Episode 85- 10 Signs You Could Be Stuck In a Freeze Response!

Do you struggle with feeling unmotivated or stuck when it comes to reaching your goals? Do you often feel numb, disconnected, or struggle with procrastination? Maybe you even walk around thinking there is something “wrong” with you. 

In reality, you may be stuck in the freeze response. 

The body is complex, intelligent even, but when your stress response kicks in over and over, and you start to spend more time stressed than calm and relaxed, you could be wiring your system for nervous system dysfunction. 

In this episode, Pam shares 10 Signs that might mean you are stuck in, what practitioners call → Functional Freeze. A Chronic Freeze state that has you walking through the musts, and leaves you unmotivated to reach your larger goals. 

Free Workshop: Get Ready to Gain Control Over the Freeze Response, by checking out this all-new training to rewire your stress response! 

Join us and get started!!

Start Regulating Your emotions, clearing out the triggers that have you stuck, and shifting your parenting strategies with my brand new program The Calm Project → Yours for FREE when you join the Align Mom’s Membership Today! 

Follow Me on Instagram: @parentingtherapistpam

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The best thing you can do for yourself and your kids is effectively regulate your nervous system. And a great place to start >> to wire the brain for gratitude. Research tells us that gratitude increases happiness and a peaceful mindset. Make the shift and watch how things in your life start to change. Sign up today! www.pamgodbois.com/gratitude

