Why Do I Shut Down During Conflict?

Apologies in advance to my husband for revealing this terrible secret, but: we argue. And sometimes when we argue, there’s this moment when things just go numb. I can picture it—one second things are red hot, my chest is tight, voices are raised, and I’m making my case, trying to get him to understand me. And then the next moment: nothing. It’s not like I get calm or sad or even resigned. It’s the total absence of feeling. It’s like all the energy I had for this fight (whether it was actually doing any good or not) just teleported to another dimension. I can feel my husband’s frustration in moments like these. He sees me go from engaged to disengaged in a split second. He wants to keep talking, but I’m already gone.

And let me be clear: Shutting down doesn’t feel like a choice in that moment. It’s not a powerful tool that I’ve devised to send all my negative emotions to some cosmic emotional landfill. Like so many of the strategies we learn, numbing out in moments of conflict is a way for me to protect myself. Our nervous system has a whole repertoire of responses to threat (fighting, running away, freezing, shutting down) that developed for good reasons. But sometimes the threat we’re responding to right now is not a predator threatening our lives; it’s our loved one telling us they’re hurting.

You may find yourself thinking—but that doesn’t make sense. If I love this person, why would I be triggered by their pain? I wish it were that simple. But sometimes something happens in the present that bears more than a passing resemblance to a story that we’ve been carrying for a long time. And once this story joins the party, the argument is no longer about whatever started it; something older is here too.

When it stops being about the argument

I’ve always been scared that my anger will hurt the people I love. It’s a story I’ve carried with me since I was little. I know where it comes from, and I’ve had a lifetime of experience that seems to confirm it. And so when I see the pain unfolding in front of me, even though logically I know that it’s not my pain to own, I shut down. That story says, “You have to stop, you monster. You’re harming him.” I also hold a story that says the deck is stacked against me. Some part of me is always calculating the odds and assessing the rules to see if I have a fair shot. And when that part decides things are unfair, it would rather I walk away than keep trying. I think it’s afraid it will hurt too much to try and fail. We all have our own versions of these—stories that come online and convince us that we can’t stay with what is currently happening.

But that disconnection just leads to more disconnection. My shutting down doesn’t actually stop my husband from feeling pain. It just creates distance. I see the pain in his eyes when I close off, the missed opportunity to work through something together even though it is hard because we’re worth it. But his disappointment just deepens my own commitment to the story. Some part of me is trying to protect me and my relationships, and instead is actually harming them. If you see yourself in this pattern, I hope you can find some compassion for how impossible it can feel.

The space for two

It’s incredibly difficult to stay connected to your experience while also making room for the experience of someone you love. In therapy-speak, we call this differentiation. At its core, differentiation is the ability to stay connected to another person without losing your own connection to yourself. Differentiation lets us see that our partner disagreeing with us doesn’t necessarily mean that the rules are unfair. Differentiation gives us the space to see that the pain of our partner doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re a monster. Differentiation allows a couple to have their own hobbies and still make time to build LEGO together. That last one was me and my husband. But let’s be honest—they’re all me and my husband.

Differentiation doesn’t mean agreeing, and it doesn’t mean staying in a conversation that has become unhealthy or unproductive. It doesn’t mean burying your feelings so your partner can feel theirs. It does mean creating enough space so both of you and your feelings and your needs can co-exist in the same conversation.

Finding more choice

As I try to untangle my habit of shutting down, I find myself less interested in stopping it from happening and more curious about what I might be able to do instead. Maybe I could share that I’m feeling overwhelmed. Maybe I need to ask for a time-out and be clear about when I’m coming back. But I know that I can’t argue these stories out of existence, and honestly, as I get older, I’m less interested in trying. I’m going to get triggered. I’m human. But I do want to have more choice about what I do when it happens.

The stories inside me want me to believe that if I shut down, the conflict disappears too. But that’s just not true. My husband is still there. Our marriage is still there. I’m still there too. I’m grateful that shutting down helped me stay safe at one time or another, but I’m not interested in letting it distance me from the people I love. We’ve got lots of LEGO to build. And so I get curious: What happens to the conversation if I stay?