The shutdown state - Dorsal vagal

Contrary to popular belief, a state of shutdown is not the same as a freeze state.

According to Polyvagal theory freeze is a mixture of mobilisation and immobilisation. You can observe this state in your life, as having so many things you want/need to do, but you simply can’t get around to do them. You feel unable to complete tasks and to finish projects.

A shutdown state is a state of collapse. We call this Dorsal vagal shutdown.

Here are a few pointers to recognise (in yourself and in others) shutdown.

• Feeling hopeless, depressed, helpless.

• Numbness and dissociation.

• Feeling abandoned, unwanted and unlovable.

• If you notice your body, while in shutdown, you may sense a heaviness, sluggishness and unwillingness to move. You may feel floppy.

This is the deepest self protective state. This state happens once the Sympathetic state has ran wild for as long as it could. Then Shutdown comes in as the next best available option.

Example: You can see this pattern quite clearly in someone who has been an overachiever all their lives and “suddenly” they burnout.

People make the mistake to think that there is no energy when in this state. And it seems true, as you may feel lifeless, but only because there is a lot of trapped energy in your system, and that’s why it shuts down, because it can’t cope with the amount of energy that has been circulating in it.

In the case of the successful overachiever, it was not a sudden shutdown. Their system had been running in a Sympathetic mode for a long time, before it crashed.

When you notice yourself in a shutdown state, the only and best way to deal with this is to lower levels of stimulation, then gradually and very slowly, take small steps towards movement.

Humming or singing is one of my favourite suggestions. It takes a very small amount of effort to hum, but it engages the ventral vagal system, the branch of the nervous system responsible for bringing in more openness, curiosity and engagement.