I’ve noticed this more and more about myself lately, and wondered if you have experienced a similar thing in your life?
When something happens in life where I must prepare to do something I don’t want to do, no matter how hard I try, my mind seems to shut down and I find it hard to stay motivated or take action.
It’s like your mind just shuts down and you become a useless blob for a period of time.
For example, I’ve recently been on an excellent roll building my businesses – as productive and motivated as I have ever been – but all of that seemed to come to a screaching halt this past few days, and I didn’t even really notice until I had to help someone else go through a similar situation.
I’ve had a pretty tough go of it with a tooth infection, rounds of antibiotics and some other challenges this week that have led to more visits to my dentist than I’ve experienced in the last 3-years combined…and for me, because I had an absolutely brutal dentist as a kid, the dentist causes higher levels of anxiety for me than it would for most people.
But what is interesting is that I found I couldn’t function properly leading up to the various dentist appointments. It wasn’t that I was thinking of this the entire time, but I found myself taking comfort with food, television, reading magazines and other activities that ended up to be quite unproductive.
Does the same thing happen to you when you are leading up to an event, meeting or challenge that causes you anxiety, fear or uncertainty?
PREVENTING THE ‘SHUT DOWN’ EFFECT
Depending on your level of stress, anxiety, fear and uncertainty – losing productivity could become chronic if we can’t figure out a way to get around this ‘SHUT DOWN’ effect our body uses to deal with our emotional challenges.
Here is what I’ve been doing lately to make sure I can defeat this ‘Shut Down’ effect – see if it works for you too…
Try and get to the root of the problem.
Why have you fallen into this pattern now – for most of us, this happens when we are overwhelmed or suffer anxiety over something in our lives. I gave the example of pending dentist appointments as one source of anxiety.
Often if we fear something coming – either a major change, major event, our mind goes into defensive mode and pretty much shuts down. After a few days of feeling like this, suddenly we have created a new learned habit – the bad habits become the norm.
We can’t typically break out of that norm until one of two things happen:
1. We recognize and deal with the root cause – either by standing up to our fear and anxiety or getting past the event (you know how sometimes you get more energy after something you weren’t looking forward to is over) — OR —
2. Something major happens that jolts us out of our current situation…say a health challenge, major embarassment or some other life altering event that suddenly breaks you out of your current pattern.
Counting on #2 is not exactly the best scenario – it may take a lifetime for such a ‘JOLT’ situation to occur, and nothing says that the major life change will be positive – so let’s try and figure another way out of this unproductive mindset.
We really must work on understanding, admitting and then dealing with those situations that cause us anxiety. Sometimes these are very obvious – as were my dental challenges this past week – other times these are buried deeply and can be quite painful – as in the case of child abuse for example.
Whatever the case, you need to find out what is getting you down? What is causing your mind to ‘Shut Down’
What is making you feel somewhat out of control?
Once you have the factor, then you need to reframe your response to that feeling so that it is no longer causing you to shut down. In my case, I like to do a few things to help put that fear or anxiety into perspective:
- Write it out 20 or more times – studies have shown that just getting out the frustration or anxiety is thereputic in itself and can help ease the burden on your mind
- I’m a big fan of meditation (don’t worry, if you haven’t been able to get meditation to work for you, check out Attracting Greatness which has many techniques, but also a kick-butt section on how to quickly & effectively master meditation). Why will meditation help? Meditation is wonderful for helping your mind NOT overreact to life’s challenges. When meditation works, you can visualize the most anxiety-ridden situations in your life without the slightest overreaction or discomfort – in short – you learn to go with the flow and not be impacted so much by stress and anxiety.
- Prepare…anxiety, stress and fear go down if we better prepare ourselves for upcoming situations. Our typical response is to ignore the event or situation, but by dealing with it and preparing in advance, we can substantially reduce the impact that upcoming situation can have on our life.
Let’s hear from you if you have experienced this ‘Shut Down’ effect in your life? What makes you ‘Shut Down?”
What sorts of things in your life cause you enough anxiety or fear to make you less effective….we all have them, leave a comment if you would like to share yours.
Make sense?
Comments on What Makes You Shut Down?
hey,
my name is Alykhan and i just came across this article and realized that this is the feeling i used to and at times still do. so here my story.
I am a performer/actor so i tend to have a few of these moments. I recently had a huge show which turned out amazing i got offers etc. i while after that i had another show to do but for some reason was soo nervous anxious and did everything and looked for excuses not to do the show. while all this was going on i couldnt function properly as what its called the shut down effect. i really hate this feeling and u feel it holds me back from moving ahead cause whenever i get an opportunity this negative effect takes over
You are so right in calling this the “shutdown effect” because that is exactly what happens. You are more advanced than most since the majority of us don’t even realize WHY we shut down in the face of being uncomfortable, fearful or frustrated – we make so many excuses that seem legitimate that we convince ourselves that it was best to give up, give in or change our course when really we should have perservered.
