Understanding the Freeze Trauma Response
The most common state of the human nervous system today is the freeze response.
This state can manifest on a spectrum, from a high-functioning freeze to a more collapsed, shut-down state.
When our nervous systems are stuck in a freeze state, it affects our physical, emotional, and mental health, often leading to feelings of disconnection, numbness, and fatigue.
Polyvagal Theory and the Freeze Response
Quick Overview of Polyvagal Theory (for a deep dive head here)
Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, explains how our nervous system regulates responses to safety and threat through three pathways:
Ventral Vagal Pathway (Social Engagement System): When we feel safe, this system is active, promoting connection, communication, and calmness. It enables us to engage socially, build relationships, and feel a sense of security and comfort in our interactions.
Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight or Flight): When we perceive a threat, this system activates, preparing us to either fight the threat or flee from it. This state is characterized by increased heart rate, heightened alertness, and readiness for action.
Dorsal Vagal Pathway (Freeze or Shutdown): When the threat is overwhelming and neither fight nor flight is possible, the dorsal vagal pathway activates, leading to a freeze or shutdown state. This response helps us cope with extreme stress by disconnecting from the environment and conserving energy.
Polyvagal Theory highlights the importance of feeling safe for optimal functioning. When we understand these pathways, we can better comprehend how our nervous system reacts to various situations and how to support it in returning to a state of safety and connection.
How Freeze Trauma Response Happens in the Nervous System
The freeze response is a protective-survival state triggered by perceived threats, whether internal or external.
For example, as a child, your nervous system might have responded with freeze when your emotions were invalidated or dismissed. These unmet emotional needs were perceived as threats, pushing your system into a freeze state.
This response is not just a reaction to physical danger but also to emotional and psychological stress.
As an adult, similar threats may trigger the freeze response, including:
Unmet Emotional Needs: Past emotional needs that remain unmet continue to pose a threat until the inner conditions change to address them. These could include needs for love, validation, and safety.
Emotional Wounds: Wounds such as feelings of rejection, abandonment, or loneliness, activated by unmet needs, can trigger the freeze response. These wounds often stem from early life experiences and can be reactivated by current situations.
Emotional Regulation Challenges: Unfamiliarity with managing emotions, resolving emotional conflicts, or experiencing emotional intimacy can be perceived as threats. If we didn't learn healthy emotional regulation skills in childhood, our nervous system may react with freeze when faced with emotional challenges.
Disconnect from Emotional Needs: Ignoring or being disconnected from your emotional needs can also trigger a freeze state. This disconnection often results from past experiences where expressing needs was not safe or was discouraged.
Accumulated Emotional Energy: Suppressed emotional energy from the past adds to the threat perception. Over time, these unprocessed emotions build up, creating a sense of overwhelm.
Negative Emotional Narratives: If your brain labels an emotion as dangerous, bad, or unwanted, your nervous system perceives that emotion as a threat. These narratives are often formed in response to past experiences and can be deeply ingrained.
Sympathetic Freeze vs. Dorsal Freeze
The freeze response can manifest in two distinct ways: sympathetic freeze and dorsal freeze. Understanding these variations helps in recognizing and addressing them effectively.
Sympathetic Freeze
In a sympathetic freeze, the body is still in a state of high arousal and alertness, driven by the sympathetic nervous system. This type of freeze is characterized by:
Hypervigilance: The person may appear tense, alert, and ready to act but is unable to move or make decisions.
High Energy: There is a significant amount of energy in the body, but it is not being utilized for action.
Functional Impairment: Despite the high energy, the individual feels stuck and unable to move forward.
Dorsal Freeze
In a dorsal freeze, the body shuts down, driven by the dorsal vagal pathway. This type of freeze is characterized by:
Low Energy: The person feels drained, lethargic, and disconnected from their surroundings.
Disconnection: There is a sense of numbness and detachment from the environment and from emotions.
