Coming out of dorsal vagal shutdown is not linear as I thought it would be. I wasn't feeling better so much as I wasn't daily breaking down. While still crying every day I'd stopped collapsing into my hallway scream sobbing. I wouldn't even say I felt hope so much as I wasn't longing to stick my head in the oven. Apparently when you start to come back your nervous system is testing to see if things are safe. This means if another blow comes, especially one hitting a core would, you can not only fall back into shutdown, but it can come quicker and harsher than the last one.
Multiple blows at once during an emotional landmine time of the year for me. I collapsed again.
There is rock bottom and then there is a level much more terrifying where you keep falling lower and lower with no end in sight. When you descend into nothingness, the unknown, the darkness, lines become blurred and every breath is forced. Your nerves are exposed and raw and feeling is excruciating. Your fears turn to terrors as you wonder how long will this free fall last? Will I even survive the landing?
What makes this especially heavy is that collapse doesn’t come from refusing to heal. It comes after years of trying. I'm told I should focus on "healing", whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean, and feeling my emotions. As if you do all these hard things and some magical land of happiness awaits you on the other side. I look back and I did everything I was told to do: therapy, journaling, medication, meditation, yoga, prayer, positive affirmations, crystals, energy work, hypnosis, manifesting, intentions, body work release, magic...and yet here I am flailing into the abyss alone. Collapse happens when you’ve exhausted every option you were told would save you, and your body finally says it has no more energy left to search, strive, or fight. Not because you want to die, but because you’ve run out of ways to stay alive that hurt less than this.
I feel like the entire weight and grief of my life experience has overtaken me. I tried to feel these emotions, cried so many tears, but this time is different. Between loss after loss in a few months' time, traumas compounding, over a year all my resilience and tenacity which I've relied on gave out as it was too much to bear. I can't hide it as I used to. I can't shove it down with all the things I've used to numb myself over the years. I can't pull out of it.
When pain dismantles the nervous system, it doesn’t just hurt it alters capacity. It narrows the world. It collapses time. Decisions become heavy, language thins out, and even small tasks require negotiation. Despair sets in as exhaustion so immense there’s nothing left to carry hope. The system gets overwhelmed past its ability to regulate. From inside that state, survival is already work. When encouragement shows up as reminders to heal, grow, or “do the work,” it feels like another thing to carry. And there’s no strength left to carry anything else. Another moment for you to fail with a spotlight on you as you're judged if you are truly trying hard enough.
No cute and happy conclusion here. Only freefall.
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