The Shutdown Trauma Response: Maybe It’s Not Depression?
If you find yourself collapsing in the face of overwhelm, as if all your life force got sucked into an invisible void, you might have experienced the shutdown trauma response. Most people have heard of fight, flight, freeze, and perhaps even fawn, but flop is the most misunderstood and least known. This is not because it’s uncommon though. It often gets confused with freeze, because both look like immobility and shutdown from the outside. But inside the body, something very different is happening — and that difference is crucial for learning how to relate to ourselves, understand the purpose of this survival response, and bring the nervous system back to equilibrium.
In this post, I want to bring clarity to this lesser-known trauma response. If you live with cptsd, you may be familiar with its symptoms without realizing it — they can masquerade as chronic depression, emotional numbness, or lack of motivation. If you internalize the symptoms, then you might just feel like you’re a lazy person, you’re permanently numb, or that you have a depressive personality. The shutdwon response is also common in neurodivergent folks, because the world wasn’t designed for us, so our nervous systems get taxed more easily. If internalized, neurodivergent folks can similarly berate themselves for being ‘too reactive’ when really, they need support that embraces their neurodivergence.
But, what if your flop response is just trying really hard to protect you? What if it emerged at a time when collapsing into a full body shut down was a way to help you keep on surviving? Or, what if it’s a way to try to alert you to pay attention to your body, so you can respond in a way that works with your nervous system?
Understanding this state for what it is — a survival strategy — can help loosen the shame or confusion that often comes with it, while also opening the door to a more compassionate relationship with it.
What Is the Shutdown Response?
Shutdown is what happens when your nervous system goes into collapse. The body goes limp, energy drains out of you, and everything slows down — from your heart rate to your ability to think clearly. I’ve heard clients describe it as if they’re in a foggy haze, like some force is wrapping them in a dissociative blanket. When you’re in this state, it looks passive, but it’s actually your body’s last-resort survival strategy. When the brain perceives that fight, flight, freeze or fawn won’t work — it hits the shutdown button.
The goal isn’t to run from danger anymore, but to conserve energy and reduce pain in the face of something overwhelming.
When opossums go into flop, they “play dead” in the most literal sense. Not only do they go limp, but their bodies conveniently release the stench of death to dissuade potential predators.
It might sound extreme, especially if you've never faced what you’d call a life-or-death situation. But, while us humans may not go into cadaver scent mode, we shutdown more often than we might realize.
This is because the nervous system doesn’t run on logic — it responds instinctively to perceived threat . That could mean physical danger, but it could also mean emotional overwhelm, relational betrayal, or feeling deeply trapped, especially if these threats occurred in childhood, or over a prolonged period of time. Even chronic stress without a history of complex trauma can trigger a shutdown, as is often the case with neurodivergent burnout.
Flop Vs. Freeze
Many people also confuse flop with the freeze response, but they’re quite different. Freeze is a high-energy state with immobility — the body is on alert, bracing to move but unable to. Unlike flop, the heart rate is up, muscles are tense, but you feel paralyzed. It’s like having the engine revving with the brakes on. In the animal world, it brings up the classic example of a deer in the headlights. If you’re a horror fan, extreme freeze states are often depicted in movies when someone is trying to hide from the murderer, zombie, or other evil creature, and can’t yet run away. They’re trying not to be seen or heard, until it’s safer to fight back or flee. But, they still need their nervous system on high alert, so they can take action when it’s safer to.
By contrast, the shutdown response often shows up as:
flat mood
feeling numb
dissociation
low motivation
low energy/ exhaustion
feeling disconnected from others
difficulty thinking clearly (brain fog)
Unlike freeze, the system gives up trying to move at all. The energy isn’t trapped with nowhere to go; it’s simply not there.
In sessions with clients, if I have a sense that someone is dropping into this state, I’ll ask them to check how the connection with their chair is, or their feet on the floor. When dipping into shutdown, it’s not uncommon for clients to share that it feels like they’re wearing 5 pairs of socks, or that the connection with the chair feels ‘fuzzy.’ I’ll also sometimes ask if I feel farther away than before, or maybe a bit blurry to them. These are all signs that their nervous system is heading in that direction, and a cue for me to support them to upregulate in session (which I will get to later).
The Polyvagal Ladder: Why Your Body Shuts Down When It Feels Trapped
A helpful way to understand the difference between trauma responses — and especially why shutdown happens — is through something called the Polyvagal Ladder. This comes from Polyvagal Theory, a science-backed framework developed by Dr. Stephen Porges to explain how our nervous system works when our survival responses get activated. While this theory is still contentious and debated, it’s become a go-to framework for many trauma therapists by offering a compelling, intuitive and nervous system-informed lens for understanding shutdown.
Porges uses the metaphor of the ladder. You don’t consciously move down the ladder though - your nervous system does that for you, by reacting automatically while scanning for danger or safety. At the top rung is your safe and social state, called the ventral vagal state. In this state, it’s easier to relate to others, you are more present, and if you experience an uncomfortable emotion, you are able to process it.
