[00:00:00] You weren't yelling, you weren't reactive. You weren't explosive. You weren't doing any of the things that trauma-informed parenting content says to watch out for. You were just quiet, sitting at the table or on the couch or in the same room and completely unreachable, physically present, emotionally gone.
And if there was a child in that room, or a person who loves you, or anyone whose nervous system was trying to find yours, they felt every single second of your absence, silence isn't neutral. Checked out, isn't safe. And today we're gonna talk about why.
Welcome to the Raw Regulation on the Regulated Life. I'm Erica Carter folk, and today we're going into a territory that I think is genuinely underrepresented in a nervous system and conscious parenting conversation. We talk a lot about [00:01:00] explosive parent, the reactive one, the one who raises their voice or loses their temper.
And yes, those patterns matter enormously and we'll keep talking about them. But today we're talking about the other side, the free state, the shutdown, the parent or the other person who holds quiet under pressure, who disappears emotionally, who is on paper not doing anything wrong. And whose absence is still to a child's nervous system or or anyone's nervous system, a form of distress signal, because here's what the science makes undeniably clear.
Absence is not neutral. It is not safe. It is not the absence of a nervous system stimulus.
It is a stimulus. And today we're gonna understand why and what to do about it. Let me take you back to polyvagal theory because this is where it gets really important. Dr. Steven [00:02:00] Porges mapped three primary states of the nervous system.
Each governed by a different branch of the vagus nerve. The first is ventral vagal, the state of safety, social engagement, and genuine connection. This is a state from which we can truly be present. We can listen, attune, respond, repair. This is a state we're aiming for. The second is sympathetic activation, fight or flight.
This is a state most people think of when they think about stress. Elevated heart rate, reactive behavior, the explosive moment. This is the one that gets the most airtime. But the third, the one that we're talking about today is dorsal, vagal, the shutdown state, the freeze, the biological response, the overwhelm that looks from the outside, like stillness, but it's actually a nervous system that has gone into conservation mode, gone underground, gone away.
Dorsal vagal [00:03:00] activation is not a character flaw. It's not laziness. It is not indifference. It's what's happening when a nervous system has been running too hot for too long and finally hits a wall. The system in a very real physiological sense, powers down to survive.
And here's the critical piece from the outside. Dorsal Vaal looks like calm. It looks like control. It looks like someone who's handling things, especially in high functioning adults who have been trained often from childhood to mass activation and appear composed. So we have a parent who is internally in a shutdown state, dissociated, numb.
Running on fumes behind a neutral expression, and we have a child whose social engagement system is scanning that parent, picking up on the quality of their presence, the warmth or absence of warmth in their face, the tone of their voice, the availability in their eyes.[00:04:00]
Dr. Porges research identified something called cues of safety, the specific signals that tell a nervous system. It is safe to settle eye contact, a warm, melodic voice, facial expressiveness, genuine attunement. These are not nice extras.
They're biological requirements for developing nervous system. When those cues are absent, when the parent is there but not there, the child's nervous system does not conclude. Everything is fine. My parent is just resting. It concludes something is wrong. My safe person is gone and I need to find them.
In Dr. John Cacioppo's, research on social disconnection takes this even further, showing us that the perception of being alone, even in the presence of another person, activates the same neurological pain pathways as physical pain. Social [00:05:00] disconnection is not an emotional inconvenience.
It is process in the brain as genuine hurt. Your children are not dramatic. When they act out during quiet times, they're in pain.
I wanna paint a specific picture because I think many of us have been in this exact moment on one side of it or the other. It is evening. The workday is over, the commute is done.
The logistics of dinner are handled. Everyone is in the same space. And to anyone looking in from the outside, it looks fine. It looks like a family at rest, but one person in that room, the adult has checked out. They're on their phone, but not really reading anything. They're watching something but not really watching it.
They're present in the physical sense and somewhere entirely else in every other sense. And the child at the table gets louder, starts doing something they know will get a reaction. Ask the [00:06:00] same question three times.
