Episode Transcript
📍 📍 Welcome to Exiled & Rising. I'm Ana Mael, Somatic Experiencing therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery. Today, we'll cover Resignation Syndrome, the place where you don't wanna live and you don't wanna die. This episode is for everyone who survived war, every child, every adult who has ever felt the slow disappearance of life force inside their own body.
This term Resignation Syndrome is coined by doctors in Sweden who were taking care of the kids, coming from former Yugoslavia, and this is where I'm from, and we often talk about trauma in terms of anxiety, fight or flight or depression, but there is a deeper, quieter form of survival that most people don't recognize.
A state called Resignation Syndrome. Resignation is not burnout. It's not laziness. It's not depression. It's not lack of willpower. It's not being suicidal. It is biological shut down that occurs when the nervous system after prolonged trauma or uncertainty decides that the safest thing to do is to shut down and to receive minimum input from the outside, and that's the place where you don't wanna live,
you don't wanna die. You only want to disappear from outside life so you can have catatonic rest. And it's a brilliant, the most brilliant, intelligent move of your nervous system, of your body. And know you don't need to go through the wars to feel this way. If you lived and if you're living in continuous state of uncertainty from outside, your body will move into this state of resignation syndrome.
So resignation syndrome is a nervous system collapse, and it is what happens when the body has spent too long in survival. Fighting uncertainty that never ends and waiting for safety that never comes. And at first there is a fight or flight, adrenaline, alertness, constant scanning, right? And then when escape isn't possible, when this is already too much
the body freezes. You will feel detached, spacey, not fully present. And finally, after too much for too long of this unsafety, the nervous system goes into shutdown. So from my experience, after my third war, so we are talking about almost eight or nine years living in a war zones and surviving and having some gap in between of quote unquote of peace.
Resignation syndrome hits you after everything seems as it's fine. So you can see many soldiers, you can see refugees when, when the war is over, right? That adrenaline will move down and the system will go into resigning state because it just couldn't burn this energy anymore. Also, it doesn't have to be after the war.
It can happen any time when the intensity from the outside is too much to handle. So this is called dorsal vagal dominance. It's a deep withdrawal where metabolism, emotion, and energy all go offline. There is a documentary about children from former Yugoslavia done in Sweden. You can find this movie on Netflix, where you can see that catatonic state where kids cannot eat right, and it's not a choice.
They'll move into deep sleep state. For adults what's very common, it's flatness. They cannot feel, they cannot plan. They just wanna shut outside world and that's your body's the most brilliant self preservation response. Let me repeat this because there is so much shame. So much shame, and yet the doctors are still saying, you are suicidal or you are depressed.
And please, this is only for educational purposes. You need to talk with your doctor. But many doctors and therapists, they don't know about resignation syndrome. They don't. Resignation is not apathy, it's body saying: I will wait and use the least amount of energy what is left in me to react, to feel symptoms, to eat, to move untill
the world becomes safe again for you. As I said, resignation syndrome was first identified among refugee kids coming from former Yugoslavia and other kids who were displaced by war, genocide, statelessness, and those kids, they were not mentally ill. Physiologically, they were protecting themselves from unbearable uncertainty.
So when they're trapped in asylum limbo, right? Being stateless, they literally lost speech, appetite and movement, and they would enter in this catatonic state that mirrored the moral paralysis of the world around them. And this condition doesn't only exist in refugee camps, it lives in adults who have lived too long in survival environments, homes with chronic violence or control and neglect.
So that can happen in your family of origin, cultures where emotional truth is forbidden, where you couldn't be who you are in your own identity, sexual orientation, abilities, or disabilities. Or jobs and economy where there is constantly threat of your security, of your livelihood and also in the families and system.
This is important. So do not think this is happening only for people who went through the war. It can happen in a family that refuse to witness harm. Resignation can happen in anyone whose nervous system has learned that effort never leads to safety and it just gives up. It just gives up.
Many adults live in resignation while appearing functional, I was able to go to school. I was able , to walk, quote unquote socialize, but inside it's deep, motionless flat, absent state. There is no effort anymore. So you might feel, you may recognize yourself, if you feel permanently tired even after rest.
Joy is absolutely out of reach. You can't cry even when you want to, and you're not suicidal, and yet you can't find reason to live. That's a place, the most easiest way to describe this is: I don't wanna live and I don't wanna die.
And you feel detached from your body, your voice, your relationships, and it's not depression in traditional sense.
Depression can carry emotions, sadness, guilt, anger. Resignation carries nothingness. Nothingness. It's complete absence of charge and body has reduced that charge energy so deeply that even emotion feels too expensive to spend the energy on it. It's absolutely brilliant way of doing it. And we know this is why talk therapy or positive thinking, rarely, they don't help in this state because the thinking brain right, isn't the problem.
It's the nervous system. It's a nervous system. So if you're looking at the science, what's the science of shutdown? How this process unfolds inside body is we have a hyper arousal, right, fight or flight where the system is on a high alert, panic, overworking, constant vigilance, right? And then we have a freeze response,
where body begins to disconnect. You may feel distant or dissociated. Third one is collapse. Resignation Syndrome. The body conserves every bit of energy by shutting down either metabolism, emotion, and motivation, and you can appear calm. But this, people can say, oh, you're very calm, but that's not grounded stillness.
This is a stillness of depletion, not peace. This state can last weeks, month, even years, especially if safety and recognition never arrive. And because this is biological, this is not moral. So please, if you see someonein resignation state, you cannot inspire. You cannot discipline someone out of it or shame someone out of it.
