Episode 13
Finding Safety Without Shutting Down
What do you do when you’re not the one who lashes out… but the one who shuts down?
When your partner’s emotions take over—and your voice disappears?
This episode is for the partners who hold it all together.
The ones who manage, soothe, edit, and shrink—just to keep the peace.
If you’ve ever felt like the only way to stay in your relationship is to go quiet, you’re not alone.
Inside the episode, I’ll walk you through:
- Why your partner’s reactivity may be rooted in fear—not cruelty
- What happens when you become the emotional shock absorber
- The subtle but devastating toll of long-term self-silencing
- What freeze, fawn, or shut down responses actually mean in your body
- Five grounded, practical tools to protect your nervous system without disconnecting
You’ll also hear a personal story from my own relationship—because yes, even therapists get caught in this pattern—and how we found our way back to connection through vulnerability.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re “too sensitive” for wanting peace and closeness…
Let me assure you: you’re not.
You don’t have to disappear to stay.
You don’t have to walk on eggshells to be safe.
You are allowed to ask for more—without feeling like a burden.
Want to work together?
Learn more about coaching and current offers at www.drrachelorleck.com
Transcript
Finding Safety Without Shutting Down
[:You're thinking, wait, did I say something wrong? Should I have phrased it differently? Was that my fault? Do I even bring things up anymore? And you find yourself shrinking, walking on eggshells, editing your tone, avoiding anything that might set them off. Because every time it happens, you feel like you are the one who ends up shattered and still you love them.[00:01:00]
You know, they're not cruel. You see how hard they're trying. You even get why they react sometimes. But loving someone doesn't mean you stop needing safety, and when their reactivity becomes the loudest thing in the room, your voice disappears. A quick note before we really dive in. What we're talking about today is emotional reactivity inside relationships that are imperfect, but loving relationships where both people want to do better.
This episode is not about abuse. If your partner consistently belittles you, uses fear or threats to control you, or refuses to take responsibility for how they hurt you. Please know that's a different conversation.
ety without question. And if [:This episode is for the people in relationships that get emotionally messy, maybe even explosive, but underneath it, both partners still want to connect.
So if you are the one who ends up blinking through tears, second guessing your needs. Or holding everything in just to keep the peace. This episode is for you because you shouldn't have to choose between loving your partner and feeling emotionally safe. You can have both, and we're gonna talk about how.
ctivity, especially when you [:Eyes wide, unsure whether you just triggered something or walked into something that was already brewing. It's disorienting because it's not just what they said. It's how fast it flipped. It's the tone, the energy shift, the sudden wave of intensity or withdrawal. You start scanning. What did I miss? Did I phrase that wrong?
, or you start trying to fix [:You know, they're not trying to hurt you.
You've seen their heart.
You've been through things together. You want to be able to weather the hard stuff. But when their reactivity keeps taking over the room, when your voice, your intention, your pain gets buried under their reaction, you start to feel like you're losing yourself. You begin to avoid, edit, and minimize.
. Sometimes softening helps, [:So if you've ever felt like you're walking on emotional eggshells. If you've ever found yourself managing your partner's emotions more than your own, that's not you being too sensitive. That's your nervous system, responding to inconsistency and emotional overwhelm. It's not weakness, it's a signal, and you are allowed to listen to it.
eing in a relationship where [:and then you start telling yourself that it's just not worth it and that you'll just wait it out and you're probably being too sensitive anyway. But underneath that logic is something else. You're managing, you're containing, and you are shrinking. Because part of you has learned that it's safer to make yourself small than to risk yet another emotional blow up.
Over time, you lose track [:I've worked with so many clients who come and saying, we love each other. I know that, but I don't feel like myself anymore. I really miss the version of me that used to speak up. I've begun to feel invisible and that feeling. It doesn't just show up one day.
It happens from months or maybe years of minimizing your needs to avoid the fallout.
s the part that's hardest to [:Don't just disappear. They show up as burnout, as resentment, as anxiety detachment, as a kind of hollow loneliness that no amount of problem solving can actually fix. If that's you, if you've become the [00:09:00] emotional shock absorber in your relationship. I really want you to hear this.
That is not your role. You are not here to absorb everything, so your partner doesn't have to deal with their own emotional work. Your nervous system deserves protection too.
I see this dynamic in my clients all the time, you know, I just wanna let you know that it's not just my clients, like this is me, this is my husband too. We go through this, even though I've been doing this work for over a decade, we are still human and we fall into this pattern as well. In fact, it happened around the time of the birth of our son. and while my husband is not the blow up and get loud kind of guy, he is the shut down kind of guy. I started to feel really alone.
