Are You Stuck in Freeze Mode? How to Turn off the Freeze Response

I believe I have lived my whole life in freeze ( and fawn) ‘disability’ from child abuse survival mode. I have a lot of grief about my ‘wasted’ life living gripped in fear. I’d love to access this type of therapy and recovery

Fight = Problem felt beatable. Flight = You had an opportunity to escape or obtain an advantage. Freeze = Problem feels too overwhelming or you feel powerless. Interesting.

Someone commented they feel they have been frozen all of their life. I can relate. As a young adult I naively thought my issue was simply low self esteem. Eventually I began to understand I suffer from a variety of anxiety disorders due to emotional trauma in my childhood. Now I recognize a paralysis that comes over me in certain situations and with specific triggers. And it happens far more often than I've ever been able to acknowledged until recently. I've always attributed it to me just being the weirdo I was made to believe I am since I was a kid. It's taken me 45 years to wrap my brain around the true extent of the damage done to me as a child. Turns out I've always needed intense therapy but could never afford it.

I recently discovered my problem with procrastination is related to my freeze response. I have only gone into the physical aspect of the freeze response once but, the going silent and becoming "invisible" until I will not be noticed leaving has gone on for decades. I'm now realizing following my dreams and doing things my family screamed at me I could not do are triggering the same response that I thought was procrastination. Now that I have acknowledged what's really happening the "procrastination is gone."

This is so normal--yet when I would tell people that I could not process information because I was pretty much in panic mode 24/7, they look at me like I'm speaking gibberish.

Having major anxiety over work. It takes me FOREVER to finish something or answer an email. I have nausea, and I retreat by covering my face and welling up tears in my eyes. Thank you for validating what I feel.

Exercise is HARD to commence if you are indeed feeling frozen. Once you CAN get encouraged into movement (or manage it alone) then EXERCISE IS A “Godsend.”

Emma, I am a Psychotherapist in Canada and I just wanted to tell you that I've seen a few of your videos and I think you have an amazing skill of presenting information in such a digestible fashion. I like your simplistic, brief and warm approach. You are definitely a huge asset to the therapy community and all of humanity. Thank you for your videos.

1. Reengage the Body -Remind it it’s safe -Body sends message to brain that your safe -Create movement (Pat your legs, stomp your feet, shaking arms, dancing) -After you can process trauma out of freeze -Don’t move in a fear based way, but in an intentional way 2. Self defense training 3. identifying your triggers/symptoms -what happens when you freeze, so you know how to ground yourself 4. Exercise -Get excited, similar to flight or fight 5. Practice how you would like to response -if you freeze in a meeting practice what you want to say with others 6. Develop the ability to Envision Safety -Same as how you imagine flight -Imagine times that went well

When someone says something especially hurtful or someone corners me I cannot think of anything to say, my mind just goes blank.

Thank you for helping my little 8 year old self that could not move when she was being sexually assaulted. I hated feeling frozen and helpless.

Omg when you describe the stiffness it rings true. I’d be so angry but my body becomes rigid, my mind becomes rigid and I can’t process through to the end of the anger. I’ve found that developing awareness of what’s happening is the key to breaking the wheel.

I always had the freeze response when confronted with someone saying something degrading to me in school. I could never think of a good comeback until later that evening while in bed. It seems my first response to anything that would get my adrenaline going was always to freeze, never to run or fight. I still do this when someone yells at me and I become very compliant. I lost a cat this way and it destroyed me because I let the vet who was yelling at me go ahead and put her to sleep without having any time to think about it. For 9 months afterward I cried continuously over her and started thinking that I was an evil person to allow that to have happened. The thing that made me stop crying over my cat was that my youngest daughter committed suicide. All this happened in 2012 and 2013. I could have really used this information early on in life, especially during the 18 years or so that I was continually replaying my childhood traumas in my head and crying every night. I would say my brain was definitely frozen then!

6:09 Re-engage the body (create movement, pat legs, move arms, stomp feet, shake arms, dance, go a little crazy) 9:05 Train in martial arts 10:27 Work out! 11:08 Practice and Role-play effective responses Creating a Safe Place Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isw37iCwMCg

I wish I had a therapist who knew about this. I had trauma therapy and we never left the talking stage because I kept dissociating. The therapist thought I was pretending to ignore him or trying to force the session to end. While I wanted to work on processing my trauma so much, because it was and still is disrupting my life every day. And he claimed to be a specialist.

It might not be a traumatic experience, it could be an on going situation which keeps you frozen in life.

I’ve been stuck in this on and off all of my adult life (since my trauma at 18). You are the only one talking about this, no one gets it. I hear, “just get up” 🙄… umm if i could I would! It’s destroyed my career, it can last weeks. Im just so sick. Edit- awww! I see my comment from one year ago! Always coming back 🧡

Emma, in the name of accessibility, it would be helpful to add Closed Captions (CC) to this video. I am hearing impaired and barely able to comprehend the speaker. Thanks for your assistance. Click Settings > click Subtitles/CC > click Add subtitles/CC > select English and proceed. This way, you can reach a wider audience - deaf, English learners, etc. Judging from the first go-around, I like your style of presentation and the abundance of information. And I would like to be able to fill in the missing pieces in the next go-around with the aid of CC.

I realize Ive done some of these things automatically, but in a cubicle environment everyone keeps telling you to sit down, stop pacing, stop fidgeting, stop walking the corridors. But sitting down in a chair just adds to the freeze response and eventually my brain will just lock up. Thank for for telling me that what Ive been doing is what is required for me to function when faced with tough deadlines.

I know this is a super blanket non-trauma informed statement but I hate PTSD so much lol like it has been 2 years of increasingly, and daily, freeze response episodes and constant dissociation and my entire life & support system has suffered because of it. This video was very helpful, thank you 🙏