And if you are in resignation state
no shame. No shame. Don't weaponize yourself. Don't weaponize yourself. Don't guilt yourself. There is a reason why your body is in this state. It's to protect you from what's unsafe from outside, and that unsafety could last for month and years. And this has nothing to do with you because when body collapse, it is because the world, the family,
the system failed to hold you. Every resigned child, every numb adult is a living evidence of collective moral injury. And now I'm saying this from personal and professional place, but from personal, I lived in a war from age of 14 till 22.
How the system failed all kids, all teenagers, all young adults and every human collectively failed us to protect us.
That wasn't my fault, right? It's not my neighbor fault, my other friend's fault. It's collective moral injury we went through. And this is why I say resignation syndrome is not only clinical, it's ethical, it's political, and it exposes where families, governments and societies failed us,
right.
Especially society who are valuing more productivity over protection, conquering land over safety
or praising resilience and strength over justice. Where, there is no accountability. And when accountability disappears, the nervous system stops expecting safety and without safety, the only way to preserve your life is to use the minimum amount of energy, and that's to resign until life becomes consistent and safe again.
So also how we move more quickly to the place of feeling more safe. We start with body, right? We need to feel the right to rest, the right to process in quitetude. In solitary, in solitude inside of our body. That permission to rest while you're in a state of resignation. Don't be threatened by it. Absolutely not.
It's a deep need to rest. And how do we do this? On Soma level, I'm teaching distilled, somatic experiencing lesson. It's one hour just allowing to rest. Allowing to rest, so body can find inside that safety and certainty first.
So with this somatic lesson, you can always go to the practice and repeat this. Every day. Every day where your body will allow to be in this safe space of rest. Please check the links below. Because healing from resignation is not about pushing through, and it's about reeducating, relearning the body to trust life again.
And we do this through small, consistent cues of safety, what I call microsafe practices. We are cultivating microsafety. Reconnecting with relational safety, right. And then reawakening through movement and breath. And those micro movements are cues to your nervous system, cues that you are not in danger anymore, and healing from resignation is slow.
It's subtle. And it's sacred, and it's not about motivation. It's about permission to exist. To feel what you feel. To be safe in your own skin again.
So please check the lesson below in the show links. It's called Resignation Syndrome Recovery. It's very distilled. One hour. Where we are implementing and going through those steps so the body can move into regulated state where you would feel safety. And also if you're a therapist, if you're a parent, if you're caregiver, and know that first step is not to activate, but it's to stabilize.
Don't demand engagement. What you need to provide is safety, it's predictability, it's warmth, it's routine. Your presence needs to be medicine,
right. So resignation syndrome is the body's way of saying, I will not waste energy on a world that refuses to care. So it's not a mental weakness, it's biological protest and protection, and for everyone who is living in this state, adults who are quietly functioning through this emotional emptiness
notice this: your body is brilliant. There is a reason why you're in this state. It has kept you alive the only way it could, and now the work is to gently show you that life can be safe again. That safety can be learned. That trust is not naive. It's in our, in ourselves. And you don't need to fight for your liveness.
Absolutely not. So let me summarize all of this. Resignation syndrome. When trauma is unresolved and nervous system does not feel safe enough to reengage with life outside resignation syndrome can persist for weeks, month, or even years. And key factors that keep the body in this state include ongoing uncertainty, not knowing what comes next or lacking control over your environment
keeps the nervous system in this state and globally what we're seeing now, the level of uncertainty. Most likely we will see people going into this state more and more, right. Lack of social support, feeling unseen, unheard and disconnected reinforces the nervous system believe that the only way to survive is to stay withdrawn.
That's why it's so important, communities, support groups, right. This is what we do in Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. Please check the links below. It's so important. Also, what keeps the system in a deep shutdown in a resignation syndrome is silencing or self minimization. So if someone is told that their experience wasn't that bad, or they compare their pain to others, it prevents the trauma from being processed.
Reinforce the shut down response. That goes for you If you are labeled as strong one and resilient one
by the family, friends in society, please check my episodes about burden of being called strong one and resilient. What I witnessed throughout my practice is people who are labeled as "strong one", they will go from this hypervigilant state into resignation syndrome, very common. Then we have unprocessed grief, loss, change, immigrating, exiling, being displaced,
changing your jobs, moving from one city to another, or if your identity shifts your belonging, and if that's never fully acknowledged, the body holds onto the pain, keeping you right in this trapped numbness. And the last one. Why we move into resignation syndrome is too much, too sudden. When impact of experience is traumatic and too shocking for your nervous system to absorb.
So please remember, there is no forcing motivation, not pushing through, or trying to snap out of it, right. It's a deep sacred space your nervous system is trying to do, and you wanna honor that. And then gently guiding back that intelligent biology you have into safety, into engagement, into connection.
There is nothing wrong with you. Your biology is keeping you safe,
and we need to remind biology that it's safe to be, between you and you in your body and cultivating this microsafety, Reconnecting with relational safety and bringing this somatic awareness, you'll move into reawakening your system into the safety. So your body is not betraying you. It is protecting you the best way it knows how and the work is to honor this protection
while gently guiding yourself back to connection and vitality. How do we do this? One lesson I'm guiding, please check the links in the show notes and sign up.
And as we close today, please remind yourself to be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with people around you. No judgment, no shame, no guilting, but honoring your biology, your system,
your trust and faith into intelligence of your body. This is all for today. I am Ana Mael. This is Exiled & Rising. Until next time. Much care, much care.
