Redheaded Jill

According to the workout which my dorsal vagus nerve is shut down. I have been trying to make myself cry for over a month. I want to cry. I NEED to cry. I need to release these pent up emotions. But instead of releasing them my mind has shut down. I am stuck.

@theworkoutwitch_ (on IG) made a post about just this thing on August 26 I think… It said:

What does it mean if you can’t cry anymore? You no longer feel your feelings. Maybe you feel nothing inside… When you go through a lot of stress or trauma over a prolonged period of time, your body, your emotions, and your nervous system can start to shut down. At a certain point you’re so overloaded from all of the stress or all of the trauma that you have one of two choices. Excessive anger or shutting down and you have gone the route of shutting down. This is not your fault! This is an automatic physiological response to the amount of stress or trauma that you’ve been through… You may self isolate as much as possible, have difficulty getting out of bed, feel constantly exhausted, emotionally numb, disconnected from your loved ones, have frequent stomachaches, feel like there’s a lump in your throat, and feel overwhelmed and stuck. Scientifically speaking, this shut down is called ‘dorsal vagal shutdown’. Your dorsal vagus nerve is one of the longest cranial nerves in your body and it runs from the base of your brainstem all the way down into your stomach. And once you know that your dorsal vagus nerve is shutting down and that’s the reason why you can’t feel your feelings, why you can’t cry, and why you have all of this pain or dissociation it’s an incredibly helpful step forward in your ability to heal. You can absolutely re-stimulate your dorsal vagus nerve and start to feel and be able to cry again.

Other symptoms of dorsal vagal shutdown may be: numbness or tingling in your limbs, long-term unexplained pain, gut issues, lightheadedness, dizziness, vertigo, shallow/irregular breathing, feeling disconnected from your body/feelings, low energy, weakened immune system, feeling constantly overwhelmed/frozen/stuck, frequent dissociation.

Her recommended treatment is somatic exercises, which I can confirm WORK. I did a stretch the other night that made my legs shake uncontrollably. It didn’t trigger tears, but it was an immense release in my hips.

I suspect that I’m numbed because of the time of year (loss of grandparents, birthday, school starting, being broke, sister getting married…) and once all this passes I will fall apart. I’m definitely feeling the stress.