Does the thing that reliably produces a response, any response. From the outside, that child looks difficult. Attention sinking, exhausting. From inside their nervous system, they're trying to find the person. Or maybe it goes other way. The child goes quiet too. They match the checked out energy.
They disappear into their own screen or their own room, and the adult feels relief. Finally, some peace. Without realizing that what just happened was two nervous systems, both shutting down, both going away, both choosing absence, over risk of reaching toward each other.
I wanna speak directly to anyone who recognizes themselves as the one who checks out. I'm not here to make you feel guilty. I'm here to tell you that this pattern, the freeze, the shutdown, the [00:07:00] going away. It's almost always a learned response to something that felt overwhelming at some point in your life. Your nervous system learned that going numb was safer than staying present, that checking out with survival that was true.
Then the good news is it can change. The nervous system is plastic. New responses can be learned, and we start, as always, with the body. Today's practice is called Come back to the Room. It's for the moment when you catch yourself checked out, when you notice you've been somewhere else, and the people or the space around you needed you to be here. And I wanna say before we begin, this practice is not about forcing yourself into a performance of presence. It's about genuinely returning to your body so that genuine connection becomes possible.
Wherever you are right now, put your phone down or set it aside if you can. [00:08:00] Feel your feet on the floor, both of them. Press them down gently and feel the floor pressed back.
Feel your sit bone if you're seated, or the weight of your body on your feet. If you're standing. Feel gravity doing its quiet work. You are here. You are in a body, you are in a place.
Take a breath, not a forced one. Just a natural breath. A little slower than your last one. And as you exhale, I want you to widen your gaze now at a screen. Now at your phone. Look at the actual room around you. Let your eyes move softly across the space. Not scanning for a problem, just [00:09:00] seeing. Let them land on something that has a texture, something that has color, a plant, a chair, the light coming through a window, whatever's there.
Take another breath.
Now deliberately soften your face. This is a physical instruction, not a metaphor. Relax the muscles around your eyes. Let your forehead smooth out. Let your jaw drop slightly. Let your mouth be soft.
Take another breath.
Now and only if appropriate in the moment. Bring your awareness to the people in your space. Not to fix anything. Not to perform anything. Just notice them, their face, their energy, [00:10:00] the quality of what they're holding right now.
And if there is someone who needs you, say something simple. It doesn't have to be profound. Hey, I'm here. But just make eye contact and let your face be warm.
Your presence, your genuine presence communicated through your face and your body is a regulation tool is one of the most powerful ones you have. Take one more breath and slowly out easily, and come back.
Use this practice anytime you catch yourself in the checked out state. And I wanna be honest with you about how hard it can be to catch yourself. Because part of what makes the free state so insidious is that it can feel like [00:11:00] rest. It can feel like peace. It can feel like finally a moment of nothing.
And it may genuinely be rest, sometimes. I'm not suggesting that stillness is always shut down or that you owe anyone constant performance of engagement, but the signal to look for is this. If the people around you seem to be escalating while you're getting quieter, if the room is getting louder while you're going further away.
That is often the co-regulation dynamic at work. The nervous systems are reaching for yours and yours is gone somewhere they can't follow. That's the moment to use the practice, not to punish yourself for having checked out, not to white knuckle your way into performed presence, but to genuinely come back one breath.
One widened and gaze, one soft face at a time. Your return matters even when it's imperfect, even when it's five minutes late.
The spiral reset [00:12:00] [email protected] slash audio is a free guided five minute reset. For moments like this one we just talked about, it's specifically designed to help you return to your body when you've drifted.
Gently without force in the way that actually last link is in the show notes. Tomorrow we're going into something a little more uncomfortable, the over-functioning trap and specifically how some of us, without knowing it, may be teaching the people we love to fawn, just to keep us regulated. It's a tender one, but important one.
I'll see you then.
