How Shutdown can Become Freeze & What to do About it

So what if you're coming out of shutdown and you find yourself with a new Stuck state or a new predicament, which is having more freeze activation. I want to address this as a real question I got from, or as a real person asking a question on YouTube that I wanted to address. Hi, I'm Justin Sunseri. I'm a therapist and coach and I want to teach you how to live with more calm, confidence, and connection without psychobabble or woo woo. Welcome to Stuck Not Broken.

Of course, this is not therapy and should not replace therapy. So here's the question. It says, "Thank you, Justin. Since I discovered you, I was able to get out of shutdown mode that I've been in for years." Super happy for you. Congratulations on the progress. "I was able to get out of the shutdown mode that I've been in for years. Maybe most of my life. But now I'm in freeze.

And while I understand slightly touching on a safe state, I'm not sure I understand what touching on defense feels like. Can you please explain that for me again, or thanks again, your work is so important to all of us." I'm really happy to read that the progress and also I'm glad that what I put out there has been helpful for you. Let's learn or relearn what shutdown and freeze are.

And then I'm going to address in general, and I don't know about this person in particular, but in general, what could be happening if, if, if someone's going through this. And then I will lightly touch upon how to lightly touch upon. defensive activation. So first off, shutdown and freeze are different things. Shutdown is, in the, in the polyvagal theory, shutdown is a state of collapse. It's a state of limp collapse. It is the last resort when we cannot be safe, run away, be aggressive.

If none of those strategies work, or if we're not able to be safe, can't run away or fight off a danger, then we collapse. We shut down. Our body plays dead. Uh, the other option would be Freeze. Freeze is, uh, just like Shutdown, it's immobilization, but it's a tense immobilization. So Shutdown is a limp collapse, it's immobilized, but Freeze is a tense immobilization, more like a statue. The body is ready to run away or fight, but also immobilizing at the same time.

Freeze is a combination of flight, fight, flight or fight plus shutdown. So freeze is a combination of shutdown immobilization and flight or fight. Both of these polyvagal autonomic states are occurring at the same time. So we have our foot on the gas, but also on the brake at the same time. Shutdown is, is not a mixed state like that. Shutdown is a primary state. It's um, it's just the dorsal vagal pathways are active and, or more overly active and, and someone goes into a limp collapse.

So they're, they're different. I guess just to sum it up, shutdown is a limp collapsed immobilization

and freeze is a tense immobilization. They are similar, but different. And it's going to play into what could be happening if someone finds themselves going through, uh, what the questioner, uh, put forth. Which is, I'm coming out of shutdown. So a, a, a prolonged, uh, even maybe decades worth of living in shutdown, which is not playing dead, but the body's in a state of collapse. It's in a state of disconnection.

It's in a state of numbness and low energy and unable to fulfill the wants that the person has like they want to do things, but they lack the energy to make it happen So even though it's not playing dead for decades that activate that- that shutdown activation is active in the system for decades, and that's what it can look like day to day. Really quick, again, a reminder, to get to shutdown, one has to go, they can't be safe, they can't be in their safety state.

They can't run away, they can't fight, and so the body collapses in shutdown.

One can get stuck in shutdown, and that's trauma. One can get stuck in a state of defense, and one of those states of defense would be shutdown. So to come out of shutdown, to come out of that stuck defensive state, that traumatized shutdown state, you have to do the reverse. You can't just be done with shutdown and feel safe and fulfilled and how to live a content life. It's not exactly how it works. You kind of have to go through for really full healing.

You have to go from shutdown through fight, through flight, and then back into your safety state. Now that's the very one dimensional cartoon way of looking at it. It is more complex than that. All of these states are active within us pretty much at all times. Like right now I'm immobile. I'm sitting still, but you know, my hands are moving and I'm talking a lot and thinking critically and rapidly. And so I'm in my safety state, but I'm also kind of mobile. I'm also immobile.

So it's all these things are kind of happening all at once. My dominant state or one's dominant state might be shut down or might be flight fight or might be safety. So if your dominant state is shut down, For that to ease up, you have to have more access to safety. So you have to build up the strength of your safety state.

As you do that, the dominance from shutdown alleviates, but now flight and fight come more online because our body has to go through those autonomic shifts in order to get even deeper into its safety state and have more of a dominant safety state. So, when you come out of shutdown, what you'll find is that now there's more fight, probably specifically fight happening, but we'll call it, we'll say flight and fight. As you come out of shutdown, there's more sympathetic flight fight activation.

But again, it's not all at once. So it's not like you're in shutdown today and then 12 hours from now, at the end of the day, you're out of shutdown. It's a gradual process of coming out of shutdown. So, as immobilization softens, mobilization will increase,

but it's not one or the other. So you might have a ton of shutdown today. And then two months from now, that shutdown has decreased by 50%. Let's give it a number. And since it's decreased by 50%, now the mobilization system has increased by, I don't know, we'll say 10 percent and safety's increased by 40%. I make it up numbers. Don't worry about the numbers. So even though shutdown's gone down and safety has come up, well now there's more room in your system to have sympathetic activation.

