SHUT DOWN MINI-SERIES: Why Do I Shut Down When Things Get Heavy?

Shutdowns can look and feel different for each of us.  Sometimes deep and immediate, sometimes a slow drip toward isolation. Numbness, wordlessness, sometimes seething, sometimes out-of-body.  We all shut down sometimes, even if it isn’t our usual modus operandi.  But why do they happen in the first place?  And what can we do about them?  It all starts with noticing.  In Part One of our series on shutdowns, we talk about trauma responses in the body and our developing brain throughout the life cycle—it turns out our brains don’t stop developing after adolescence.  We share our personal experiences with shutting down and—surprise!—they’re very different from each other.  We talk about self-soothing versus coregulation.  We ask: When one of us is shutting down, what would be a relationally healthy thing to do?  The ultimate goal is always in undoing the aloneness.

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This podcast is not a substitute for therapy with a licensed provider.