Episode #112- How to Know if You’re in Freeze

In this episode I talk all about the nervous system state of freeze.

 

This is the nervous system state of shutdown when the system detects a mortal threat.

 

The nervous system chooses this state as the best option for your survival, so it is not a conscious choice.

 

Here is an example of what you may feel in freeze:

Feeling space, foggy, unable to think clearly, forgetting details, disoriented, forgetting where you’re going, losing track of time, continual exhaustion, numb, no energy, feeling overwhelmed, disconnection, feeling trapped, hopelessness, helplessness & shame.

If you identify with feeling these emotions, you are going in to freeze.

Listen in for more details about how to know you're in freeze and how it affects the body!

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 112, How to Know If You're in Freeze. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my loves. This episode, I'm going to talk about the state of freeze, the nervous system state so that you can identify if you are in freeze.
For me, I feel like I tended to be someone who was a little more anxious, more of the sympathetic activation, meaning fight or flight, primarily flight, high achiever, wanting to get things done. But then lately in my life, especially since my mom passed away and I've started to learn about trauma responses and the nervous system, I really have started to identify with freeze. I think part of it is also I'm growing my coaching business, so I'm putting myself out there in different ways.
There's been a lot of overwhelm. So freeze is a nervous system state. I feel like I really become an expert in over these last few years.
Now, in general, for all of our survival responses, they are to try to protect us when there is danger. So if there is a threat that we think we can handle, then our nervous system will choose fight or flight. And this is a choice by the nervous system and our subconscious mind.
We are not thinking this through. This happens physiologically at the body level. If the threat is more than we feel that we can handle, the body and the nervous system can choose to go into freeze or shut down.
We see this with animals in nature. If they're being hunted, and there's no way they could outrun the predator, they might have the nervous system response to freeze so that the predator might not notice them, and they might survive that way by just becoming immobilized. So the body closes up and the systems shut down.
So our primitive system decides what nervous system state is best for us to adapt to survive. And when it chooses freeze, these are the types of things that you will feel or notice in your body. Your head can feel spacey or foggy, unable to think clearly.
You could forget details or feel disoriented. You could feel blank or checked out, forgetting where you're going or losing track of time, continually feeling exhausted or numb, no energy, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like you're on autopilot or disconnection, feeling lifeless with a flat affect. Think of the walking dead.
You're immobilized or feeling collapsed, dissociated, emptiness, trapped, hopelessness, helplessness, burnt out, depression, isolation, feeling like you can't defend yourself or say no, wanting to hide and numb out. This is where shame is, so feeling ashamed and like something is wrong with you, feeling abandoned or unwanted or not good enough. It may show up as the silent treatment or giving up quickly when you're trying to advocate for your needs.
You could see difficulty taking actions or making decisions, procrastinating, fear of achieving or trying new things. And you still could be highly functional in a functional freeze state where you're a hard worker, an overachiever, performing well, just feeling numb on the inside, like you're watching yourself in your life, but not experiencing it. Freeze can have a mix of two states, the dorsal and the sympathetic.
So it can have some conflicting energy, like a horse that's given a direction to run and stay still at the same time. So you may think things like, there's so much to do, but I can't do all of it, but I need to do it all, but I can't do it, and I need to do it. So you can have a lot of energy, but also feel stuck.
Eventually, if the nervous system continues to be overwhelmed, it could go to immobility, to a shut down state, where you get tired and fuzzy, you can't think. It's like, I can't do all the things I want to, so I'm just gonna go back to sleep. And the more you try to get unstuck, the more stuck you may feel.
I have experienced this so much. As I said, with growing my business, it's crazy to me. Now I can watch all that's happening.
And so say I'll have a new idea, and I'll think about doing it, and then I'll think about the website that I have needs to be updated, and I need to figure out how to post three more things related to that. And so soon, I have overwhelmed myself. I get very tired, and I have this chaotic feeling in my brain, so I feel like maybe I should just rest, take a nap, distract for a little while, go get a cup of coffee.
And so I literally create freeze in myself, thinking of something that I need to do, and then all of these things that my brain thinks I have to do first, or that also need to be done, and soon I actually feel tired and overwhelmed and can't do anything. And that, again, is the protective nature of freeze to keep you from doing something where you could get hurt, right? So it's this quote unquote safety reaction, but it's keeping you immobilized.
If you feel like you're swimming upstream of a major current to get things done, then you're probably in freeze. The other thing to notice is that when you are in freeze, you will tell a story of how bad things are in all of the areas of your life. I call it the freeze goggles.
So when you have the freeze goggles on, it's like everything you're looking at just seems kind of dreary and hopeless and bad. So I had an example where I was getting coached, and I was telling my coach how I was bad in all the areas, not a great mom, horrible coach, every example I could think of where things weren't going how I wanted. And we talked about my yoga class, and I had had 10 people that night in yoga, which is usually what I would want, 10 people or more.
And I still told her, yeah, but I teach the same thing all the time. It's probably so boring for them. It's not creative.
I bet they hate it. Right? So that is the idea of those freeze goggles.
Even when something could potentially be something that in other frames of mind you'd be excited about, when you're in freeze, even something good, you can see the bad part about it. And it feels very real. So whenever I'm in freeze, I've started to really be able to notice it now.
And then I'm better able to just remind myself like, okay, this feels real, but it's not as bad as it seems. And there are several other specific strategies for coming out of freeze. So the story you would tell if you were in freeze is you're hopeless, you're stuck, you're powerless, because this state immobilizes the nervous system.
That's what it's designed to do. When you're chronically in freeze, you can have a low capacity for emotion and connection. You will often find yourself in situations where you feel trapped, unheard or helpless, and until you start to notice and recognize what's going on with freeze for you and supporting the nervous system to regulate it, you'll continue to have these same patterns.
Physiologically, the way that freeze affects your body is by decreasing the heart rate, decreasing the blood pressure and temperature, decreasing your muscle tone and facial expressions and eye contact. There's decreased social behavior, sexual function and decreased immunity. And there's increased fatigue, brain fog, and focus on the body sensations.
There's also increased fuel storage. So you could have the best diet in the world, but if you're in freeze, your digestion is not going to work properly, and you will be more likely to hang on to the food as storage because your nervous system is in the survival state of freeze. What I experienced is something I see oftentimes with my clients is that they were more on the activation side, the high achievers doing things with a lot of frenetic energy earlier in their lives, and then maybe have moved more into this freeze and overwhelm state as they've gotten older or had kids or had more stressors in their lives.
So you may feel like you go into an out of freeze or you may feel like you're predominantly in freeze and stuck in freeze. So with this podcast, I wanted to just help you get an understanding of what freeze feels like so that you can make sense of what's going on with your body, with your physiology, and how to move out of it. So for coming out of freeze, I'm actually doing a workshop.
I'll have a link in the show notes, but it's coming out tomorrow. So go ahead and click on that link if you want to be involved live or have access to the replays. A special workshop all about coming out of freeze.
I'll have some other workshops available this week as well. If you register, they'll also come with an exclusive coaching call with me to answer all of your questions on Friday, March 31st. So if you're listening when this comes out, go ahead and click on the show notes.
Or if it's after, you can always find the replays there as well. All right, you guys have a great week. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.