But the shutdown's still there. So what could be happening is that, especially if there's not enough safety in the system, as shutdown recedes, well now sympathetic's coming up. And so now we have sympathetic flight fight and shutdown, uh, kind of co occurring. Uh, they're, so they're there, and, and this is, this could be the process of healing. This could be the process, this could be a sign of progress.

So it's not like the shutdown's done and I'm good, it's, well now shutdown's less, and now I have to also feel and utilize my, my newfound sympathetic fight activation, plus seek out safety and, and practice feeling that. So there's a lot of things that kinda happen all at once. But that could be What's happening in a situation like this, so shutdown's less cool, but sympathetic's more. But now both of those are kind of in the system, and it could feel like a freeze.

It could feel like, not a full on freeze probably, but, um, it could feel like there's something I'm working on, and I'm making progress on it, but I keep stalling. Or there's something in my mind that I want to achieve, and I'm just, I'm not moving forward with it. So there's mobilization. It's there. I want to create this art project. And I started it, but then I just sit there staring at the canvas. So there's mobilization.

The body wants to do something, but just kind of stalls or just kind of freezes. But it's not an intense freeze where your muscles are actually tense and your eyes are wide. It's not a panic attack. It's more just, it could look like that. Could it look like a panic attack? Could it look like a freeze? Eh, kinda. My client work, at least, and for myself. As shutdown recedes, there's definitely more sympathetic in the system.

Uh, it can look like a big burst of it, where like, Oh, this feels great, let me just run with this and use it. But it's kinda all over the place, and so it's dysregulated. That, that can, it's, there's no like one way these things can look. And, and so it could look more like stalling, it could look like out of control, sympathetic, but not.

Like you're actually, you know, hurting someone, but just a lot of aggression in my system and now I'm telling people off or, or I'm getting a ton of work done, but I'm not really being that productive. I'm just sort of spinning my wheels. It could look different ways.

So, for the question that's put forth, when we come out of shutdown and we notice some freeze or some lingering or background freeze or, Something in that realm that could be what's happening is that now they're just more sympathetic, but it's also shut down.

And so those two things are in a sense competing, uh, but really in you and your system, in your safety state, there's an inability to, or the strength is lacking to allow both of those activations to allow yourself to be shut down, but also to vacillate over to mobilization. The safety state always needs to be strengthened. All of us, I think. Every day we should be working on that.

But as the safety state strengthens, the shutdown will continue to recede and it'll be able, the safety state will be able to greet and welcome and um, point the emerging sympathetic activation in the appropriate direction. that's, that's meaningful. I'm actually working on something right now, a new cohort and course called Stillness to Sympathetic. And that is going to teach people how to who people who have access to stillness, which is, um, shut down plus safety.

So people have access to stillness and are noticing some sympathetic activation coming back in their system. It teaches that person how to welcome it, how to feel it, but also how to direct it toward a meaningful. goals, hobbies, productivity, whatever they want, exercise to be able to point that emerging sympathetic activation in the right direction or in the direction that is right for them.

The questioner asks, they, or they say they know how to touch upon safety, great, but how do you touch upon defense? It, it's the process of it, at least the way I break it down in my coursework is very similar. And what I would ask you or ask anyone, not just the questioner, but I would ask us to do is can you mindfully connect with what you feel in the present moment, no matter what it is? And that's not easy.

But when it comes to safety, can you go for a walk and mindfully connect with the experience of the sensory input around you? So that would be like, going for a walk, and it's a sunny day, and I like that feeling. Like, yay, this is nice. Um, that's safety, and that's nice, but it's like passive safety. You're not really mindfully connecting with it. You're not getting the most out of it. So the next step would be, can you mindfully experience what it's like to go out for a walk on a sunny day.

Can you notice how the sun feels on your skin and how that affects your breath? Can you notice what the chill of the air might feel like on your face and how you feel about that internally? What happens inside of you based on that external input? Can you listen to a bird and notice whether you like it or not? And if you like it, how could you tell? What do you feel internally? Are you more or less likely to smile when you listen to that bird? So all of these pieces.

When we mindfully attune to them one by one and notice how we feel inside of it, that to me, that's mindfulness. To me, that is mindfully putting the reps in and feeling your safety state when it's there. So same thing when it comes to defensive activation. Can we notice it when it's there and mindfully connect with it?

That would be what I would encourage people to do in my coursework, what I encourage people to do is have- or at least starting out, have an environment in their home where it is giving them consistent cues of safety. We call it the Passive Safety Environment. It's also in book number two that I, that I wrote, uh, Stuck Not