If something stressful happens that feels overwhelming, especially if you have cptsd, your body might drop down to the next rung: fight or flight. This is the sympathetic nervous system taking over to give you a surge of cortisol and adrenaline, so that your body is ready to take action.
If that still doesn’t help — if escape or fighting back feels impossible — your body may descend one step further. This is the dorsal vagal state, also known as flop or collapse. This is lights out, shut off mode.
Then there’s freeze - this is like being in between the two ladder rungs: the second - fight or flight, and the third, flop. This is because it’s a blended state between hyperarousal i.e the sympathetic nervous system taking over, and the collapsed, dorsal vagal state. That’s why there’s a high level of charge paired with immobility.
Emotionally, freeze and flop feel very different as well. While flop tends to be associated with a low mood and numbness, freeze is accompanied by fear or terror.
Some sources put the shutdown response under the freeze umbrella, which I think can be misleading. Pete Walker, who popularized the 4 survival responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn) and who has been very influential for good reason, does this. Collapse isn’t in his model. Rather, he mentions the collapse response briefly under the freeze section, but doesn’t give it a distinct name.
I think it’s important to distinguish the two, because it has practical implications for healing. What might be most helpful for you in freeze may not work so well if you’re in flop. Perhaps the hardest part of recovering from a collapsed state? It’s not just the numbness — it’s the heavy, burdensome shame that often comes with it. While shame can also show up in freeze, it often does not have the same sense of defeat or failure that can make healing feel like a pipe dream in shut down mode.
The Shame of Collapse
When you're stuck in a collapsed state, it’s disempowering. You feel stuck and disconnected, but there’s no energy in your system to take action. It’s like you know that you need to turn on the lights, but it has suddenly become impossible to flick the switch. If this becomes a dominant response, it’s easy to internalize this chronic collapse as evidence that there is something intrinsically wrong with you.
It also does not mean you had to be in a life threatening situation growing up for this response to become dominant. It could be countless times a parent dismissed or invalidated your emotions, ways that your penchant to be playful and explore as a child was thwarted, or more overt forms of psychological abuse that made you feel like you were at fault. Over time, this becomes internalized, and can lead to a thwarted response of shutting down when: you experience big or uncomfortable emotions, you feel excitement about trying something new, or you receive criticism, just to name a few examples. Because this has become a pattern, the body remembers how psychologically unsafe it felt as a child even now as an adult. The shutdown survival part doesn’t know that you are in a safer position now - it operates on an old default mode programmed in the past.
It might feel like an unshakable part of one’s personality, but it’s a survival response gone a bit (or very) haywire. Your nervous system made the choice for you when it was unsafe, unpredictable or overwhelming until it became a default mode. Remember, the survival responses are instinctual and faster than conscious, deliberate thinking. This is also why you can’t really logic your way out of it - when your nervous system shuts down, so does your brain. The prefrontal cortex, which helps us exercise good judgment, learn from new experiences, and regulate emotions, goes offline. (REF)
You Can’t Force Yourself Out of Shutdown
Because the shutdown response looks passive though, it can be treated like a motivation problem. People tell themselves (or are told by others) to try harder. Just get moving. But, a collapsed nervous system doesn’t respond well to pressure. So, when forcing fails, it can get internalized. But, it’s approaching it from the wrong angle. Pressure leads to overwhelm, which can just get your system to shut down all over again, into a vicious collapse, pressure, shame, collapse cycle.
When you’re in a collapsed state, you might know that taking action will help, but actually doing so feels out of reach. It’s as Stephen Porges says, ‘it is as if the nervous system betrayed us.’ (2006, p. 34). This can naturally lead to frustration.
But, instead of thinking of shutdown as a body betrayal, what if we thought of it like tortoises who had to retreat in their shells for awhile? Deb Dana, a clinician who helped polyvagal theory, uses this analogy. In an interview, she shares a conversation in which someone asks her well, then how do you get the tortoise to come out of its shell? ‘You can’t knock on the top of the shell and say, ‘Come on out now.’ Right? You don’t shake the turtle and say it’s safe to come out.’ That’s exactly it - it would only discourage the tortoise further, until it didn’t even feel safe to poke its head out of its shell an inch.
We need to treat ourselves in shutdown with the same gentleness we would treat a tortoise hidden in its shell. Our nervous systems need patience and softness when they collapse. So, if we can’t just jump start our bodies back to life what are our options?
Listening to the Body & Creating Safety
While we might find ourselves involuntarily thrust into turtle mode, as Porges (2006) explains, we can learn to become acutely aware when this happens, and make voluntary choices that will help bring us back into a state of equilibrium.
