111 – Herbal Support for the Shutdown State

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello.

Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism

podcast.

So this is the third episode in a miniseries

all about different nervous system states and a kind of herb that is, yeah, has an affinity

for that, for kind of shifting that state.

And uh, please, if you haven't, check out the introduction episode because I talk about like

a bunch of the nuances like that, you know, these states aren't a binary.

They aren't like good or bad.

They've evolved for a reason.

And I also talk about how, yeah, a lot of

people, probably the majority to be honest, of the planet, are in proper survival states.

So, you know, these nervous system states are serving their kind of evolutionary function of

keeping people alive while under threat from all of the things.

But yeah, I talk about how when these states get kind of stuck, that's when we're in

trouble in terms of like needing support to kind of shift them back to,

you know, how we want to be feeling, which is potentially in a more sort of safe and social

state where we feel grounded and connected to our bodies, being able to socialize and

interact with other people in like non threatening ways and where we can access

feelings of joy and aliveness and also,

you know, like clear, kind of grounded, strategic thinking.

Okay, so this episode is about the shutdown state.

So shutdown from an evolutionary perspective, like come like commonly comes after being in

fight or flight.

And it makes sense because it's like our body's way of preserving energy.

So in nature it might look like an animal playing dead.

Not that humans aren't nature, but you know what I mean?

So when this response kind of gets sort of stuck, it can show up as like regular feelings

of helplessness,

emptiness,

hollowness, isolation, numbness, feeling drained.

And you know, it's often accompanied by like, kind of a lot of like fatigue and depression.

And in general, like the world can feel very, very overwhelming, but also like overwhelming

but not in a like hyper stimulating way, but in a real like life is pointless and

uninteresting and yeah, like in that kind of way, if that makes sense.

Hmm.

So some of the like embodied habits that might accompany this state are like withdrawing or

isolating yourself,

you know, wanting to kind of be a hermit, wanting to hide away from the world,

limpness or fatigue.

So I'm going to talk about freeze in the next

episode, which is often a state of real kind of like tension Whereas shut down, it's more

of a like, yeah, like a limpness.

So someone might be sort of lying like motionless or struggling to get up.

There's often a lot of kind of like dissociation,

you know, like a feeling of kind of like checking out almost of the body.

And it's often accompanied by kind of brain fog and like mental heaviness.

And you know, it's really the body's like last line of defense and it's a way of conserving

energy.

And you know, we,

it's so hard because we're always like a dance between all of these states.

So you might hit a real serious like shutdown phase where you are sort of shut down for like

several months or you know, even years potentially as like your dominant state.

Or it might be that you've had a really hardcore week with loads of stress and then

you have like a day where you're feeling more shut down and you're feeling a little like

extremely fatigued and helpless and like everything is un, uninteresting and you don't

want to get out of bed.

And you know like that often correlates with like low sort of cortisol reserves when the

body's already been just like generating huge amounts of stress hormones.

Excuse me.

For a long time.

So yeah, it's, you know, it can be like a real long term pattern or it can be a short term

pattern,

you know, just something that kind of,

yeah, moves in and out I guess like a couple of examples just like content warning here

when I know I've talked about his death several times, but when my friend Taylor

killed himself in prison,

the subsequent weeks were just full of hardcore rage and activation and anger and

like extreme fight or flight.

Like I also got covered but I was dealing with

the authorities and fighting the prison and trying to get information and trying to get

his body and trying to get his stuff and it was so stressful.

And then it was like once the funeral had happened I was ******.

Like I think it was maybe three weeks where I really couldn't get out of bed.

Like I, in all honesty, I just felt like I kind of wanted to die.

Like I just wanted to lie in a room and not do anything.

Maybe I was like watching trash.

But often I was just lying there for hours

like proper zoning out.

And you know, like I saw this pattern.

For example, my mum, who's amazing, had quite

like severe depression when I was a child and yeah, one of her sort of critical kind of

nervous breakdowns when I was about 11 years old came after,

you know, months of really ******* intense stress, of moving to a different place, of

having a relationship breakdown, of having like loads of economic challenges.

And then bang.

It just like the body didn't have the reserves

to be in that fight or flight state.

And so came the kind of like will not get out of a darkened room for love nor money kind of

phase, you know.

So yeah, it's a really challenging.

It's a really, really challenging state.

But again, all of these states have evolved to protect us.

And when someone is like out of energy,

like it really makes sense that the body initiates fatigue, right?

Because that body does not want to use any more energy anymore and needs to like protect

and safeguard itself.

And we often, you know, this kicks in when it's like feeling impossible to like fight or

flee, for example.

So how do we move out of shutdown? And again, that's like whole books worth of

content.

But like you can't push through it because the

capacity to push is gone.

So it has to be gentle, it has to be slow steps.

You know,

like when I had like a really bad PTSD episode, which I've talked about before as

well, but like, it was literally like write a post it note the night before of what I needed

to do in the morning and it was like, brush teeth, have a shower,

go sit on the bench near my herb garden.

And that was it.

Those were like my three outcomes for the day that I was trying to achieve each day.

And you know, like,

yeah, it's all about gentleness basically.

So you know, that gentleness, it might be say for the example of after, you know, after

you've had like some really hardcore stress and you're feeling like shut down kind of

temporarily, but you just don't want to get out of bed.

