A man comes to me terrified of flying. Logically he knows he is safe, and his subconscious keeps him in the fear loop anyway. When he thinks about flying, his body starts to sweat, his hands go clammy and he starts to shake.
His mind is not the one in charge at that moment. I tell this story on episode 10 of my podcast, because the machinery that shut him down on a plane is the same machinery that shuts you down when someone you love moves close.
Why does my body shut down when someone gets close?
Your body shuts down because closeness has been filed under danger somewhere below your awareness, and the shutdown is the protection. The active, thinking part of your brain goes offline and you are left in a response, with no choice about it.
In that dorsal shutdown, the cognitive part of the brain goes offline. Closeness has not hurt you in this moment. Your body is reacting to what closeness once meant.
Why can't I think my way out of it?
Because more than 80% of everyday actions are run by the subconscious, and the shutdown lives there. I say this on the episode: we do not know how we breathe, and we do not consciously direct it. The subconscious drives that pattern, and it also drives the pattern of shutting down.
Facts reach only the part of you that is online, and in a shutdown that part is offline. That is why insight alone can leave you understanding your shutdown in detail while it keeps happening.
Is shutting down the same as freezing or dissociating?
They are cousins, and what you notice in the moment tells you which one you are in:
| What you notice | Where to read more |
|---|---|
| Your body locks and goes still when touch arrives | Freezing when touched |
| Everything gets far away and you leave your body | Dissociating during sex |
| You feel little or nothing when you are touched | Feeling nothing when he touches you |
| Your mind goes blank and you cannot act as closeness grows | This page |
What helps a body that shuts down?
What helps is moving through the shutdown rather than around it, and giving your subconscious a new way to keep you safe. My own position, which I come back to on the podcast, is that the only way out is through, feeling every sensation, emotion and everything that comes up.
- Catch the first sign. A held breath, a tight jaw, a stillness in the hips. These come earlier than the blankness.
- Come back with Touch Base®. Thumb to forefinger, feel the ridges, say “I am safe right now”, and hold for two minutes.
- Go through the pattern in pieces. In RRRR, Rapid Release Rewire Restore, we move through the images, the thoughts and the body sensations of the shutdown until the old belief that you are unsafe loosens.
- Let the subconscious find another way. Hypnotherapy asks it, directly, to find a different way of keeping you safe, because its job is to keep you safe.
When this works, the biggest change is choice. For you, choice means staying or stepping away as your own decision.
When should I get help with it?
Get help when the shutdown keeps costing you closeness, or when you notice you have been managing around it for years. As an intimacy and touch coach in the UK, I work one to one in a VIP day, and I match the tool to the person, from EMDR and hypnotherapy to Somatic Experiencing. If feeling safe in touch is what you are after, read how to feel safe being touched after trauma next.
A shutdown is your body keeping you safe. Choice is what it can learn to give back.