Recognizing the situation is 90% of the battle, working through those feelings and sticking with your goals is the rest. A big part of it is recognizing the fears that are causing us to shut down and then begin to look at those fears more objectively – without the subjective dramatization that our minds naturally do. Now that you realize you have these shut-down moments, look closely at what you are afraid, and soon you will see that the worst case often doesn’t happen and even if it did, is not as bad as we convince our minds it could be.
WOW. is all i have to say. i have happened to stumble upon these articles as well and i have shut down for the first time and i do not care about the world around me and its my way of drowning my emotional pain from being emotionally abused and it has turned me into a dark person. i can stop it but now i don’t want too. it takes over me and everything wrong becomes right. the person i trust in my life told me i was “shut down, and unresponsive” to me that was good and bad. there are different levels of the “shut down effect.” im going through a pretty high level. i dont want change but no change is so much worse. im only 16 and i dont know what is real. im convinced that what she (cant say who) does is because she loves me too much instead of not at all. i can understand some of her actions but others… there is no explanation and no one knows why. so i shut down. im in a world where i dont have to worry.
Rachel – this is where you want to dig deep and get back in touch with your own sense of what is right and wrong. You want to look inside yourself and remind yourself of what is GOOD about you, the good things you have done for others and the world around you. We have all messed up at times, but you want to specifically focus on the good things….write them out, list your good qualities, remember back to when you have helped friends, lived in line with your principles. People will say things, be hurtful (sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally) often to deal with their own challenges, the key is to be confident and aware of yourself enough that it doesn’t get you down. Whatever you do, don’t withdraw, shut down without working on a plan to come back even stronger.
I too am, and have been living with extreme and chronic stress. The anxiety I feel has caused me to feel dead inside while being the only one, my family can depend on forces me to where a face and maintain a front.
I daydream constantly about how if my parents had gone to different highschools and never met…. I wouldn’t be here.
I have the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Unresolved issues are so numerous and life altering each and every single one. I constantly fight the urge to not cry. I am so worried I am literally sick from these dilemas that face my kids (and one year old grandson)and me. My heart hurts from the strain and unresolved issues. The fear of the future is like an anchor around my neck. I miss the everyday normalcy that was stripped from my family when my second husband had a facebook relationship last February of 2010 and left us in June of 2010. The divorce is still up in the air with no closure, the recession has destroyed my childrens fathers ability to work and I am barely making it much less the multitude of issues that have come up since last year. I am lost, however still moving forward at less than a snails pace. My heart hurts and I fight emotions of saddness and frustration and rage and fear.
I tend to get anxious when I’m expecting something unpleasant to happen, feel threatened or don’t know what I can expect from my day/week/month. I shut down, I can’t get anything productive done, my muscles tense, I pace, I never quite feel relaxed, I get nauseous, the amount of social contact I can handle goes down… they don’t always occur all at once, but these are the kinds of things that happen when I get like this. Depending on the situation it can take hours or days for the anxiety to go away and normalcy to return.
So I understand very well the effects of anxiety. Luckily I’m not always like this, it needs a trigger such as uncertainty or dread. Not knowing when exactly an operation is going to happen, for example (or operations in general, expectation of pain is a HUGE stressor for me)
Anne – many people (if not most) go through exactly what you share – paralyzing anxiety when we expect something negative to happen in life. Certain things used to trigger this in my life as well…two things I found extremely useful in combatting this – 1) Meditation which allowed me to calm my mind and look at things that used to make me anxious in a more objective way (instead of building up worry and fear that just isn’t warranted) and 2) Being able to push through the paralyzing impact when anxiety does rear its head
What I found is that 95% of what we worry or get anxious about is in our mind, at some point you realize that it just isn’t worth worrying about…if something bad happens there’s not a lot worrying will do about that anyway. So using techniques like meditation to put worries into perspective help a huge amount.
Jeff
@Jeff:
I do something similar, I either joke about it (as in: “I’ll be popping so many painkillers all I’ll do for a week is contemplating my hands” to relieve the stress) show my fear and vunerability (so that the people around me are aware of how I feel and know I’m not just overreacting, it makes me feel safer) and just talking about it in general, so that the issue kind of ‘settles’ in my mind. As that happens I can look at it more objectively and think: “I won’t be there to go through the process, I’ll come in, sleep, and wake up one tooth less. No biggie.”
Of course my rational mind can’t prevent involuntary reactions like tensing, but at least it deflates the anxiety a little.
