Published on 12, July, 2020
Shutdowns are part of life. There are multiple root causes for a shutdown, including the result of sensory overload, physical and mental exhaustion, unexpected news, anxiety about an upcoming event, and upheaval in our schedule. Sometimes it comes in combination; other times it comes down to simply being “on” for so long, that we have no choice but to turn “off.”
Are you always aware that you are about to go into "shutdown"?
What strategies to you use to help recover from them?
How do you "resurface"
How do you describe what they are to others and try to manage their occurrence?
X said: Shutdowns are part of life. There are multiple root causes for a shutdown, including the result of sensory overload, physical and mental exhaustion, unexpected news, anxiety about an upcoming event, and upheaval in our schedule. Sometimes it comes in combination; other times it comes down to simply being “on” for so long, that we have no choice but to turn “off.”
Everything you report I so know so much what you mean. When things go awry I get burnouts in staged progressions, becoming more and more disassociated until I have seizures, which used to be grand-mall (large-scale) ones but I have painstakingly got them down to petite-mall (small-scale) ones.
I can take a series of overloads, before a seizure happens, and I avoid going any further when and where possible.
X said: Are you always aware that you are about to go into "shutdown"?
Not always no, but I can definitely recognise how to limit them in terms of how many I do have and how harsh they are ~ obviously the more exhausted or stressed I get the more problematic things get.
X said: What strategies to you use to help recover from them?
Every three and four days I have a major soak in a deep sauna-hot bath with 600 grams of bicarbonate of soda, half a kilogramme of pink Himalayan rock-salt, and twenty-five grammes of magnesium flakes dissolved in the water ~ so as to soak and leach out as much of the hypertensive toxins (ketones, lactic acid and all that) from my body. I also after bathing or showering use a moisturising skin lotion with seven drops of Mandarin essential oil, which I find remarkable relaxing and calming in all senses physiologically.
Everyday bar one each week I take a high-strength vitamin C tablet and a multivitamin tablet in the morning, and in the evening a 14-strain gut-flora capsule (as stress is incredibly damaging to the friendly and essential gut bacteria population/s of our intestines) ~ with meals.
Obviously, as far as any of this information goes, always consult personally with a fully qualified health practitioner before acting on it, should you or anyone else be so inclined.
X said: How do you describe what they are to others and try to manage their occurrence?
I generally refer to them as being 'burn-outs', 'flake-outs' and 'flip-ins' for the shut-downs and seizures, and 'overloads' for the initiation of the seizures or shutdowns.
In terms of managing shut-downs or overloads or whatever else you might call them, I do a constant deep-gentle pelvic breathing exercise, where essentially you imagine your bladder and womb are your lungs and breath as such from the heart, which keeps things way more viable in general.
Of course, the strategy of all strategies for dealing with burn-outs really is ~ know your limits in pedantic detail and do anything other than to go beyond them, sort of thing.
Deepthought .. I confess I followed you to here so that I could thank you so very much for what you wrote on closed threads. I am overwhelmed by your deep thought and kindness in taking the time to do that not just for me but for everyone affected by it. I didn't know if I had said stupid or terrible things and it's good to know that you could see what I was trying to do . Thank you very much. I'm sorry I didn't feel up to posting on the actual post.
To be honest, it was all going huge-umma-flip, and people were doing the very best they could none the less, even JEP a tiny bit ~ but bless her, her mother injured her neck recently and is now paralysed from the neck down.
Having a parent become as such or in any way seriously injured is for most children (younger or older) incredibly distressing, along with mountain loads of challenging as carer roles suddenly reverse, and parental reassurance shortages just make things even worse ~ so expecting hostile outbursts is pretty much the done thing really.
But bless you how many times over I do not think can be counted, you held it together like an industrial diamond in terms of reasonable behaviour.
What a magnificent post.