Thanks to our autonomic nervous system, when we mammals experience a threat and can’t fight or flee (“flight”), we freeze.
And that’s a good thing. We need this survival strategy to protect us under intense stress.
The trouble comes when we live our lives or extended periods of time in this state (this freeze response is only supposed to last moments, seconds really!).
But, we keep pushing, pleasing, working, and doing (basically overriding our system), without realizing how stressed we are, and overtime we slowly, unknowingly, become ‘frozen,’ but in a ‘functional’ way.
And here’s the thing about us humans…we adapt to the point of illness and dis-ease.
Many people are living semi-functional lives in some spectrum of the freeze response—and have no idea.
Sure, they’re numb, shut down, and checked out from their body, internal physiology, sensations, emotions, and life force energy. But that’s normal, right?
This, my friends, is what we in this somatic trauma healing world often refer to as functional freeze.
And as you may be learning here, it comes with consequences (to our health, our relationships, our world).
In today’s video re-release, I dive deeper into functional freeze, what it is, how these patterns get embedded into us humans (often when we are very young), and steps you can take to thaw out and come back to life.
Have a watch.
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Resources I Share In The Vlog:
VLOG: The Polyvagal Theory. Explained.
VLOG: Two Types of Orienting
VLOG: On Feeling sensations
VIDEO: Raising healthy humans
VIDEO: Why shaking isn’t enough, how functional freeze can show up, healing early trauma, and more.
VIDEO: How to come out of a chronic freeze response after repeated stress & trauma
Robert Scaer’s Books. https://traumasoma.weebly.com/books.html