Naming & Noticing
Shutdown can feel like it comes out of nowhere sometimes, especially when faced with an unexpected trigger. But, by building your in-the-moment awareness muscle, it won’t feel as elusive. It can be helpful to start by giving it a name. As a parts work therapist trained in trauma-informed stabilization treatment (TIST) I encourage my clients to name their shutdown response as a part. You can call it the shutdown part, the collapse part, the depressive part, or anything that feels resonant. This makes it easier to name, but also notice, because it helps give you a bit of separation. Then you can notice how it’s showing up. Is it emotional numbness? a physical dissociation? looping thoughts of what’s the point? A combination? See if you can develop a bit of curiosity for how it shows up in the here and now, like you’re a detective of your own psyche.
Social Engagement
This is sometimes the last thing anyone wants to do when they’re in shutdown. Usually they feel exhausted, down on themselves, and numb - a perfect recipe for social withdrawal. Paradoxically, connecting with someone who feels safe is one of the most powerful ways to upregulate from hypoarousal. Even a short phone call, hug or cuddle (whether a human or pet), can help shift the nervous system. Ideally the social contact is one where you can take in the other person’s face, and see their expressions, but if not, hearing their voice is important. We pick up on safety cues unconsciously, and look to vocal tone, facial expressions and body language to assess for safety a lot more than the actual words spoken. Texting likely won’t be as effective even if someone is saying all the right things.
In-the-moment Upregulation
When you’re in hypoarousal, your nervous system needs to safely feel some energy come back, so it can move up to a more regulated state. This means often the opposite of what someone feels like doing, which is nothing. But, there are ways to enliven your senses that don’t require much effort, and also won’t overwhelm your system when you’re in turtle mode.
I like to encourage folks to treat it like an experiment. So, when you’re in shutdown, what might make you feel 5-10% better? It can be helpful to think of using your senses. When shut down, you feel dissociated, so your nervous system needs a reminder that you can feel things with your body. But, rather than calming scents or sounds, like lavendar and zen meditation music, you need something different in shutdown. It can be anything that feels enlivening without being too overwhelming: movement (walking , stretching, or intuitive), music with a solid beat or faster tempo, energizing scents, intense flavors (sour candies or spicy foods), or food with crunchy textures.
Grounding & Orienting
As a somatically trained therapist, these are two of my go-to ways to support a client to come out of shutdown in session. They are both very simple, and they are what we call adaptogens, meaning that your nervous system can benefit whether it’s in a state of hyperaroual (fight or flight), hypoarousal (shutdown), or freeze.
Here are a couple grounding practices that take about a minute.
(1) Putting a hand on the heart or belly (or both), and noticing the contact that your hand is making with your body. You may also notice the hand(s) rise and fall with the breath.
(2) Noticing the contact of your feet on the floor while sitting, and then slowly inviting movement into the feet. My favorite is to keep the heels on the floor while lifting the rest of the foot up, one at a time, in an alternating rhythm. Some days I just lift my toes up, and other days it feels better to lift most of the foot. You may even choose to synch your breath with the movement. The subtle movement in the feet can help gently bring some mobilizing energy into the body, which is especially helpful for shutdown.
(3) Noticing the points of contact that your body is making with the chair - under the arms (if you have arm rests), under the legs, under the seat and behind the back. As you notice these points of contact, see if the connection feels strongest in one area. If so, take some breaths while focusing on the strongest point of contact between your body and the chair. If it feels even throughout, that is fine too.
Orienting is another practice that helps signal to your nervous system that you’re safe now. I suggest that clients do it when they can have their back to a wall, because it can feel safer. Orienting is basically a fancy way of saying intentionally look around your room or space. Allow your eyes to move slowly, and take in the full 360 space. Let your eyes take in any objects of interest, like plants, paintings, scenery outside, etc.
These practices may seem very simple and obvious, but they are easy to forget, especially when you’re stuck in shutdown.
Deeper Work
Of course, if trauma is at play, or there are deeper, longstanding patterns, then getting to the root of the issue with therapy can be a big help with the right support. While in the moment coping strategies are helpful, someone could know all the nervous system hacks and still feel stuck in hypoarousal if it is a familiar place to be. Finding a therapist who specializes and is trained in a somatic (body-based) or nervous system-informed approach is a great fit for this kind of work. I find it particularly powerful to combine with parts work, especially if there are higher levels of dissociation, or the body rarely feels like a safe place to be.
The shutdown response is our last ditch survival attempt, and it helped keep us alive at times when fighting back or running away were not options. It might not always feel like it, but it’s an ingenious protective part. It’s also not all of you, even if the shutdown feels all consuming at times. While you can’t always prevent a hypoarousal state, you can learn to relate to it differently, and develop agency in how you respond to it.
If you had even a little more space from your shutdown part, what might that open up for you in your daily life?
References
Walker, P. (n.d.). The 4Fs: A trauma typology in Complex PTSD. Retrieved from https://pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm
Dana, D. (2020, June 16). Befriending your nervous system [Transcript]. Sounds True. https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/deb-dana-befriending-your-nervous-system/
Porges, S. W. (2006, March/April). Don't talk to me now, I'm scanning for danger. Psychotherapy Networker. Retrieved from https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org