When the going gets tough… Do you Flop?! The nervous system response you’ve probably never heard of!

Also known as ‘collapsed immobility’, the ‘flop’ nervous system response is a little-known or talked about cousin to fight, flight, freeze and fawn.

You might be able to visualise the flop response in the toddler who goes full sack o’ potatoes post-meltdown… or the romantic era heroine who faints when in distress… orrrr in yourself as a semi-system shutdown that could look like anything from mentally or physically dissociating when the external stressors get too much, to an internal thought or feeling process of ‘I can’t’ or ‘I give up’ or a loss of control of your body’s energy and functions when the going gets tough…

In the Polyvagal map of the nervous system, the ‘flop’ response belongs to part of our dorsal-vagal shut-down, a place where the body goes when it’s life goes OTT and none of the sympathetic responses (fight/flight/fawn) can be enacted to help.

It’s a deep survival strategy, centred on preventing us from pain. Evolutionarily – in the animal kingdom (of which we humans are a part!), going limp mimics death as a strategy to throw a predator off its chase. Physiologically this shut down includes systems like the cardiovascular system, where the heart rate may slow down (partially responsible for a reduction in blood flow causing things like faintness),  pulmonary system – our lungs through a reduction in breathing rate (causing a reduction of oxygen in the bloodstream), and the musculo-skeletal system causing a softening in muscle tone (this can be both internal, causing things like a loosening and evacuation of the bladder and bowels and external, causing limpness in muscles. There may also be a mental sense of numbness to create distance from the current or impending pain, causing an inability to think or respond any further.

Though closely related in the dorsal-vagal system, it differs from the freeze response in that freeze is rigid immobility, and flop is flaccid. Both are deeply linked to perceived threats and our systems desire to keep us alive… though not necessarily happy (great for the savannah, however a slight evolutionary inconvenience in the modern world!). 

I wanted to share a little about the flop response as it doesn’t get a lot of airtime in the social-media-trauma-verse however it’s a quite common experience when you start to recognise it.

Over recent years there’s been a big focus on resilience, and sometimes that’s worthwhile, but there’s also a point where everyone’s resilience cup runneth TF out. This, despite what the podcast bros will tell you, doesn’t mean you’re a failure or that you need to do MORE (saunas, ice baths, meditations, breathwork etc. etc….).

What it might mean is that your system has actually reached and surpassed its capacity and some fundamental returning to baseline is required. THIS IS NORMAL for a whole range of reasons, including that the current world is WAAAAAYYYY too much for most systems to remain ‘resilient’ in and that our nervous systems are fundamentally not designed to thrive under conditions of continual excessive stress.

When we’re thinking about HOW to return to baseline, there are lots of ‘solutions’ on the market that land in the realm of helping you ‘cope’ by keeping your head above water without making any deep and lasting change (either internally or in the external circumstances contributing to your stress). Then there are solutions that might live closer to the realm of ‘recovery’, where you’re able to create a time-out enough to de-load your system from stress to a point you regain functionality but again, might not be able to influence whether the external stressors recur.

Then there’s ‘healing’. What even is that anyway?!  Well, I guess it depends and is different for everyone, but at its core healing allows for a deep shift within, that along with upskilling in the art of employing coping mechanisms appropriately, creating space and strategies for recovery when required, walks you towards being able to shift the way you engage with yourself AND the external world, whether you can change either of those things or not.

At the core of many spiritual traditions and healing modalities lies the concept of acceptance. It’s core to them not because it’s easy, but because it’s essential to being able to direct oneself with honesty. To see/feel/know with a balance that can both encompass the micro and the macro and make choices informed by our values and goals towards what will best help serve… us, others, the greater – whatever we happen to be focussed on, invested in, creating.

It's important to discern that acceptance does not equate with agreement – you might not like that you just got a shitty health diagnosis for example but accepting it (including going through the process of getting second, third and twenty-third opinions if necessary!) will get you on a path to healing way faster than denial will. 

How do I heal the flop response?

If you recognise signs of the flop response in yourself, it’s important to begin from a place of self-compassion.

Understanding that your nervous system is biologically hard wired with these strategies as an attempt to help or protect you can take some of the shame out of realising that you’re running on default mode.

Once something bubbles up into our awareness, it’s an opportunity for us to interact with it and as we do, we can begin to learn more about these responses and use the wonders of neuroplasticity to rewire our brains with new, possibly more effective strategies.  

Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) is a gentle healing modality that allows for compassionate curiosity and seeks to create understanding within all aspects of our internal system. It also seeks to uncover and build relationship with our ‘self’ energy – the part of us that has the most wisdom, compassion and capacity to move us into a relationship with ourselves that is honest and non-judgemental and is similarly open (but not necessarily always soft! Self can be strong and courageous too!) to the outside world.

As self-energy becomes more accessible, we increase our window of tolerance (polyvagal talk for resilience!) so the stuff that we used to sweat before becomes less inflammatory and our ability to respond from a place of groundedness with clarity and ease becomes more accessible.

If you’d like to explore how IFS can help you shift from habitual patterns of dissociation, shutdown or perpetual overwhelm book a  90 minute discovery session today!