Summary

The article discusses the freeze response as a stress reaction, explaining its debilitating effects and strategies for managing it.

Abstract

The article "Freeze Responses: The Unspoken Stress Response" delves into the often overlooked freeze response, one of the four recognized stress reactions, alongside fight, flight, and fawn. It emphasizes the importance of understanding this response to effectively manage stress, as each stress reaction requires unique coping strategies. The freeze response is characterized by a sense of paralysis in the face of perceived danger, which can be physical or psychological, and is not limited to extreme situations like natural disasters but can also occur in everyday stressful scenarios. The article provides examples such as job interviews, relationship conflicts, and social settings for individuals with social anxiety. It also explores how past experiences, particularly in childhood, can condition the freeze response as a default reaction to stress. Symptoms include a lack of focus, emotional and physical numbness, and an impaired ability to communicate. The author shares a personal anecdote about a relationship where a freeze response led to a breakdown in communication. To manage freeze responses, the article suggests setting pre-emptive measures, engaging the senses, physical movement, breathwork, and seeking professional help to address underlying traumas.

Opinions

The author believes that understanding the freeze response is crucial for personal growth and managing stress effectively.
It is implied that hindsight can lead to self-compassion when reflecting on past situations where a freeze response occurred.
The author suggests that the freeze response can be a preferred or conditioned reaction due to past traumas, particularly from childhood.
There is an opinion that loved ones should be understanding and provide space when someone is experiencing a freeze response.
The article conveys that engaging the senses and physical movement can counteract the physiological effects of freezing.
The author advocates for professional therapy as a means to understand and overcome the freeze response, hinting at the potential for healing from childhood traumas.

Freeze Responses: The Unspoken Stress Response

Why Freeze Responses Can Be So Debilitating and How To Manage Them

Photograph by Matheus Bertelli on Pexels

When we think of stress responses it’s not uncommon to immediately go to the fight or flight response; that adrenaline-filled reaction that pushes us to run from our adversities or face them head-on.

But fight or flight responses aren’t the only stress responses we may exhibit when things get tough — there are several others, all equally as important to recognize. In total, psychologists recognize 4 stress responses, or the 4 Fs for reminder's sake;

Fight
Flight
Fawn
Freeze

It’s difficult for us to manage our responses in light of stress if we’re uneducated and misinterpreting our reactions for something else. Each stress response brings with it a unique set of physiological and mental reactions, which require unique strategies to navigate and manage. Someone exhibiting a fight stress response, for example, is going to react differently than someone in a freeze response.

This is why today’s article is so important to acknowledge and learn. There have been situations in my past where I wished I’d known I was experiencing a freeze response. I would have handled that situation better, or set pre-emptive measures to ensure I could. *Hindsight is a wonderful thing, though, and we need to have compassion for our past selves as we would all do better if we knew what we know now.

Today we’re focusing on the Freeze response: Why we experience it, how it shows up in our bodies and minds, and how to cope with its potentially debilitating impacts. To stay up to date on future articles relating to the other stress responses, and other personal growth topics, be sure to follow Above The Middle and subscribe for email updates.

Thanks for clicking on, and let’s get to it.

What Is The Freeze Response?

Freeze responses are the stress responses we turn to when neither fighting nor running away is an option. Take doomsday movies as an example, there might be a devastating event like a huge tsunami wave or volcano eruption and suddenly the camera pans to onlookers staring as their death approaches. You’re screaming at the TV for them to move but they’re practically paralyzed in fear.

That’s a freeze response.

Unfortunately for us though, freeze responses aren’t unique to doomsday movies — we can experience them in our day to lives in any situation where we feel helpless.

For example, a child may be being mistreated by their caregiver but have no route out to flee or justification to fight. If they fled, there may be danger and if they fought, they may face even more danger. The fight or flight response therefore isn’t a suitable option and instead their body shuts down. They become numb to their environment, helpless in their stress, and frozen in time. In essence, they freeze.

