The Moment Before You Explode or Go Quiet | Ep 70

When something threatening happens in a conversation, and I mean threatening your nervous system, not necessarily threatening in any objective sense, your body has to make a decision fast, faster than you thought.

And it only really has two doors available to it.

One goes outward.

Your body floods with energy.

Your heart rate spikes.

Your muscles prepare for action.

This is the explosion, the raised voice, the sharp comment, the door slammed, the point that you have to make right now before you lose the chance.

It feels, in the moment, like you're taking control, like you're finally being heard.

The other goes inward.

Instead of energy flowing outward, everything shuts down.

Your face goes flat.

Your voice drops or disappears.

You might physically leave the room, or you might stay in the room and just leave the conversation, nodding along somewhere far away.

This is the shutdown, and it feels, in the moment, like you're protecting yourself, like refusing to make things worse.

Here's what most men never realize, though.

These two doors aren't opposites.

They're the same response, just wearing a different shirt.

Both are your nervous system deciding in that fraction of a second that it is no longer safe to stay present and engaged.

One channels that decision into action.

The other channels it into absence.

Underneath both, though, is the same thing happening.

You have left the conversation even if your body is still standing in the room.

Some men explode every time.

Some men shut down every time.

Many men do both depending on who they're talking to or how tired they are or how many times this same argument has happened before.