others.
It directly impacts our life, our happiness, and our motivation.
You likely have somebody in your life who is stuck in shutdown.
Maybe somebody at your work, or even in your own home.
Heck, you may be stuck in shutdown yourself.
But, I'm going to focus on how to recognize it in others.
When we recognize shutdown in others, it might help us to feel more
compassion and less judgment for them.
My name is Justin Sunseri.
I am a therapist and coach who helps you live more calmly,
confidently, and connectedly without psychobabble or woo woo.
Welcome to Stuck Not Broken.
This podcast is not therapy, nor is it intended to replace therapy.
What's a dorsal vagal shutdown?
Let's understand shutdown a tad more before discussing how it might show
up in the people that you care about.
Biologically, shutdown is a state of immobilization.
Specifically, collapsed and limp.
Freeze is also a state of immobilization, but tense.
Shutdown is also a state of conservation.
The body is slowing down, or shutting down, its processes to conserve resources
in anticipation of coming out of shutdown.
When it comes out of shutdown it emerges into sympathetic flight fight activation
and then uses that energy to create space, escape, and return to safety.
So shutdown is collapsed limply and conserving resources.
Everything is slowed down.
Shutdown also requires reduced stimulation.
The external world is overwhelming, it's too much.
Shutdown needs less, it needs less noise, less light, less people even.
On that note, shutdown's actually usually pretty alone.
In shutdown, one disconnects from others, and even from themselves to some degree.
So, let's understand shutdown as a state of collapsed and
disconnected immobilization.
Okay, now we're ready to learn how shutdown shows up in others, like
the person that you're thinking of that prompted you to click on
this episode in the first place.
Is what I'm going to share true for everyone all the time?
Of course not.
But these are fairly predictable presentations of shutdown.
At the end of this episode, just to throw a wrench into everything,
I'll share how this actually might not be true at all at the same time.
So what I'm giving you are likely very common presentations of shutdown,
but at the extreme, shutdown could present much differently as well.
shutdown and isolation.
Someone in shutdown, including your loved one, may withdraw.
They might be isolating themselves.
This can be as extreme as locking themselves in a dark room and doom
scrolling for hours or oversleeping.
Being alone feels better for somebody who's in shutdown.
Other people are potentially overwhelming.
Not to mention the sounds, the crowds, and the lighting of the places
that we typically go to every day.
You might go to the grocery store and have no problem.
But Someone in shutdown could struggle to get out of their front door because
they're so physically exhausted.
And then when they get to the store, that might be another huge
challenge to get into that next door.
Remember, shutdown is a state of collapse.
Their body is at least prepared to collapse, not to
mobilize and go to the store.
And if they make it to the store they could legitimately
struggle with overstimulation.
Too many people, too many sights, too many sounds, the
lighting might be too harsh even.
You might think, "Well, too bad. They need to get over it, or that's an
excuse for laziness." I'm not asking you to be okay with the shutdown that
your loved one is struggling with.
I'm not asking you to be okay with how they're handling it, or not handling it.
I don't think the person in shutdown is okay with it either, but whether you
accept it or not, whether you're okay with it or not, these are potential
obstacles for somebody in shutdown.
This is their reality, or at least a piece of it.
the demeanor and body posture of shutdown
When someone is stuck in shutdown, you'll see it in their faces and their body.
Again, shutdown is about collapse.
So someone in shutdown will have a collapsed look to them.
Maybe not lying on the floor like literally collapsed, but
slumped, slouched, shriveled.
They appear smaller.
This is how they show up to my therapy office, no matter
what age they are, honestly.
Teens are probably more obvious about it, but adults do it too.
As mobility comes back into their system, they can sit upright, they can lean
forward, they think and they plan with more motivation and more intention.
Also, somebody in shutdown, and maybe this is describing your loved
one, They'll also have unique facial qualities, and by unique I mean, uh,
they kind of don't have facial qualities.
I mean, they do, obviously.
They still have faces, but the life in their face is just kind of gone.
They're just sort of flat.
There's no emotion in their faces.
They don't smile.
Their eyes are open, but only partially.
Especially compared to Flight Fight, which are more wide open.
Their upper cheeks, the person in shutdown, they aren't doing much
and eye crinkles don't really form on the corners of their eyes.
Of course, I'm speaking very generally and really more to the extreme one
dimensional presentation of shutdown.