Collapse: The individual may feel physically heavy, with a lack of motivation or ability to engage in activities.
Coexistence of Sympathetic and Dorsal Freeze
It's possible for both sympathetic and dorsal freeze responses to coexist. This can create a complex state where an individual experiences both high internal arousal and external shutdown. For example, someone might feel a high level of internal anxiety (sympathetic) while simultaneously feeling physically and emotionally numb (dorsal).
Completing the Freeze Response- How to Get Out of Freeze Response
To move out of the freeze state, your nervous system needs to experience what it lacked in the past to return to a baseline of safety. This involves two interconnected phases: safety and Integration.
Safety: Your nervous system must feel safe enough to begin the completion process. Safety cannot be forced; it needs to develop organically. Creating a sense of safety involves cultivating supportive relationships, establishing boundaries, and engaging in practices that calm the nervous system.
Integration: Once safety is established, the nervous system can start integrating past experiences and emotions. This means processing and making sense of past traumas and emotional wounds in a way that reduces their impact on the present.
How to Overcome the Freeze Response
Remembering:
Somatic Memory: Remembering suppressed emotional and sensory memories from the body, not just cognitively recalling events. These memories are stored in the body's tissues and can resurface as physical sensations or emotions. Working with a somatic therapist or a somatic experiencing practitioner can be supportive.
Your Body's Wisdom: Your body has a natural drive to restore regulation, to flow between nervous system state without overwhelming you. Growing your ability to feel safe enough to connect with your body is a skill that with time, practice and patience, can be honed. Again, a somatic therapist can help with this.
Feeling and Regulating:
Layered Emotions: Processing various layers of emotions such as disconnection, fight/flight responses, exhaustion, and unmet needs. Each layer needs to be acknowledged and addressed.
Energy Acknowledgement: Recognizing the enormous energy required to maintain a freeze state and addressing the need for rest and self-care. This may involve prioritizing relaxation and recovery activities.
Discharge:
Stress Release: Releasing the trapped traumatic stress and survival energy within the freeze state. This can happen subtly through spontaneous shaking or crying. The body naturally knows how to release this energy when given the opportunity.
Stabilization: As the nervous system releases this energy, it becomes more stable and less activated. This stability allows for greater emotional resilience and a sense of calm.
Grieving:
Loss of Connection: Mourning the loss of connection, life, and time spent in the freeze state. This includes grieving the missed opportunities and relationships that were affected by being in a frozen state.
Acceptance: Embracing the reality of past protections and their role in survival while moving towards healing. This means honoring the coping mechanisms that helped you survive and recognizing that it's now safe to let them go.
As always, radical, compassionate self-care is the name of the game.
Healing from a freeze state requires patience, gentleness, safety, and presence. Be kind and understanding with yourself as you navigate starting to feel and process your emotions.
If your nervous system has spent years in a freeze state, it can’t be rushed into healing. Gradually embody the care and safety that were missing during the activation of the freeze response.
Here are 4 principals to remember as you navigate healing from trauma:
Patience: Understand that healing is a gradual process and that it's okay to take small steps.
Gentleness: Treat yourself with kindness and compassion, acknowledging your efforts and progress.
Safety: Create an environment that feels safe and supportive, both physically and emotionally.
Presence: Stay present with your experiences, allowing yourself to fully feel and process emotions as they arise.
You don’t have to navigate trauma recovery alone.
At reclaim therapy we provide trauma therapy and therapy for childhood trauma from a somatic and nervous system lens.
We believe that the body is an integral part of renegotiating trauma and the freeze response trauma.
To learn more about somatic experiencing, head here. Or, learn more about EMDR and how an EMDR Therapist in Horsham, PA can help you get out of freeze response.
🧡,
Reclaim Therapy is a team of trauma therapists in Horsham, PA who specialize in treating eating disorders, PTSD and Complex PTSD.
We’re passionate about helping people reclaim their lives from the impact of trauma, disordered eating and body-shame.