Fight, Flight, or... Flat

If you've been having major fear, bigger than anything you've ever felt in your life, or a terrible flatness where you feel completely disconnected and like nothing can reach you anymore while you're in psychiatric drug withdrawal, this is for you. I want to share why that happens to your body, what your body is doing in the healing process, and some things you can do to help.

The fear or flatness of withdrawal is bizarre and confusing. There were a lot of things I learned from others in the community and through my own experience, and I want to pass those on to help in your healing.

Hyperarousal: When Your Body Goes Into Overdrive

One of the things that happens when you're going through this is your body goes into hyperarousal or hypoarousal. It's like your nervous system is trying to figure out what gear to be in to respond to this major change in your body.

Hyperarousal is when your body goes into overdrive. You may experience things like akathisia, or that terrible inner restlessness, racing thoughts, feeling so ramped up, like you're being chased by a tiger or about to be eaten alive. And you think, "There's nothing dangerous. Why am I so afraid of everything?" Everything sets off some kind of major fear response. In withdrawal you might feel this to an extreme degree, where it's like, "I could have never wrapped my head around this kind of fear. What is going wrong with me?"

I experienced that. I remember being afraid of the window. Looking out into nature, which I had loved, I was afraid of the yard, afraid of walking out the door, of the open air, the sun, the sky. Everything felt overwhelming and way too intense. Even my thoughts were scary to me, or memories, or thinking about the future. My mind would latch onto things. There were looping thoughts, racing thoughts, terror.

So if you're experiencing that, wondering, "What is happening to me that I cannot get a grip?" that's the hyperarousal that can come in withdrawal. It doesn't mean you're not healing. It doesn't mean you did something wrong. Your brain is getting that fear signal, "Something's wrong, I need to do something. What's wrong?" But the only thing happening is that your body is going through a healing process from this injury and from reducing the medication, and it's trying to figure out how to regulate. So it's in this hyperdrive.

Hypoarousal: When Your Body Shuts Down

Then there's the flip side, and it can swing from one to the next. You're in this major terror, fear, pacing, feeling horrible, and then the other side is this flatness where you feel completely disconnected, unmotivated, almost waterlogged in lethargy. No motivation, no engagement, no sense of connection to the world around you. You might have anhedonia or DPDR, where you feel really dissociated from everything. That's your body's slow down, shut down mode: "We got overwhelmed. We need to pump the brakes."

So our nervous systems in withdrawal can go from one extreme to the next in this big swing, which is so disorienting and hard to work with when you're going through it.

I experienced that too. I remember dragging myself through the house. For a while I was on my bed. I couldn't even do anything, hardly. So you might be having a lot of that hypoarousal, feeling completely flat, having a hard time dragging yourself to do even the smallest chore.

That's another part of the dysregulation that can happen to our nervous systems through this injury. It also doesn't mean you did something wrong. It doesn't mean you're not healing or getting worse. All it means is that your body is going to these extremes as it figures out how to get you centered again.

Your Window: The Calm Center You're Heading Toward

In that center is your window. When you have times of feeling clear, with the right amount of energy, when you can engage but not be overwhelmed, that is your center, that healthy amount of arousal. That is what you're headed for.

In the meantime, it can be a rollercoaster back and forth as your nervous system asks, "How do we get back to homeostasis? How do we get back to that normal state of calm and motivation, being regulated?"

Your mind might come up with so many reasons why this is happening. "You did this wrong," or "You did that wrong," or "You shouldn't have eaten this," or "You shouldn't have watched that." Your mind might latch onto things from the past, the future, the present, as a way of trying to figure out what's going on with your body. But all that's really going on is that you're going through a healing process, and it is a bit of a rollercoaster ride for your body to figure out how to regulate again on its own. Your body does have that resilience and can figure it out. It just takes time.

Healing Takes the Time It Takes

There are some things you can do in the process that can help, and I'm going to share some of those. But I also want to say, they don't take away the symptoms. They don't make them disappear, or make the healing wrap up faster if you do them just right, because the healing takes as long as it takes.

Think of it like a plant growing. You wouldn't say, "Grow faster, plant," and get angry at the plant for not growing faster. If it has sunlight and it's being watered, it's going to grow at its right pace. Think of the things you do to take care of yourself in this process as the sunlight and the water. You're doing what you can to help, but the healing is going to happen in its own time.