I noticed myself managing, I [:I wouldn't wake him in the middle of the night to help me with the baby because I wanted him to get enough sleep. These are the things that we start to do when we're trying to manage our partner's reactions instead of being vulnerable with them and sharing about how alone we feel. About how we need to be seen and not invisible and supported.
So if this episode really feels like it has you sitting there with a lump in your throat, if you've been nodding along, feeling seen by the words that I'm saying, and maybe even feeling a little scared to admit how much this hits you, then let's pause for a second. Take a breath and let me tell you something you might not have heard in a long time.
ave to keep living this way. [:You can be the kind of partner who holds space and holds boundaries. You can be loving and firm. You can care deeply without abandoning yourself in the process. Because emotional safety isn't selfish. It's foundational. It's what makes closeness even possible. It's what allows you to stay soft in the moments that used to make you go hard or go numb or go silent. And no matter how long you've been caught in this pattern, whether it's been months or [00:12:00] decades, you can start to shift, not by blowing it all up. Not by trying to change your partner overnight, of course, but by learning how to stay connected to yourself even when their reaction tries to pull you off center.
And that's what we're going to talk about next because once I started talking to my husband about how alone I was feeling, it really changed everything. You see in these moments that he would pull away. That was louder to me than any angry explosion because of my own stuff that caused me to feel the least safe, and all I was trying to do in taking care of everything that I could and trying to manage for him was wanting to find connection again.
being vulnerable about what [:So we're gonna talk about what actually happens in your body in these moments, why you freeze or fawn or shut down. And how to start reclaiming your voice without escalating the cycle. What's happening is survival. Your nervous system is scanning for danger, maybe even faster than you realize. It hears the sharpness in their voice. It sees the micro shift in their expression. It picks up on the energy rising, the tension in the room, and then it goes, this is not safe. Let's freeze Fawn.
e you do the opposite. Maybe [:Why is it always about you? And then comes the shame. Because now you are the one who looks reactive. Now you feel like you've become what you are trying to avoid. And let's be clear, that's not dysfunction. That's a trauma response
when you've been absorbing someone else's reactivity over and over. Your system has to find some way to survive it, and those responses. The freezing fawning, lashing out
ur body is trying to protect [:You suppress your reactions for so long that when they finally come out, they scare you. This is the reactive cycle from the other side. And unless it gets named and understood, it turns into resentment, disconnection, and a deep relational loneliness. But here's the good news. When you can name what your body is doing without shame, you can start to intervene.
fawn before you abandon your [:So how do you actually do it? How do you stay grounded when your partner is flooding with emotion? How do you hold onto your voice when everything in you wants to shut down? How do you stop absorbing their intensity, their blame, and the spiral? Here are five strategies I teach all the time.
a word. Feel your feet. Push [:So the first step is safety from within. One deep breath, one exhale with sound, one hand over your chest. I'm here. I'm not the threat. I'm safe. Number two, don't answer the tone. Respond to the moment. When someone comes at you hot, your instinct might be to match their energy or to completely shut down
n. Let's pause for a second. [:Number three, use a simple boundary and bridge statement. This is the magic formula. Name what's not okay, and invite connection anyway. It's hard for me to stay present when I feel blamed. Can we slow it down so I can actually hear you, or I wanna hear what you're trying to say, but I can't take it in when it comes at me that fast.
feel tempted to overexplain, [:Or I notice I'm trying to fix your feelings instead of staying connected to my own. Let's take a second. Naming pulls you back into yourself
earlier, I noticed I started [:I want us to keep working on how we can handle those moments together. So why does this really matter? Because rupture isn't the problem. Avoiding the rupture's impact is. Debriefing keeps resentment from building and reminds both of you. We're not just surviving these fights, we're actually trying to learn from them.
aries, clarity and emotional [:That's what builds real safety. Really on both sides.
So let's bring it back. If you are the partner who often ends up absorbing your partner's reactivity, if you've learned to go quiet, edit your needs, or walk on eggshells just to keep things from blowing up. I want you to know that coping strategy may have served you once. But it doesn't have to keep defining your whole relationship.
You are allowed to speak up. You are allowed to slow things down. You are allowed to take care of your nervous system without waiting for your partner to get it first.
voice, your truth, and your [:Don't rush to shut down. Don't rush to make yourself smaller .
Instead, ask yourself one question. What would staying connected to myself look like right now? Maybe it's taking a breath before responding, or maybe it's saying, I need a minute. Maybe it's coming back later with that landed really hard and I wanna unpack it, but not like that. This isn't about being perfect.
It's about practicing presence. Especially when it's hard. You don't have to go silent to be loving and you don't have to be agreeable to be safe,
and [:
