Going Numb Under Stress Is Your Brain Trying to Protect You
Shutdown happens when your brain decides there is nothing you can do, and you can train a more engaged response with practice.
The Mel Robbins Podcast · Stanford Psychologist: 7 Small Things You Can Do Right Now to Enjoy Life MoreWhen you go blank, silent, and strangely distant in the middle of stress, going blank is your body protecting you.
That is how Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford psychologist who studies joy and stress, explains emotional shutdown. When your body and brain read a situation as unsafe, and as one where you have little power, control, or options, they conclude there is nothing you can do. So, in McGonigal's words, they "try as an act of kindness to make you less present for" what is happening.
It helps to understand that the body has more than one stress setting. Some stress responses sharpen the senses, so you can fight, flee, help someone, or rise to a challenge. Shutdown does the opposite. It dulls feeling to make a painful moment less awful to sit inside.
In the short term, that mercy can help. The trouble, McGonigal says, is that what worked once can harden into a habit. Anytime life gets difficult, the body and brain return to the same shelter, and withdrawal becomes a chronic way of relating to life. The way back is to cultivate the other, more engaged stress responses.
McGonigal suggests starting not by correcting the shutdown but by recognizing it as self-compassion, the same impulse that would make you throw your body over someone you love to shield them. It reflects how deeply an inner protective side wants to look after you.
From there, she suggests changing the inner voice from protection to encouragement, speaking to yourself the way someone who loves you would. Not, I have control, but, I trust you, you have done hard things before, and you want this.
That shift works best if you train for it. McGonigal, who spent her life terrified of flying, practiced by returning to an indoor cycling class she hated. On the bike, her heart pounded, she sweated, she felt trapped, much as she did on a plane, and, as McGonigal put it, she "wanted to get off the bike" and get out of the sweaty room. She stayed anyway, in service of a life where she could fly. The memory of staying became something she could call to mind later.
Questions people ask
What should I do in the moment when I notice I am shutting down?
Grounding can help in the moment, like feeling your feet on the floor, but McGonigal argues training matters more. She describes returning to a spin class she hated and practicing staying on the bike while tolerating a pounding heart and feeling trapped, so she built a memory of staying engaged to recall later.
Is shutdown the same as fight or flight?
No, not quite. McGonigal says some stress responses heighten your senses to help you fight, flee, help another person, or meet a challenge. Shutdown works the other way, trying to take care of you by making a difficult moment less awful to be in.