How Long Does Shutdown last Real People Answer (SNB 227)

Hi, I'm Justin Sunseri. I am a therapist, a coach, and the creator of the Polyvagal Trauma Relief System. This is the second episode of my shutdown experiences survey results, so if you haven't watched the one right before this, I highly recommend you go watch that one first.

This episode, I'm going to share more of the survey results, like how far away safety feels from someone who's in shutdown, how much time they spent in shutdown and the actual words of the respondents who are in shutdown about what it's like to be in shutdown. So get ready to receive some validation and normalization. You are not alone in your shutdown experiences.

Welcome to Stuck Not Broken, where I teach you how to live with more calm, confidence and connection without psychobabble or woo This is of course not therapy, nor is it intended to replace therapy. Okay, so shutdown is disconnection. We know that based on the last episode. That was made really, really clear, right? The general experience of shutdown is disconnection from yourself, from the environment, and from others.

Part of this disconnection is numbness, like physical numbness, emotional numbness. Part of this disconnection could be actual dissociation, being cut off from yourself, feeling like you're not in your body, or feeling like reality isn't real. But both of these things have to do with the safety state. If you don't have access to your safety state, it results in defense.

That could be flight, or fight, or shutdown, or freeze, but you have to have access to your safety state in order to feel connected. Shutdown is the furthest rung down the polyvagal ladder, so it's the furthest away from the safety state. So that begs the question, how far away does safety feel from shutdown? There were five options to pick from. I'll read you the results of each one. The highest one at 42 percent is, "I can't even see my safety state from here."

This sounds like a significant amount of shutdown, they can't even see it. The safety state seems completely unreachable from this state, from this deep shutdown experience, I mean. They probably don't even know how to access their safety state. That's pretty common for someone to shut down, not to know how to feel or how to experience what's within them. And that includes their safety state. They don't know how to feel it. They don't don't know how to access it.

The person who's feeling like their safety state, like they can't even see it. That person's probably in a pretty hopeless, helpless, unmotivated kind of state. Sensory safety cues might be the most accessible, uh, something that helps you to connect to the environment, connecting to the self, recognizing your emotions, connecting to other people. That might be too much to ask.

So using your senses in a lower stimulation environment, that might be the most accessible way to, uh, to feel some level of safety or some level of grounding to the present moment. I highly recommend reduced stimulation and work on increasing your passive safety cues.

The second option is "I see it, it's possible to get there, but I don't know how." And this was about 12 percent of the respondees. So this person has some level of safety that they've touched upon in the past although and they have the capacity to still but It's just a pretty big challenge. So it might be best to focus on sensory safety, but also memory and imagination. Imagination and memory functionally are pretty much the same thing when it comes to anchoring and safety.

But if you use the memory in particular, it might help you to focus on a specific aspect or specific experience of safety from the past. So that might be an accessible way to experience safety again today, even while existing in shutdown. Imagination plays a similar role, but that's something you have to create

with you, with your mind, obviously. The next option is, "I touch into my safety state every now and then, but I lose it easily." And this is about 22 percent of respondents said this. This sentiment is pretty common.

I think that people who come to my courses and community, but also to my content here on YouTube or here on my podcast, They're kind of in this boat where they have an experience of safety and maybe they can do something on purpose to feel that way, to feel more safety in their system, but they can't hold on to it. So like they know there's something there that they can actively work towards and maybe even do things that just sort of feel better, but they lose it really easily.

So this is, I think this is a common, not just in shutdown, but from any defensive state.

But this indicates to me that you're building self regulation. There's something that's going right here as far as self regulation and your safety state and maybe even building your vagal brake. The safety state is strengthening. So it's accessible, but it's hard to hold on to it, which is a pretty normal part of change and trauma recovery or any self development really. definitely start with or maybe solidify passive safety cues in your environment, then mindfully utilize more active means.

So that means set up your safety environment at home, things that just sort of generally feel better than not. But then actively do other things that could be yoga stuff. It could be some meditation stuff It could be using your senses.

It could be movement based There's a lot of options But actively do those things mindfully like really experience them in your safety environment that might help get you to that next level The next option is "I feel safety often But I'm still in shutdown often too" and this was also at 22% And that's completely okay. Keep focusing on safety. And eventually that shutdown, the immobilization of shutdown plus safety will turn into stillness.

