Cody Butler explains why women shut down in conversations: their nervous system predicts the exchange will be pointless or painful based on past interactions. She's already war-gamed it and concluded engagement means feeling invalidated or unheard, so her body protects her by withdrawing.
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But what's actually happening here is none of those things at all. She has a preconceived idea of what you're capable of, the kind of conversation that you're capable of having based on what's happened in the past. And she doesn't believe that you're capable of having a safe conversation with her at this point in time. So when a woman refuses to speak or refuses to engage in the conversation, there's only a few possibilities of what's going on. There's really two, potentially three. So the first is that communication with you is completely pointless. The second option is that communication with you is very painful. Or the third option is that it's both, right? It's, it's painful and it's pointless. So she has a preconceived idea. She had— she's war-gamed this out in her mind, how this is going to go. And she's already decided how this conversation is going to go. And based on her past history with you, she's decided that this conversation is not worth having. So it's not that she doesn't want to have it or wouldn't have it. She just doesn't think that it is actually worth having right now. So what's actually going on is her nervous system, which is a predictive mechanism, has predicted that having this conversation with you which you think is going to be calm and productive, she is predicting that this is going to be a pressured conversation. It's going to invalidate her position. She's just going to feel more unseen, more unheard.