Like sometimes just don't get out of bed.

Do you know what I mean?

Just if you can just cozy up with a duvet and hot drinks and watch trash and dissociate or

just lie there feeling hopeless, you know, because your body is trying to preserve your

energy and hopefully your energy will return gently.

And often it's very hard to shift out of this state like on your own.

Like normally the state you need someone to kind of like, I hate the term co regulate, but

like it really helps having someone there to like enhance that feeling of safety and to

kind of like gently move you out of that state because,

you know, like slow movement is like really fantastic.

If it's possible, you know, like maybe stretching or just like walking very gently,

you know, it's not like, oh, I've got depression, I'm gonna go for a hardcore run.

It's just not that it's very, very gentle, you know, like a warm bath or may lavender oil or

like.

Yeah, connecting with plants and I think, you know, or animals for example,

or just sitting with the land.

Like, you don't have to be like,

I'm gonna go do these 5 billion things for like my quote unquote mental health.

It can just be like, I am just gonna sit here and watch the birds and the insects and the

plants.

And that can be enough to help someone slowly over time, like shift out of this state.

But like I said, you know, it's like a whole spectrum of a state.

Um,

but yeah, the plant medicine that is that I've included in the series for this state is St.

John's Wort.

Um, so yeah, just I guess, safety note, St.

John's wort speeds up the kind of metabolism,

like the processing of things in the liver.

So it has vast impacts on pretty much any pharmaceutical medication that you're taking.

There's also some research.

It's a little bit inconclusive, but I have

heard anecdotally about St. John's wort affecting contraceptives, for example.

But I basically think if you're taking anything at the same time as St.

John's War, it will potentially like speed up that clearance of it in your system.

So yeah, so please research like it thoroughly before using St. John's Wort.

But yeah, it's such a incredible herb.

And I love working with St. John's Wort with depression.

And it's not because of this like generic antidepressant action which has been like very

well researched and documented in all sorts of like placebo,

you know, double blind control trials and stuff, like against meds like Prozac.

Like, it's really strongly effective.

But the mechanisms of that are also very interesting.

So St. John's Ward has this amazing affinity with the liver, hence, you know, this effect

on taking medications and then, you know, being cleared faster.

But the liver is like such a critical organ in terms of processing our kind of like wastes in

our system and our metabolites and our hormones and our stress hormones especially.

So St. John's Wort has a real affinity with people who have self described kind of like

stagnant depression, where depression is coming from a liver that is potentially not

functioning very well.

And so, yeah, St. John's Wort is like, you know,

fantastic at helping that kind of organ to process if that Makes sense.

And therefore,

you know, that can have a knock on effect on, you know, all our kind of endocrine system and

our nervous system.

Um, but yeah, it has this real amazing kind of like, uplifting effect that I think there's

not loads of herbs in my experience that really do that as well as St.

John's Wort. And I think when someone is in a kind of like frozen or shut down state,

you do need that kind of like joyful reminder of how it feels to have a kind of lifted mood.

And, you know, St. John's Wort is also fantastic with kind of like repair.

So it's like a really amazing, like wound healing plant because it's fantastic at kind

of accelerating the,

you know, like the regrowth in healthy tissue, for example.

And it's really great for like, intestinal permeability which is kind of colloquially

known as leaky gut.

But I will often use, if someone's not on meds, I'll use a bit of St. John's Wort as

part of a kind of gut health tea to help kind of tone and heal those, like, inflamed, like,

gut tissues, you know, where there might be some intestinal permeability.

And, you know, there's just like a ******* mega field of interesting stuff around

someone's gut health and their mood.

And so,

you know, working with St. John's War is really amazing because we're kind of like

covering our bases, if that makes sense.

Like we're supporting the liver, but we're

also supporting the digestion and the whole nervous system in terms of kind of like, yeah,

shifting.

Shifting that kind of like, yeah, that low mood.

So, yeah, So I think St. John's Wart is fantastic when someone is in the state.

And yeah.

All right, so again, shameless plug.

The herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course

is still open until Monday,

so if you want to join it, please join it.

You can listen to a bunch of other podcasts where I'm talking about the course in depth.

I'm talking about the modules, the lessons, like the learning outcomes.

I'm talking about the sliding scale and how it's.

No one turned away for lack of funds.

So please, please, please don't go onto that course page and think I can't afford that

because there's so many options.

You know, you can a just access it for free

with the code and all the details are on the page.

Or you can be like, right, I'm gonna donate three pounds a month.

Or you can be like, right, I can afford this, but it will take me five months, in which case

there's a payment plan.

So, yeah, just like, please don't,

you know, don't delay accessing support for yourself.

And it is lifetime access, so there's no pressure to participate in it now.

Like, there's no live calls or anything like that.

It's all kind of content that you can work through completely in your own time.

And I send out email reminders, like, in an automated fashion every eight weeks.

I mean, I'm Aquarius.

Like, everything is ******* automated.

No, I'm just joking.

I wish it was.

No, I'm just joking.

Anyway, yeah, basically, I've tried to make it

as accessible as possible, and there's loads of this 32 plant profiles in there about herbs

like St. John's wort and their support for the nervous system.

So, yeah, please check it out.

And I will be back soon with the next in the

series.

Okay, take care.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.