00:00Shutting down during conflict doesn't mean you don't care. It means your body thinks caring is
00:05dangerous. Some people yell to protect themselves, and others go quiet, freeze, disappear. Not because
00:11they're cold, but because they were raised in environments where emotions were either ignored
00:15or punished, where silence felt safer than saying or doing the wrong thing. Where calm wasn't just
00:20a coping skill, it was a survival strategy. And here's the kicker. The people who shut down,
00:25honestly, they're usually the strongest ones in the room. They're the ones who can hold it
00:29together in a crisis. They're surgeons, soldiers, CEOs. They nail the ability to be in control.
00:36But intimacy? Intimacy requires the one thing that they were never taught to trust,
00:40letting someone in when you're not performing. So how do you start to repair if you're someone
00:44who shuts down? Don't disappear. Narrate. Say, I'm starting to shut down, but I don't want to go.
00:50I just need a little space, and I'll come back. That one sentence, oh my god, it changes everything.
00:55It says to your partner, I'm still here. I still care. I'm working on it. This works especially
01:00well if you're with someone who runs on the anxious side. This will help calm their nervous
01:04system from feeling abandoned, so you can actually take the space you need versus navigating their
01:10anxiousness while you're not in a place where you can actually stay open. So if you take one thing away
01:15from this video, it's this. You don't have to know what to say. You don't even have to know what
01:19you're feeling. You just have to let your partner know that you're coming back.
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