Yes Anne – totally understand what you mean…by taking action you stop the process of negative “holding in”. When I first started meditating I used to use that time each day to put the things that caused me anxiety into perspective so I could better deal with them during the day…after about 1-month I was able to momentarily put myself into that same “state” – pretty much no matter where I was – and calm my mind internally without having to “show” it externally. It really is unbelievable the internal confidence this gives you knowing that you can regain some control over these situations that used to just eat you up.
Unfortunately, just about everything causes enough stress for me to shut down. Even the idea of cleaning, getting up, getting dressed, bathing, brushing my hair, let alone events that are stressfull for everybody, like schoolwork (I am in college). I also have a constant stress that I have no idea where it is coming from. It is just always there and has been for about twelve years. Some days are better than others, and I can do more and actually be productive. Normally I am very unproductive, which in turn stresses me, but I am already stressed by normal everyday aspects of life. I have no idea why. I wish I had more motivation. Maybe I will try meditation. I wish that I could pin-point the cause but there is just too many, and I am completely unaware of what is causing the minor stress that is just always there. I have OCD and I have wondered if that is the source of the constant stress, but I’m not sure. This post was helpful, thank you.
Amber – believe it or not, what you are going through is very common. Stress left unchecked will eventually end up to be a chronic condition that manifests itself physically as well as mentally…your body ends up being in a constant “stress response” state that is both exhausting as well as very damaging to your immune, digestive (pancreas throwing blood sugar off for example) and your internal chemical balance which will lead to heightened propensity for disease, etc…
I go through a similar experience in our own life (that we have since seen repeated thousands of times by others we know and have worked with) in Attracting Greatness…
So yes, you are right to be concerned, you are correct…you want to start on a regime of 1) Exercise – even just walking briskly for 15-20 minutes a day to get it rolling, but ideally evolving to something that gets you sweating and breathing hard for 20-25 minutes a day will help improve your mind and body 2) Meditation is an absolute MUST…block 20-minutes a day and make that your own private refuge, give yourself that time to focus on one stimuli (sound of waves on a CD does it for me) that helps you completely realize calm and see your anxieties, stresses, worries and frustrations in a completely objective light – perhaps for the first time ever in your life. It is incredible to feel how freeing this can be. Give it 3-4 weeks, some days of meditation will be better than others, doesn’t matter – just DO IT. 3) Improve your eating/diet…more water, less sugar, more raw vegetables, less processed food. 4) Finally, you may need to go through specific focused effort to reduce yeast (candida) or parasite overgrowth both which are very common in that a body that is racked by stress is a perfect host for these conditions when other healthier bodies can fight them off naturally.
Jeff
Thanks for the message and suggestions. I’m going to try that as best I can because I need to do something about this. Right now I am taking a yoga class that gets me sweating every time for an hour, I don’t know if that counts as exercise. Thanks for the help. I tried meditating when I was a kid and couldn’t focus my mind. I haven’t tried since then though, and I am going to.
Thanks again for responding and giving me suggestions, I will make use of them. Thanks, Jeff!
No problem Amber. Yoga is a terrific activity – great that you are doing this, keep it up for sure and yes it counts as part of the overall exercise regime.
I struggled with meditation for nearly 15-years because of 2 things 1) I was trying various guided meditations (where someone’s voice was chanting) and tried my own chants, etc… What I found is that everyone is different about what helps them relax and focus their mind. For me, the repetitive sound of the ocean does it, for others, the sound of a forest or just quiet is enough. This is important in the beginning, after a while you learn to put yourself into a meditative state based on nearly any stimuli, but to start it depends heavily on getting the right repetitive sound. 2) I used to get stressed that my mind would get even busier when I tried to meditate – this used to frustrate me to no end! Then a very well seasoned meditation practitioner told me this is normal, it happens to everyone. How you deal with it is to pretend all of the thoughts that flood your mind are part of a movie or are floating above you…you recognize them, acknowledge them, but let them go right on past as if they belonged to someone else. So you reach this point where you can meditate for 20 minutes where the first 10-15 minutes are just calming your mind, letting your thoughts flow but let them objectively pass until you reach that meditative zone…it is pure bliss! You just need to stick with it and accept those thoughts rather than fight them.
Thanks again for the help. Yes, I can’t seem to get my mind quieted. There is just so much noise in it. I will try what you said, to let them flow but not attachedly. I will try to figure out what can help quiet my mind because I haven’t yet, but I’m sure I will. I already have a few ideas I haven’t tried. Thanks again for all of this help. You are a very kind and helpful person. I am grateful for this help. Thanks for these suggestions because I am going to use them. I hope you are well and bless you.
~Amber