There's obviously a variety of possible presentations, but you're
likely to see these types of things.
When you're with someone who's in shutdown, you might feel yourself
pulled down, heavier, less hopeful.
It's not their fault, they're not imposing that feeling on you.
You, as an empathetic, caring person, are feeling a bit of
what it's like to be them.
That's a bit of their experience, day in and day out.
Someone in Shutdown also hugely struggles with eye contact.
They tend to look down.
In Flight Fight, we look away also, but more around the environment, almost
looking for danger, scanning for danger.
Or in Flight Fight, our eyes are wider open, staring at the person
in front of us and maybe even creating uncomfy eye contact.
But in shutdown, they look down.
Like, they lack the energy to even look up.
Maintaining eye contact is pretty much impossible.
That requires, maintaining eye contact requires a lot of safety in the system.
So, if you're someone that needs eye contact to feel like you're being listened
to and understood, You're kind of SOL.
If the body's in a state of collapse, and thinks it's life's in threat, then
making eye contact and facial emotiveness are just not priorities for that body.
vocal changes in shutdown
in shutdown, the voice becomes flat.
Just like facial affect and body posture.
It's there, but there's no life in it.
Very monotone and leaning more into the deeper end of the vocal spectrum,
no matter what their gender is.
In safety, we have something called vocal prosody, which is
a sing songy quality of voice.
Vocal prosody enables us to go high and low.
I can't do a very good high voice.
To go high and low.
Vocal prosody allows us to express our emotions and our intent through voice.
In a defensive state, that's not really possible.
Shutdown, in particular, as a defensive state, is flat in prosody.
And it's also slower.
There isn't much energy in what someone in shutdown is saying.
Sometimes it even seems like they struggle to get through the sentence.
It's not uncommon for someone in shutdown to think before they speak, inhale,
and then say one sentence that bypasses everything that was being talked about.
For example, if you ask someone in shutdown what motivates them, they
might pause, breathe in, and then say, "What's the point?" That one sentence
may be the best they can muster.
thinking and shutdown
On that note, let's touch upon the cognitions of someone who is in shutdown.
The thinking.
Just like face and just like voice, thinking is flat, devoid
of energy, not much life in it.
Very pessimistic.
Lacking hope.
Helpless, even.
Again, this is at the extreme.
Someone in shutdown can totally have a job they excel at, but
outside that context, they fall into typical shutdown experiences.
Or when a shutdown individual is in a different environment, like nature, or
with a loved one, or with their pet, in silence, they're less shut down, more
mobile, and maybe even more hopeful.
In shutdown, again, the body's preparing to die, so thinking is not a priority.
Just like facial emotions, vocal prosody, and body posture.
Everything is slowing down, including thoughts, and the ability
to form new memories, to sustain attention, to think critically,
and to feel hope and motivation.
Also to think hopefully and think in a motivated way.
You might think, "Well, they just need to think more positively."
And yeah, you're right.
I don't exactly disagree.
But, it's also not going to happen.
At least not when they're in shutdown.
You see, when we're in a defensive state, we don't have access
to all of our brain functions.
But that includes flight, fight, freeze, and shutdown.
But in shutdown, we might have even less.
At the very extreme, someone in shutdown may actually dissociate.
They may disconnect from their bodies, from reality, and from you.
They don't want to.
It's not a conscious choice.
It's a biological reaction which affects the entire body, including the brain.
emotions and shutdown
So we've covered isolating, body posture, voice, face, and thinking.
So what about emotions?
Just like the other domains that we've covered, the collapsed state of
shutdown affects how we feel also, or affects how your loved one feels also.
In shutdown, the individual feels slow.
Empty, heavy.
What else would they feel if they were ready to collapse and play dead, right?
They feel potentially hopeless and helpless as well.
They also know they're letting people down and themselves too.
They know they're not fulfilling their responsibilities or they're
wasting their life to some degree.
So they also feel guilt and regret.
Maybe even shame.
So there's this overall sense of disconnection in shutdown, which shows
up emotionally in a bunch of ways.
how shutdown can look like not shutdown
I'm gonna backtrack in the intro I mentioned throwing
a wrench into everything and how this could all be wrong.
I say that because someone in shutdown may adopt behaviors that completely
mask the fact that they are in shutdown.
This is more for those who are in life contexts where they are
dealing with abuses of various kinds day in and day out.
Someone who's been repeatedly abandoned, neglected, or let down.
