Somatic processing: How to get out of Freeze state
Hello. I have a question for you: How do you know when the sensations you’re feeling require you to pause & work with them?
This is not a dad joke or a rhetorical question. It’s a genuine one - a question you’d have to answer from experience.
We are on the final day of a 3-day potty-training marathon with our nearly-3-year-old Goldie. It’s going incredibly well. Only one pee accident (she hid out in her cardboard playhouse, so it’s been relegated to the porch until we can cut it up for recycling).
Even though it’s going great, I have somatic remnants from the months when Goldie was scream-colicky and my mental health tanked. While I no longer get fully dissociative or have panic attacks when she cries, knowing that I have long stretches ahead with her can bring me into a freeze state.
The freeze state, also known as a dorsal shutdown, happens when the nervous system is overwhelmed to the point that neither fighting nor fleeing seem possible.
Thank goodness for our 2-parent team - James is an incredible dad and an amazingly supportive partner. Yesterday, James held the fort down for nap time while I headed out for a walk.
It is easiest for me to feel and process my emotions when I’m in my own company. Even on a walk in the city, where there are plenty of people and cars, my emotional wires can’t get tangled like they can when I’m at home with my people. Having alone time is 100% essential for my mental health.
It’s tied up in my neurodivergence - my inclinations to mask and camouflage. Before Goldie was born, I periodically spent time out at my friend’s cabin in the woods where my cell phone didn’t work. It was heavenly. These days, I’ll settle for being alone in the house or even a walk where my intention is to act like I’m alone, even if my behaviors are unorthodox.
Am I hurting anyone? I ask myself. If the answer is no, I often carry on (see video above).
Walking activates the parasympathetic nervous sytstem (what we think of as the rest/digest NS). If we’re a little keyed up, walking can be soothing. It’s a good initial step for emotional regulation.
So I walked for 2 or 3 minutes and realized I was holding a freeze charge. My felt sensations (interroception) were strong; my insides felt carbonated. Activating the sympathetic nervous system (what we think of as fight/flight) is typically a great way to clear a freeze response. Running is percussive. It’s a sympathetic activity.
If you think about threats from a literal, physical perspective, it makes perfect sense. If you’re in danger because a tiger is chasing you, and you run from the tiger and successfully escape, your body is naturally closing a stress response loop. Our nervous systems are wired to ramp up (sympathetic) and wind down (parasympathetic) over and over again in elegantly overlaid cycles - from breathing in (sympathetic), to exhaling (parasympathetic). From running (sympathetic, to walking and resting (parasympathetic).
The trouble with getting stuck in freeze mode is that, regardless of what your mind thinks, your nervous system still believes it’s in danger, and this impacts brain and physiological functioning. Rational thinking, digestion, and great sleep are elusive when we’re in freeze.
To address the pent-up sensations from earlier, I jogged a little bit. It didn’t help much. I had plans to go to a cafe with my book…I knew I wouldn’t be able to settle well with this level of charge in my body, so I dipped into the Chatterbox Club parking lot and did the little routine from the video above.
I was somewhat secluded behind bushes, but that didn’t stop a guy taking his trash out from doing a triple take. One of the neurodivergent superpowers I’ve honed over the years is the ability to (sometimes) convince myself to do whatever feels best for my body. It takes some grit to leap around alone in public - and I find that it is well worth the social risk. I was not looking for friends on my walk…and I don’t think any of my friends would have been surprised to come across me kickboxing and “menacing” invisible foes.
Perhaps more importantly, what are the implications of living in a culture where it’s more accepted to hold in toxic emotions and “act normal” than it is to respond to our bodies’ immediate and diverse needs?
After activating my fight response, I felt better. And incredibly grateful that my body was able to do this spontaneous practice to move me through the stress cycle. A month ago, my body wasn’t up to that particular sort of challenge due to chronic pain.¹
Does this sort of work intrigue you? If it does, my inquiry for you is:
Do you feel any particular sensation in your body in response to the question?
If so, where do you feel it?
Can you take a few breaths with the sensation? And then pause and allow yourself to “be breathed?”
What do you notice now?
Our bodies are full of intricately overlaid, intelligent information. Bodies are also complicated - depending on the body you live in, your intersecting identities, your genetic inheritance, and the “imprints” of life experience, yours might not feel safe to you. If that’s true, I want to encourage you: your experience does not have to remain your forever experience. Your nervous system is wired to return to a state of wellbeing, and there are many paths forward.
If you’d like to work together, I’d be honored to hold space for you and your nervous system.
If you want reading in this direction, I can’t recommend Kimberly Ann Johnson’s book, Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It For Good.
Blessings! Thanks for reading! Keep it weird! ✊🏻🪩🙏🏻
There are endless ways to be creative in activating and stewarding various charges through our bodies…that said, being able to leap and jump is uniquely helpful for me to get into my fight charge.
