The Escape Artist: When we ‘learn’ to shut down as a way to survive
In my coaching work, I often meet people who don’t describe themselves as anxious, reactive, or overwhelmed.
They describe themselves as:
“tired.”
“disconnected.”
“flat.”
“numb.”
“foggy.”
“just not that emotional.”
They may be high-functioning on the outside—holding jobs, parenting, showing up for responsibilities—while feeling strangely absent from their own lives on the inside.
What they’re often experiencing isn’t laziness, lack of motivation, or failure.
It’s nervous-system shutdown.
What Shutdown Actually Is
When most people think about stress responses, they think of fight or flight—anxiety, anger, panic, adrenaline.
But the nervous system has another option.
When threat feels overwhelming, inescapable, or chronic—especially early in life—the body may choose conservation instead of mobilization.
This is sometimes called:
• freeze
• collapse
• dorsal-dominant states
• immobilization
• dissociation
Different words point to the same biological truth:
the system is reducing output to survive.
Heart rate slows.
Energy drops.
Emotional range narrows.
Sensation dulls.
Thinking becomes foggy.
Connection fades.
It is not a choice.
It is physiology.
A deep protective reflex designed to reduce pain and conserve energy when action no longer feels possible. We see versions of this throughout the animal world—an organism going still as a last-ditch survival strategy, hoping a predator loses interest. When danger passes, the nervous system gradually comes back online, and sometimes the animal is able to escape. A very real defense mechanism we might laugh at when we see possums do this on an online video .
How Shutdown Develops in Childhood
Shutdown often forms in environments where:
• caregivers were depressed or emotionally absent
• anger was unpredictable
• conflict never resolved
• children were ignored or overwhelmed
• chaos lasted too long
• responsibility was placed on young shoulders
• there was no safe adult to turn to
When nothing the child does reliably changes the environment, the nervous system may conclude:
Mobilizing costs too much.
So it conserves.
Instead of crying…
it numbs.
Instead of asking…
it withdraws.
Instead of fighting…
it collapses inward.
This is not surrender.
It is strategy.
A young body protecting itself the only way it knows how.
What Shutdown Feels Like in Adult Life
Adults who live close to shutdown often experience:
• chronic fatigue
• emotional numbness
• difficulty accessing desire or anger
• zoning out during conversations
• trouble making decisions
• needing excessive sleep or isolation
• feeling detached from partners
• forgetting what they enjoy
• watching life rather than inhabiting it
• struggling to initiate change
• going blank under pressure
Some oscillate between shutdown and bursts of competence—pushing hard until their system collapses again.
Others live in a low-energy state so long that it feels like personality.
“I’m just not passionate.”
“I don’t need much.”
Sometimes that’s true.
Sometimes it’s a nervous system that never learned it was safe to fully come alive.
Why Shutdown Is So Often Misunderstood
Because shutdown looks passive, people are frequently judged—by others or themselves—as:
• unmotivated
• apathetic
• lazy
• avoidant
• depressed
• checked out
While depression can overlap with shutdown, the nervous-system pattern itself is not a moral failure.
It is what happens when a system has carried too much for too long.
Your body didn’t quit.
It protected you.
Why Coming Out of Shutdown Takes Time
One of the hardest truths for people healing from shutdown is this:
You cannot force your way back into aliveness.
Trying to override collapse with willpower, productivity hacks, or constant stimulation often backfires.
The nervous system doesn’t emerge because it’s commanded.
It emerges when it senses safety.
Consistency.
Choice.
Boundaries.
Gentle engagement.
Enough rest.
Support.
Predictability.
When shutdown formed in childhood, it did so because activation was dangerous or useless.
So the system will only thaw when it believes the environment has truly changed.
How Coaching Works With Shutdown
In my coaching practice, we never rush people out of collapse.
We slow down enough to notice what the body is doing.
We ask:
When do you feel yourself go blank or heavy?
What precedes the drop in energy?
What situations make you disappear?
What feels even slightly resourcing?
What did younger you need but didn’t get?
Then we work bottom-up—through the body.
There is an entire spectrum of ‘collapse’ but severe collapse might be helped with:
• orienting to the room
• noticing temperature, light, and sound
• grounding through feet and breath
• tracking sensation before story
• choosing micro-actions rather than big pushes
• letting emotion rise just a notch
• building rest without guilt
• receiving support slowly
• letting pleasure register again
The goal is not to become hyper-activated.
It’s to restore flexibility.
The ability to mobilize when needed… and rest without collapsing.
The Courage of Coming Back Online
For people who lived in shutdown, feeling again can be terrifying.
Energy once preceded danger.
Emotion once overwhelmed.
Visibility once brought cost.
So thawing is not glamorous.
It can feel awkward.
Tender.
Unsteady.
Sometimes grief surfaces for what was missed.
Sometimes anger finally appears.
Sometimes joy surprises people.
All of this is a nervous system remembering how to move.
Moving Forward
If your body learned to shut down, that was not weakness.
That was adaptation.
What’s ready to change is not your personality—but the environment inside your body.
Healing means giving your nervous system new data:
I am not trapped anymore.
I have choices now.
I can stop.
I can move.
I can ask.
I can feel.
Forward motion doesn’t come from forcing yourself awake.
It comes from creating the conditions that let your body trust life again.
That is not dramatic.
That is biological.
That is profound.