Just trust the process. Just like a plant knows how to grow, it's all in there in the DNA. It's all going to happen. It just needs that environment, that sunlight, that soil, that water, and then it happens naturally. The same with your nervous system. It will heal. It's wired for healing. That's in your DNA. With the support you give it, the care you give, in time that healing is just going to happen. It's natural. It's wired into you. Think of it as the nurture you're providing to something that's already going to happen.

Grounding and Movement That Can Help

Some grounding things can help. In the hyperarousal, you may need to pace. Doing something physically may actually help. It may also help to tune yourself into physical things around you. I know some people who would walk barefoot, using that physical contact with the ground as a way of connecting and helping to regulate.

Talking to others can help too. Hearing others' voices and co-regulating can bring your nervous system down into a calmer place. These things can work for either end, the hypo or the hyper. It just might look a little different, what helps you in each state.

For me, for whatever reason, washing dishes helped. Even though it was a very ordinary task, whether I was hyper or hypo, I took it at a calm pace. If I was in that hyper state, feeling super agitated, I would try to think about the water on my hands, the plates and the dishes and how they felt, and just focus in on that moment. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I couldn't do it and I'd just have to go pace.

For the hypo state, when I was just dragging, that same physical focus helped. I'd try to tune into it and refocus my mind on one task, just one task, even if it was going to take me a long time because I was feeling really slow and flat and disconnected. Simplifying and doing one slow physical thing did help get me a little more present, a little more calmed.

Co-Regulating With Other People

There are other things like that. If you listen to audios, that can be a distraction, and hearing someone else's pace, their voice, their breathing, can cue your body into safety. Listening to healing stories, or even holding a conversation with someone else, co-regulating with other people can help. That could be sharing openly with them what's going on. But sometimes there are relationships where they may not be able to engage fully or understand what's going on, and you can still be in their presence. If they're a supportive, loving person in your life, their calm nervous system can help regulate you.

If you have kids, you can co-regulate with your kids. Just keep it slow. "All right, we're just going to keep it a low-key day today. We're going to read some books. We're going to have some tea." Being in their presence can help co-regulate you. Or it could be a loved one on the phone. Asking them about their day, getting a little outside of yourself, can sometimes help you regulate and get a different, calmer perspective.

Acceptance and Gentle Routines

Those are some of the things I've learned along the way. Ultimately, what's going to happen is your nervous system is going to heal. The things you do along the way can be coping strategies, ways of nurturing.

Acceptance is a big one. Accepting this is the state your body's in right now. It's not your fault. It's not something you did wrong. It's an injury. It's something that happened, and your body is healing from it. That acceptance of, "Okay, right now we are pacing, and that is my job today, to pace this out until it burns out, until it runs its course." Because these symptoms are going to run their course, and then they're going to pass. Your healed nervous system is going to outlive the symptoms. So in some ways it's just trying to accept the process and trust the process, that in time you're going to heal.

Another thing that can help is routines. If you set up routines for yourself, they can cue you into safety. For instance, every morning I make myself a tea, and then I sit on the porch. If you make a routine where your body can go, "Oh, okay, this is what we do on a safe day," or "This is what we do to feel safer."

It could be simple things, like a hot bath for your feet, soaking your feet. Some people swear by an Epsom salt bath as very calming. I didn't have a tub that would give me enough warm water, so that was a no-go for me, but some people love it. A barefoot walk. Touching different textures of things in nature. These different calming rituals can become routines that really help soothe your body and cue you into safety, bringing you closer to that centered place, closer to that window where your body gets cued in: "Okay, we can regulate. We can calm. There's enough safety here." That can help in your healing process.

It doesn't necessarily make everything disappear as far as the hard symptoms, and I wish I could tell you, "This is what will make it disappear." Unfortunately, it just is a wild ride to get there as your body heals.

You Are Healing

But the good news is that your body does know the way. That is built into your DNA, to be able to heal, and that resilience is in you. So I would encourage you to trust the process, to accept the symptoms as they come, to build healing routines for yourself that cue your body into safety, and to listen to the stories of hope from other people who've come to the other side.

I'll tell you, my body is on the other side of this. My body does not go into that freak-out land anymore, where I feel like I'm going to jump out of a window because a tiger's going to get me, or feel like I can't get out of bed because I'm completely waterlogged and disconnected. My nervous system has come to a place of being able to engage with life normally, after years of that kind of dysregulation.

There are so many other stories like mine, of people who've come to full healing, or who have some symptoms but they're manageable, and they're able to engage in life and live full, beautiful lives. So just know that you are healing, and you are on that journey. I'm cheering you on.

❤️‍🩹 Joanna