And stillness is the ability to, to not move and be okay with it.

Stillness, uh, results in mindfulness or more mindfulness. It results in meditative practices. It results in being able to go to sleep. Stillness is. huge. We do it all the time. I'm being still right now in this chair as I record this podcast. So shutdown eventually might turn into stillness if you practice safety enough and really deepen your anchoring in your safety state. But from that, that deep enough safety anchoring and from stillness could come mobilization.

So if you can successfully immerse yourself into a shutdown that is deeply connected to safety, then your self regulation might take that next step and climb up the polyvagal ladder into fight and then flight. But you might notice some mobilization coming into your system. That's a really good sign. And again, stay anchored in your safety state and allow that mobilization to come as it does. And the last option with only one person who selected it says "I have lots of access to my safety state.

I experience shutdown as stillness." One person said this. Congratulations to that one person. Whatever you're doing, keep it up. The next question on the survey is how long have you been in shutdown? So I'm a therapist. I'm a coach. I run my private trauma recovery courses in community and I get messages from podcast listeners all the time. So I know how long people can exist in shutdown or any defensive state.

So this isn't exactly a surprise to me, but I know also that when people hear that they're, they've existed in a shutdown state for a long time and that they're not alone, that they're, they're surprised. So these, these results might surprise you, but it's super common. to be in a shutdown state, or really any other defensive state, for a very long time, even decades.

Childhood, of course, always plays a role in our current states, our, the way we were parented, our upbringing, our neighborhoods, our companions growing up, all these things affected us for better or worse. I know it sounds like a very therapy- ish kind of thing to say, but it's true. Our nervous system adapts based on the needs of the context, based on the needs of survival.

So if you needed to exist in a shutdown state in order to get your needs met, or to get through the day, or to get through the moment repeatedly, then you likely, or your nervous system likely would have developed in a more shutdown state. Alright, so let's take a look at what the respondents said. At the highest was 24 percent of respondents saying that they had been in shutdown for 1 to 3 years.

Four years ago, well, three to four years ago was the COVID pandemic lockdown forced isolation pretty much globally. I tend to think that the 24 percent of respondents who said that they've been shut down for one to three years, it probably has something to do with that. I imagine that if I had, in 2020, done the same survey with the COVID quarantines, the civil unrest, a very intense election within the USA, the number of people in shutdown probably would have been higher, I assume.

18 percent of respondents said that they have been in shutdown within the past year. 3 percent of respondees, or two people, said they had been in shutdown for 41 to 50 years. And 7 people, or 10%, said they'd been shut down for over 50 years. Shutdown can exist for a long, long time. For the people who said that they've been shut down for over 50 years, think about what were, what was the attitudes about mental health back then?

What was the attitude about mental health and speaking up about your emotions or seeking help uh, 50 years ago? What did their families teach them? What were they taught to recognize and express in their emotions? Were they taught to recognize and express all of their emotions, or just some of them, or to repress them, to keep quiet for the family, to keep quiet for, well, whatever group that they're part of?

One of my community members actually during one of our meetups, she said that to be a quote unquote, good little girl meant to not express yourself when you were young. Actually a couple of the women in my group have mentioned something very similar to that. Those results were at the low end and the high end there was also stuff in the middle But I'll go into that a little bit more coming up Okay, so that was how long has someone been in a dominant shutdown state throughout their life?

This next question is how long does an acute episode of shutdown last? When is shutdown dominant and there's not really enough safety in your system? When is a episode of shutdown dysregulated? Or how long does it last for? In the survey I used the language "periods where shutdown is obvious or more intense than usual." The most responses were less than a day. That was about 21%.

This person's probably isolating, probably not wanting to get a bed, having negative thoughts, maybe even thoughts about death, but they're probably mostly functional. But the shutdowns definitely noticeable. At the lower end of the results was one to two months. That was at 5%. 14% said less than a week. 20 percent said somewhere between 1 and 4 weeks, 5 percent said 1 to 2 months, and almost 12 percent said shutdown never ends. Really like a big range of how long shutdown can last.