This person seriously lacks safe connections, and they may
need to become someone else to meet their own survival needs.
They're still them, but they're them with a fake smile on their face.
They're them, but they behave in ways that seem counterintuitive to their well being,
like, connecting with their abusers, something that's called appeasement.
Or, they may preemptively attempt to reduce their partner's rage by
prioritizing the partner's needs through something called fawning.
What to do.
Step 1: Validate your loved one's shutdown.
Okay, so, what the heck do you do about all this?
You're a caring individual in this person's life.
You hate seeing them go through this.
What can you do?
Let's return to an idea that I brought up before.
I said You don't have to be okay with someone being in shutdown.
You don't have to be okay with the choices they make from shutdown.
You don't have to think it's forever, and you don't have to think
you're helpless in the face of it.
And you don't have to endorse the choices that they make either.
You're allowed to want better for them.
They want it, too.
I'm not telling you how you should or should not act or feel in response
to your loved one's shutdown.
But I am recommending you acknowledge the potential truth of the situation.
In other words, validate it.
Acknowledge it.
Validating means acknowledging what is true.
If what I have described sounds like your loved one, just acknowledge it.
That doesn't mean be okay with it or like it.
Just Acknowledge it.
If you brought your validation to that person, that would probably be
more beneficial to them than telling them to think differently or reminding
them that they're wasting their life.
They already know.
Step 2: Normalize their shutdown.
after validating, the next thing you can do is normalize.
That means you reflect on their life and ask yourself, "If I had their life would I
likely have a similar shutdown response?" Or "If somebody else had their life,
would they likely have a similar shutdown response?" For example, if your spouse
who suffered ongoing abuse as a child is in shutdown, does that make sense?
If your friend whose parents abandoned him when he was young is in
shutdown, does that make sense why?
If your coworker lost those closest to her this past year, would it
make sense why she's in shutdown?
If your parents were raised in an extremely controlling and publicly shaming
religious institution, would it make sense why they might be in shutdown?
Normalizing doesn't mean being okay with it.
It doesn't mean liking it.
It just means making sense of it.
Step 3.
Let them be in shutdown.
Okay, so let's build on that.
Validate, normalize.
So, If their shutdown is valid and normal, the next step is to let it be.
Stop fighting it.
Stop minimizing it.
Stop excusing it.
Stop denying their shutdown.
Let them be in shutdown.
Again, you don't have to be okay with it, or like it.
Letting them be in shutdown means you let go of control, or the illusion of control.
It's their shutdown, not yours, so let them have it.
You can still expect the best of them.
You can still hope for the best from them.
You can still hold them accountable for the choices they make, or don't make.
But, it's their shutdown.
It's up to them to get themselves out of shutdown, ultimately.
Of course, you want to help them, and you can.
You care about the person for whom you're watching this video, or
listening to this podcast episode.
You want to help.
So, after validating, normalizing, and letting them be in shutdown, you can
connect with them more meaningfully.
Step 4: connect with your loved one.
Deb Dana has this wonderful analogy for connecting with somebody in shutdown,
which she got from somebody else who I don't know the name of, unfortunately.
Someone who shut down is like a turtle inside of its shell.
If you want the turtle to come out, you don't knock on the shell and
shake it and force it to come out.
Instead, you sit patiently and wait.
Your loved one is in their shut down shell.
Begging, pleading, yelling, forcing, threatening, shaming, guilt tripping.
These things won't help.
They may actually make things worse, I would kind of bet on it, in all honesty.
Instead, you be patient and wait for them to come out.
You can also want the best for them.
You can also tell them you believe in them, that you love them, that
you want them to get professional support, but part of the equation in
helping them is to give them patience.
Another part is to give them space.
They don't do well with pressure and pushing.
They may need space or if you're with them they may do better with quiet and calm.
Maybe ask them, they might know.
a parenting example
does this mean you give them space and let them indulge in isolation and time
killing and ignoring responsibilities?
Of course not.
I was working with a young man who just completed high school and
failed his first year of college.
Living with his parents, isolating in his room, no job, not in school,
lots of video game time, and time with his girlfriend and his friends.
Wasn't doing house chores.
Uh, in every way this kid was shut down, or this young man was shut down.
He was pretty unmotivated, wracked with, uh, guilt, and shame, and regret.
He was pretty deep in shutdown, I would say.
His parents did what any typical parent would do.
