The 5 Nervous System Response Mechanisms in Love: The Freeze Response (Shutdown)
199. The 5 Nervous System Response Mechanisms in Love: The Freeze Response (Shutdown)
This episode is part of a series of 5 episodes on the 5 nervous system response mechanisms and how they impact your relationship — starting at episode 195 and ending here at episode 199. If you are new to the podcast and unfamiliar with the influence of the nervous system on relationships, I invite you to listen to episodes 152, 153 and 154 first. You can also read my book S’ouvrir a l’amour (Editions Eyrolles) to identify your own mechanisms and patterns.
In my eight years of practice, the “shutdown” response has been one of the most common mechanisms and is often mistaken for a state of emotional control.
This episode is for you if you have the feeling of facing a mountain, that it is beyond your capacity (too hard), or the sense that you cannot change the situation, and you feel without energy or in depression.
Watch my webinar on how to finally be happy in love
The mechanisms of the freeze response (shutdown)
- Deep detachment, emptiness, often depression
- Long-term singlehood, extreme isolation
- Being there without really being present in a relationship — distracted, unfocused
- Unable to defend yourself or say what is wrong in a relationship
- Unable to leave a relationship
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If your partner is in this state, you may feel
- That they are closed off, absent, as if “dead” inside the relationship
- That nothing you do can reach them or touch them
- Like you are facing a wall, especially when you try to communicate or connect
- That they have no understanding or empathy for what you are going through — indifference
- That nothing changes despite your conversations, that you go round in circles
- Alone, or like you are carrying the entire weight of the relationship
Thoughts in this state
- “I can’t do this anymore”
- “I can’t cope, I see no way out”
- “Love is not for me”
- “I don’t want anything”
- “I’m done, it’s too late for me”
- “It’s too hard”
- “What’s the point?”
Emotions in this state
- Emotional numbness, emptiness
- Deep sadness or apathy
- Loss of meaning, of motivation, deep detachment, depression
- Need to isolate yourself
- Shame or guilt: “I shouldn’t feel this way” or “I deserve what’s happening to me”
Physiologically: activation of the parasympathetic state (dorsal branch) in dominance
- Very slow breathing, almost at an extreme slowdown
- Collapsed body, reduced muscle tone, as if empty or dead inside
- Monotone, weak voice
- Feeling of numbness, cold extremities, heaviness in the body
- No expression on the face, evasive or empty gaze, as if cut off from the environment
- Reduced circulation, sensation of cold, of “switching off”, no more feeling in sexuality
- Reduced cognitive functions: confusion, difficulty making choices, thinking, brain fog, blank mind
- As if “dead” inside
Some possible origins from your past
- Intense unresolved trauma — activates direct collapse because it is the mechanism that worked before
- Near-death experience
- A period of chronic stress that went on too long — the body applies the emergency brake so you react (depression, burnout)
- A childhood where you had to “die to yourself” to survive, cutting off emotions
- Environments with physical or psychological violence
How to change this mechanism?
If this is your dominant mechanism
- Create a sufficiently safe environment (eliminate dangers, leave a toxic relationship or toxic job) and reduce stress (Resources > Stress)
- Rebuild trust in your environment and in your capacity to influence or to bounce back
- Build more inner safety:
- Relearn to feel your sensations at the level of your current capacity
- Relearn to feel uncomfortable emotions and respond to them
- Trust your own judgement
- Become your own best friend again
- Relearn social engagement — come out of isolation at the level of your current capacity
Physiologically, this means you need to retune your physiology to restore energy to your system, relearn to feel your sensations, and process the frozen areas that emerge along the way. Working on your traumas through the body and on your physiology is essential here.
This mechanism will stop expressing itself in dominance when your nervous system has had enough evidence that you can face the stresses of your environment. This is precisely what I have developed in my Somatic Deprogramming method, a structured psycho-corporeal approach, born from 8 years of practice and accompanying more than 600 people, to deprogram love patterns held in the body and reprogram new ones.
The Day of the Past option, which I offer in my Opening Up to Love and Cultivating Love programmes, helps to deprogram the pattern that activates this mechanism in a dominant way and to reconnect (feeling your sensations again, which can be an unpleasant phase at first). You will then need to work on reconnection and process the stored emotional surplus.
When this is your response mechanism for a given situation
- Identify your personal bodily signals of shutdown: heaviness, emptiness, muscle release
- Allow your body to go into shutdown (rest), then regulate the nervous system through micro-movements
- Realise that this is how you are perceiving the situation — not necessarily the reality of what you are experiencing
- If you know this is a mechanism you have as a couple, let your partner know how it shows up for you and what supports you
Pour aller plus loin
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Going further
❤️ OPENING UP TO LOVE — if you are single
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It includes modules at your own pace (solo or as a couple), email coaching in complete confidentiality, the option to add individual sessions, and the Day of the Past option to deprogram love patterns through the body.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Editions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir a l’amour”, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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