This morning, I woke up with familiar sensations in my body. A heaviness. A reluctance to move. The dorsal state.
For years, I mistook it for weakness or laziness. Now I recognize it as one of my oldest protectors. My dorsal shutdown is the shadow that has been with me since childhood, quietly keeping me safe by freezing me in place.
However, there’s been a slow but steady shift,
I realise… I no longer want to exile it. I want to love it.
When I feel that heaviness, I remind myself:
The dorsal isn’t my enemy. It’s the oldest part of me trying to love me safe.
That reframing softens everything. It gives me space to say in the second person: “You are the kind of person who notices when your dorsal is protecting you. You can show it compassion. And you can move, even gently, into something new.”
This is shadow work, but it’s also trauma work.
In my recent COVID rest, I discovered more of my father’s story — three years under siege in Malta, the blitz in Liverpool, Normandy, and then the death of his father before the end of the war. My nervous system still carries what he carried. My freeze is not only mine. It belongs to my lineage.
And so the alchemy is this:
• Compassion for the dorsal protector.
• Humor to lighten the weight — calling it my “loyal little shutdown artist.”
• Integration to move, to breathe, to inhabit possibility.
Dan Siegel calls it “the plane of possibility.” Bruce Tift calls it “already free.” Stephen Porges reminds us that all behavior is reflexive, not intentional.
When I see the dorsal as shadow, I don’t banish it. I bow to it. I let it teach me. And then, with compassion and humor, I choose to integrate it into the flow of my day.
This morning, that meant simply moving. Breathing. Remembering: I am not abandoning myself.