Stuck in Shutdown A Guide to Recognizing and Helping Loved Ones

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.