Here are some other examples of where a freeze response may show up.

High-pressurized situations like job interviews
In the face of relational problems or “hard conversations” that trigger stress.
With insecure attachment styles most notably disorganized and avoidant individuals.
Social settings in the case of individuals with social anxieties.

The thing about freeze responses, and any stress response for that matter, is that we don’t necessarily have to be facing a REAL physical danger like a tsunami wave or mistreatment from others to experience it. We may also experience it when we THINK we’re in danger i.e., in the case of the socially anxious person who feels they’ll be judged if they say or do the wrong thing. Our beliefs tell us what is dangerous, and we react accordingly.

It’s important also to note that we may grow up with the Freeze response being our PREFERRED stress response. If we experienced a lot of freeze in childhood, we may automatically fall into a freeze response in the face of any stress. This is because our nervous system is hooked to our memory; meaning stressful situations that mirror those we had when we were younger can lead to similar reactions to those we exhbited.

Let’s look closer at the signs and symptoms of freeze responses.

The Signs and Symptoms of Freeze Responses

The aim of the freeze responses is to shut us off from the danger we’re going to or think we’re going to experience in order to save us from experiencing pain. Not physically, as that would mean us running away in a flight-like response — as running is likely not an option — but in such a way that we’re physically still there but mentally checked out. As such freeze responses bring the following symptoms.

A lack of focus and visible distance
Numbness both emotionally and physically
An inability to verbalize responses due to an impaired ability to process what’s going on.
Tiredness due to energy conservation
A lack of appetite or motivation due to the temporary shutdown of biological processes.

An example of where the above showed up for me was in the breakdown of a previous relationship I had. I felt as if the guy I was dating was being off with me for various reasons, and I asked what was up without thinking of how the stress of having a serious conversation would impact me — again, hindsight is wonderful, right?

When he began to open up about the struggles he was facing; if we were compatible, could last, etc, my response wasn’t to reason with him and discuss our problems but to go to the WORST case scenario i.e., that the relationship was going to end. In the face of that HUGE fear of mine, I froze up and immediately shut down. I couldn’t process what was being said, nor could I verbalize my own thoughts clearly. The relationship ended there.

Freeze responses don’t push us into a fight mode, nor make us flee, but shut off our ability to physically and mentally take action.

So how do we handle them?

Managing Freeze Responses

1. Set pre-emptive measures.

If you’re in a relationship, can (hopefully) confide emotionally with your partner, and feel as if a freeze response is your go-to method of stress handling, inform them of how you might react in light of stress. That way you both have a mutual understanding of what a freeze response may look like, how it shows up, and how hard decisions should not be made in when stress is high.

As I said, we’re literally emotionally and physically impaired when experiencing freeze. Anyone loving of you should understand this and give you the space you need to recollect your thoughts.

2. Engage Your Senses

As the freeze responses shut off our senses as a means to protect us from what we may be experiencing, bring your attention to what you feel, see, hear, taste, and smell. In bringing your awareness to your senses, the hope is that you wake yourself back up.

3. Move Around

Freeze responses keep us stuck by tightening up our muscles and decreasing our heart rates. Moving about will loosen those muscles and pick our heart rate back up.

4. Breathwork

We often forget that our breath is the most integral part of our survival. When experiencing a freeze response our breath is likely to get shallow so slow and deep breathing exercises which signal safety for us, can help unfreeze us.

5. Seek Professional Help

Finally, learned freeze responses are often indicators of childhood traumas where we were made to feel we couldn’t help ourselves, or seek help from others. Working with a therapist or trained professional to understand our histories, and our triggers, can help us recognize when we’re likely to experience freeze and how to break free from it when we do.

Thank you for reading this article. I appreciate the support so give this article a few *claps* if you enjoyed it and follow Above The Middle for more like this. If you want to keep reading, here are some related articles for you to check out.

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