So what could help an acute shutdown, what could help to come out of it? Listen to what your body needs and mindfully provide it. Based on last episode, we know that someone who shut down needs lower stimulation and they kind of need to be alone. So doom scrolling is not going to help, binging on things, that's not going to help. Substances don't really help. Maybe you might feel less shut down doing these things, but it doesn't really help someone to come out of a shutdown.

It doesn't really help someone to recover from shutdown. It just sort of masks the problem. So if you can, mindfully experience the underlying emotions and sensations of shutdown, which is very difficult. It's not easy to do that. It might be terrifying to think that. The priority is always to anchor into safety. If you can do that, then allow, that's what, that's what I mean by mindfully. If you can be in safety, then you can mindfully experience those emotions that come from a shutdown.

So if you can do that, the intensity of them, as long as you're existing in safety, the intensity of those emotions might soften and then some self regulation out of shutdown might occur. So mindfully experiencing your shutdown might mean that if you need to cry, you let yourself cry. And that might even mean a lot. Crying does not mean that you're weak. It does not mean that you're failing. It might just be part of the process.

If you need to cry more the next day, then you need to cry more the next day. A lot of times with people who do a lot of crying and have a lot of crying to do, they judge themselves. They call themselves weak. They say they're failing. They don't just accept that they have a real feeling and that it needs to be released. And crying oftentimes is that way. Regardless of all this, the priority, again, must be safety.

So I would focus on your underlying practices of safety, identify what safety feels like for you, and then identify what helps you get to safety, and then repeatedly practice that. I'll wrap this episode up with some words from the people in

shutdown that took my survey. They described their experiences of shutdown. I tried to whittle this down to as few as possible, but it's hard to do it when there's really so much great descriptive words in here that I think that you need to hear if you're in shutdown. I think it helps to hear that you're not alone and that other people experiencing experience something similar to you and can maybe even validate it, normalize it and give you new language.

So what I'll do is I'll take a bunch of these and segment them into how long the people have existed in shutdown. Pretty much though, the rest of the episode is going to be these descriptions of shutdown from the people in shutdown. They're not exactly easy to hear, but I didn't feel like it was right to water it down or censor it. So, just kind of this is your warning, I guess. There's no trauma descriptions or anything. And one more thing.

If you have some love to give, put it in the comments on YouTube for all the people who shared something here. I have three from people who said that they have been in shutdown within the past year. Cindy J says it's like staring into the abyss. Jen says my body feels heavy, gray, zombie like. Chris says everything feels too much and too overwhelming, while at the same time there is huge amounts of apathy and just not caring about anything. I want to run away and have zero responsibility.

I become all consumed with thoughts about me and my suffering and nothing else matters. I have four responses from people who said that they've been in shutdown from one to three years. Jillian says, exhausted like I'm filled with lead or have been drained of blood. Ken says, Nothing can be done. Not one thing will fix this. And I am correct in this. Except, time passes, and one morning, one day, maybe I stick my neck out.

Mel says, Devoid of hope, nothing will ever change, feel completely stuck in the state. It feels like a force pulling you down, and you no longer have the strength to fight it, so you just give in to it. Kelly says, Like a heavy wall is blocking my view of reality, but I can't see past it and I can't move it. I have four more from the four to ten years in shutdown. Charlotte says, I barely feel my body at all, instead just feeling the need to crawl into a dark and silent corner to disappear.

Thoughts are tumbling over each other, but in such a disconnected and foggy way that I can't grab them. Rosa says, There are varying degrees. Very intense shutdown feels as if my body is very heavy. All I want to do is go to bed and lie in the dark. My thoughts are quite dark and hopeless, or I feel very unreal, as if I'm not really here. I daydream a lot, and this is my most common coping mechanism when I'm in an intense state of shutdown.

It's the only thing that stops me from crying to disappear in my head into a fantasy story that I make up. Allie says Shutdown is like I've sunken into the depths of the ocean Lizelle says like falling down a big black bottomless hole, but

it's not necessarily uncomfortable. The isolation warms the air around me. Darkness becomes my bodyguard. As bad as it is and it is really bad Although I have never considered any form of suicide or self harm, neither am I scared of death either. In short, shutdown to me is a temporary form of death. I have three from the 11 to 20 years in shutdown group. Nico says it's a dark cave with no way out.