They pressured, they pleaded, they begged, they fought, and they also judged him.
All of it came from love.
I know it sounds weird, but they wanted the best for him, and they
were having a hard time watching him in shutdown waste away, pretty much.
So all of their efforts didn't help, and probably it actually
solidified his shutdown even more.
Even though it was ineffective, it came from the best, and it came from love.
They just didn't know how to connect with him, and they didn't know how
to help him get to that next step.
Things got so bad for him, he sought out therapy.
Because he knew he needed help and things were looking pretty dim.
But instead of connecting with me directly, he connected with his parents
to find him a therapist, which they did, and they connected with me.
So his parents connected him with me.
They all came to the first session and it went really well.
He was supposed to come work with me one on one, but the next session he flaked.
Because he was rude?
No.
Because he was insensitive or because he didn't care about his life?
No.
He's in shutdown.
And following through, feeling motivated, feeling energized to get out of the
house a second time was too much for him.
So, we didn't give up, we didn't shame him, the parents didn't
judge him, they didn't, no.
His parents and I worked together on how to best help him meet his goals.
They knew what didn't work, so we focused on what might work.
They did a combination of a few things.
They gave him more statements of love and support and encouragement.
They also reduced how many statements of negativity they gave him.
Was it easy and smooth?
Heck no.
But they did good enough.
On top of that, they also told him if he can't complete his household
chores, his household expectations like taking the garbage out, then
he would not be able to use their electricity for things like video games.
They told him he can make his own choices.
They would not hound him, they would not pressure him, and they would
simply remove the privileges they had provided to him, but he did not earn.
The electricity for video games is a privilege that they gave to
him even though he didn't earn it.
All of these pieces helped him to reduce his isolation and to
connect with his parents more.
He also came back to therapy and worked with me one on one to boost his motivation
and to start getting things done.
He wanted to get things done.
He just was in a deep shutdown and didn't know what to do next.
He and I met individually I think once, and after that meeting, he started
applying to jobs, he re enrolled in school, and he and I even met with his dad
so that they could talk some stuff out.
They had some issues between the two of them that were ignored
for years and years and years.
The parents gave him love and support, but more effectively.
They gave him love and support without the guilts and the shaming.
They gave him love and support because they love and support him.
But instead of being okay with and watching him not live up to their
or his expectations of himself, they changed something else, which was to
remove the privileges that they were giving to him that he had not earned.
So they gave him love support, but also they gave him plenty
of time for him to make his own decisions while also influencing
his decision making through removing privileges when it was appropriate.
This setup, this like three tiered phase of increasing positivity,
decreasing negativity, and then granting privileges when they're earned, this
was way more helpful than begging, pleading, trying to convince him,
hounding him, pressuring him, and so on.
Once they removed the friction of themselves from his shutdown,
he got the space, he got the incentive, and the support to decide
on his own to change his life.
Thanks so much for joining me on Stuck Not Broken.
I hope this episode has helped you to think differently about
the people in shutdown in your own life and how you could possibly,
potentially connect with them.
I hope you understand them better and also have more compassion for them.
Before you attempt to do anything differently though, it may help you
to reflect on whatever feelings you have about doing something different.
When the thought of giving them more space is in your head,
how do you feel about that?
If you typically pressure someone who's in shutdown how do you feel about backing up?
How do you feel about providing more love and support and understanding?
When I describe the different ways that shutdown can present itself
in others, did you notice any judgments in your mind about those
ways that it can present itself?
How do those judgments carry into your relationships with
the people you know in shutdown?
I know you care about the shutdown person in your life and I know you're
trying to learn everything that you can.
So great job on this leg of your journey, and I hope you keep it going and I
hope you reflect on yourself as well.
If you want to deepen your understanding of shutdown, I have the perfect
playlist for you I conducted a survey about a year ago called
the Shutdown Experiences Survey.
I got 75 responses from real people in shutdown sharing
their real shutdown experiences.
From this playlist that I'll share with the link in the description, you'll
get a deep, compassionate understanding of what it's like to live in shutdown.
Thank you again for listening.
Bye.
This podcast is not therapy, not intended to be therapy or
be a replacement for therapy.
Nothing in this creates or indicates a therapeutic relationship.
Please consult with your therapist or seek for one in your area if you are
experiencing mental health symptoms.
Nothing in this podcast should be construed to be specific life
advice, it is for educational and entertainment purposes only.