Somatic Techniques for Shutdown and Overwhelm
You know the feeling. Obligations filling your schedule, unwashed dishes piling up in the sink, noise that won’t stop, crowded rooms, stresses building up.
How does your body feel just reading that list?
Let’s take a break and start over. Get in a comfortable position and find relaxation. Do what works for you whether that’s visualizing a safe, calm place or just focusing on your breath or a mantra. Whatever gets you feeling calm and comfortable.
Really notice that feeling in each part of your body.
Create your comfortable home base
I’ll use these words interchangeably- comfort, calm, safe, relaxed. But choose the word that best fits for you and what you need and read that word into this process.
Dive deep into this experience as much as possible and observe how your body feels, what your emotions are doing, what thoughts come up, and how these parts connect together. Notice it with all your senses.
Take a look around this safe space. Is there anyone there with you? If not, does being alone feel the most comfortable or is there someone (real or fictional, dead or alive) that could make this place feel even more safe?
What scents do you notice? Are those scents associated with a particular person or event that’s meaningful or comforting to you?
Step back into overwhelm- with curiosity
Once you feel fully immersed in your calm space, take a step back. From a neutral frame and with curiosity about what is going to happen in your mind and body, either return to the list above or a memory of a time when you felt overwhelmed.
Try to stay in the space of a neutral observer and notice what shifts for you when you enter an overwhelmed state. What parts of your body tense up? What happens with your heart rate? Are there any movements that your body wants to do? What thoughts or memories go through your mind?
Once you have a few observations, let yourself return either to a neutral posture or to your calm space if you need. The goal here is to notice how your mind and body express feelings of overwhelm, not to send you into that feeling.
Play with pendulation
This process of going back and forth between two feelings is called pendulation. It’s a technique that can help you learn to recognize the somatic and psychological signs that you’re heading toward overwhelm. Pendulation also helps you get practice going in and out of different mental states so when you’re feeling overwhelmed you’ll also have practice returning to calm groundedness.
Advanced practice- proceed carefully
If you’re feeling comfortable moving from restful safety in and out of overwhelm, you may be ready to practice noticing the difference between overwhelm and shutdown.
If you don’t tend to shut down when you get overwhelmed, you may not need this exercise. If your natural response tends to stay in a more anxious state, just keep working on that response instead.
Why it’s important
Moving into overwhelm, you’re entering a state of arousal. In psychology, that refers to a more activated state of heightened reactivity, emotionality, and somatic energy. It’s the fight or flight energy that’s meant to protect you from a stressful situation by getting you out of there.
Shutdown is a step farther down the ladder (to use a polyvagal image). When your overwhelm goes too far and you’re unable to escape using fight or flight, your nervous system shuts down. If you can’t escape physically, you can at least escape mentally. This is the freeze response, and it protects you by shutting down your awareness and energy.
It can be very difficult to pull yourself out of shutdown, even if you’re physically in a safe place and comfortable with pendulation exercises. So please proceed with caution and stop if it goes too far.
Stepping into shutdown
Since shutdown is an energetic low, you can get there more easily through somatic collapse. Start by sitting still and letting your body start to drop inward. Let your posture round and hunch down and notice what happens in your mind just by shifting your physical posture. Try to keep your conscious focus in that space of neutral observation. Notice your thoughts slowing or going blank without getting drawn in.
Coming out of shutdown
When you’re ready to end this exercise, get up and move around. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, walk around the room, shake your body, and re-orient your focus outside of yourself for a few moments before you return to a safe, calm place.
It’s difficult to go from shutdown straight to safety and connection. You’ll usually have to move through activation first. Otherwise, you can come to a “false calm” where you’re still in a freeze state but with some mental activation and awareness.