Lauren says I'm tired all the time, yet can't manage to sleep at night at all, but somehow I can sleep for hours during the day. I can't accomplish any of my responsibilities, and I don't even want to think about them. I get overstimulated easily by everything around me and have no appetite. I call my kind of shutdown doom spiraling. Laura says it's like trying to see through fog to walk through quicksand.

Everything takes concerted effort and takes so much energy there is none left over for connecting with others or even trying to find safety. I am constantly fighting the desperate and all consuming drive to find somewhere dark to hide and shut down or sleep. I genuinely feel like when it's at its most intense I will die if I do not isolate and switch off. I fight it but it's exhausting and struggle to think positively but have faith in the impermanence of the state.

I have three from the 21 to 30 years in the shutdown group. Terry says, Like being alone in a dark well with no ladder to climb out and no one coming to save me. This is extreme and acute shutdown. On a day to day basis where I dip into shutdown, it often feels like a nausea and sinking feeling in my stomach. Combined with fatigue, lack in motivation and feelings of worthlessness or why am I even bothering? Hilda says, disconnected like part of me has fallen asleep.

Anne number three says, waiting to die alone and knowing I deserve it. I have three more from the 31 to 40 years age group. Julie says, I feel so useless. I hate myself for what I have been through. I wish I had never been born. Amy says, My shutdown feels like an out of body experience and I become silent and unresponsive. I feel like I'm losing my identity and uncertain of who I am and why I exist. Often times when in shutdown, I want to sleep forever or hide under blankets.

Mara says My life feels visually muted like looking up through a tumultuous water after a huge wave has clobbered you, disorienting. My life sounds tuned out, not just in a peaceful sense, but more like Charlie Brown's teacher in the Snoopy shows. womp womp, where I can't make out meaning or hear actual words in my environment. Tactilely, my body literally loses its sense of pain. Sensations of extreme hot or cold are numbed, and the natural hunger or thirst drive get turned off.

from 41 to 50 years anonymous number four says Dissociative. Blurry. Not really living. No energy. No drive. With fear as a normal state. Just want to get by. And then in the 50 plus years I have three. Smoky moon says I lose myself. I collapse. I cry. I have no voice. Even though I think and feel a great deal. Mary says It's like waiting for my life to happen. Wondering who I am then feeling like time will run out before I answer those questions.

Then I glimpse at the terror of becoming real and go back to shutdown. The moments of shutdown are being inside my own head where I am not even present and nothing around me touches me. It's empty and numb. I'm invisible to others. Everything is flat. No one wants me to come out, and I wouldn't know how if I tried. And Joan says, Existing but not living. Thank you so much for those who shared their experiences of shutdown.

And for you, dear listener, I really hope that gives you some new language, some validation, some normalization, uh, for what you're going through. And again, if you have any love to give or any words of comfort, please, uh, in the YouTube comments, if you're watching this on YouTube, put them there. That'd be fantastic. And for everyone, I have a shutdown playlist on YouTube that I'll link in the description.

If you want to learn more about this stuff, gain new language, and hopefully receive more validation and normalization, uh, watch that. It might be, it might be useful. If you're ready to take the next steps on your unstucking process though, um, I have something that I created called the Total Access Membership. Within the Stuck Not Broken: Total Access Membership there's a wonderful small private community of people who are stuck somewhere and are working their way out of their stuck state.

Could be shut down, it could be flight, it could be fight, it could be freeze. There's a really good mix of people there that are, that are wonderful. And in the Total Access Membership, I also have courses. The first one is Polyvagal 101. The second one is Building Safety Anchors, where I teach you how to live with more safety and calm in your system. And the third one is Unstucking Defensive States, where I teach you how to directly feel, experience, and relieve your stuck defensive state.

So thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I really hope to welcome you inside of the Total Access membership. There'll be a link in the description on how to learn more. Thank you so much for listening to this fellow Stucknot. I really hope it's been a helpful resource for you. Until next time. 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. More resources are available in the description of this episode and in the footer of justinlmft. com.