Transcript

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Hey there, and welcome back to the Peaceful Home Podcast. My name is Pam and I am your host. And today I want to know if you're struggling to make progress towards your goals at work or at home. Are you feeling unmotivated or stuck? If so, you may be in the freeze mode. Today's conversation is all about how the freeze response of fight, flight, or Of our stress response, how that shows up, how it gets in the way and where to go from there. So today I'm going to uncover 10 signs that you could be shut down. In the freeze mode. So let's dive in. So first and foremost, when stress occurs, the body responds by deciding if you're in danger. And if you're in danger based on what your nervous system says, it decides. Fights, fight off an attacker, run away, or freeze. Freeze is a normal response of the nervous system. And it most often shows up in children or in adults who have experienced some level of trauma in their life. And if you think about it, a small child, think about a four year old, if there is fighting or conflict in the home, and there is a real or perceived threat of death or harm, what is their greatest likelihood of survival? To be very still and don't get noticed. I honestly, I hear this from adults all the time who grew up in a household where there was an angry or addicted parent who was unpredictable. These adults often say to me, us kids knew that if we stayed out of his way, we wouldn't be the target of his rage. Get small, be quiet and don't move. It makes sense in this scenario, right? A small child, what are they going to do against a large adult? Attacker. And remember, the nervous system's job is survival. It doesn't care if you feel good about it or not. It doesn't matter if you're upset about it, if you're anxious about it, if you're mad about it, it doesn't care. It's only job is for you to get from this stressful event to the end of the stressful event alive. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a mom today who grew up in a similar scenario that I just described and she said, when I was a kid, I used to get stuck in the freeze response all the time and I would get so angry. I would get so angry. That I was stuck in freeze and couldn't do anything about the scenario. And I still carry that anger with me today. And we had a conversation about how it's so important to let go of that anger because it's not a judgment on you, right? Being stuck in the freeze response has nothing to do with you. It's not a, it's not a judgment of whether you're a good person or not. That just means that your nervous system knew at a very young age There was a threat in your environment and if you're still stuck in freeze as an adult, chances are that happened very early in life for you. Because then we roll into adulthood, right? And we start to notice maybe we're not feeling a whole lot of anything. Not a whole lot of joy, not a whole lot of big emotions other than maybe anger. Anger is a relatively safe emotion for individuals that kind of live in that freeze response. Feeling blah, struggling to make decisions struggling to take action, feeling unmotivated or stuck, not really thinking clearly, struggling to get out of the brain fog or the confusion. Just feeling out of it. You notice this when you like walk into a room and can't remember why you were there. And now that happens once, but it happens over and over again. Now this happens to us. This happens to us in life, right? But when does it happen? It happens when you're stressed. It doesn't happen when you're calm. It doesn't happen when you're feeling really productive. Like on your really productive, clear, high functioning days, do you walk into rooms and go, what did No, you don't. You also don't have to come in and out of the house 15 times because you forgot so many things. I forgot my keys. I forgot my glasses. I didn't grab my phone. I don't have my, you know, my mom's little list next to her door is like hearing aids keys, sunglasses, mask. I don't know, something else, but and she has that there, but she's 80. It's normal at, as our brain starts to age, to not remember all those things. It's not normal when we're in our mid thirties and forties to not remember why we walked into a room. It's not a normal. Healthy brain response. Now, someone may have said to you in your life, Hey, maybe you're dealing with depression, and that's why you're not feeling real motivated, or you're feeling lazy, or you're forgetting things when you come into a room, or you're not having real big positive emotions, you're just feeling blah. Or maybe you're struggling with ADHD. I have, I say to moms all the time yeah, when you walk into a room and you forget what you went into, and they're like, oh my God, that happens to me all the time, it's totally ADHD. Sure, maybe. Or it's functional freeze. Have you ever considered that's what's actually happening for you? Have you ever considered that you have trained your nervous system to live in a state of functional This happens when the stress response is triggered and we live our lives over an extended period of time in a freeze response. We keep pushing, we keep pleasing, working, doing, basically overriding the system's reaction. Without realizing how stressed we actually are. Because the crazy thing about us humans is that we are adaptive to the point of illness and disease. And so many of us that are living in this semi functional state have no idea it's even a thing. We may go through a period of time saying my stress level's really up and that's why. I'm struggling to focus or get things done. I'm not feeling real productive. I feel like I'm all over the place or distracted. Yeah, that's not just stressed. It's a functional freeze. Oftentimes we numb out, shut down, check out. We're disconnected from our bodies. From sensations and feelings or struggles or injuries, like the little whispers of a discomfort becomes a loud scream. We're also disconnected from our emotions and from our energy, from our prana, from our life force energy. Functional freeze has consequences. And those consequences are physical, they're emotional, and they're relational. So here are 10 signs that you might be in functional freeze. The first is procrastination. If you are someone who lives in that state of I'll do it later. This is really common when we're in freeze mode. It's hard to take action. Even if you want to or feel like you should, getting those things checked off your to do list is really hard. You're procrastinating, often an important task. You're feeling overwhelmed and don't know where to start. And this can lead to feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. Maybe you're afraid of making mistakes. This could show up in many ways, like overthinking everything or not wanting to try new things or being excessively critical to yourself. And this all fuels this functional freeze cycle. Another way is by not taking care of yourself. When you're in freeze mode, you may be neglecting your physical and emotional needs. You may not be eating well or exercising, not getting enough sleep, and this can lead to further fatigue and low energy, which are also signs. That you're in freeze. Another sign is not going out with friends. Staying home, isolating, withdrawing. These may be signs that you're in freeze mode. We have a tendency when we're in this place to avoid social situations, and when we do engage in social situations, they're really exhausting. And this could be going out and spending time with people, but this could also be responding to text messages. Or like the phone rings and somebody's calling and you're like, Oh, I just can't, I just can't deal with that. That could be a sign that you're in a functional freeze. Number four is task avoidance. So this is like distractions, not doing things that you are not supposed to necessarily be doing. Escapism, right? These are all common in this freeze state. It's video games, binge watching TV, scrolling on your phone. They're the things that are like time fillers, things that we do. When we're overwhelmed and try to avoid actual like functional or important tasks. This also loops into this idea of avoiding responsibilities. So we return to things that can suck us in. Social media, for instance. Or excessive learning. I have some people that I work with that will just listen to podcasts. I know you're listening to a podcast. There's nothing wrong with that. But we'll listen to podcasts, or we'll take courses, or we'll do all the learning and getting more information, but never actually take action. To move in a direction that makes them feel better, right? And all of these tasks, all of these things will give you some kind of temporary relief, but eventually lead back to guilt and worry about the tasks that I didn't do, the things that I didn't get done. My to do list that has no checks off on it today. Number five is it's hard to move and be active. So if you've ever had the experience of just like my body just feels heavy like my limbs feel heavy It feels like it's so much effort to get off the couch or get out of bed or even just get outside for a walk. Or I had somebody say to you, Oh, you're stressed. Just go for a walk. And you're like, Not a walk. Sounds awful. You could be in functional freeze. Number six is a difficulty speaking up. Like maybe you have things that you want to say or share and you feel like it's difficult to share those things. First of all, because it's hard to get clarity on what's in your mind and how you want to communicate it. And secondly, because your voice just feels stuck. Sometimes in the yoga world, when we're talking energy, we talk about like throat chakra blocks. This is the same idea. Difficulty speaking up could be. You're stuck in the functional freeze, and it could also be that in conjunction with that, you have a throat chakra block. Number seven is bad social skills, basically, right? It's like avoiding eye contact, it's like being distracted on your phone while you're interacting with somebody else, it's yelling from room to room, it's not picking up on people's social cues, but you're almost just you become almost socially awkward. And These are all strategies to protect yourself against social connection, right? So I'm just gonna stay to myself, keep to myself. Honestly, this is the one you go into the store to go shopping and you put your AirPods in and you listen to music and you don't make eye contact and interact with anyone and you barely even like you maybe pull One out so you can hear the cashier and mumble through. That's what I'm talking about here when I say poor social skills. It's that. Number eight is hypervigilance. This is where you're feeling alert, like on edge, observing everything around you, but you're not taking action on anything. You're not actually doing anything about it. You're scanning the room. You're reading people's facial expressions. You're trying to determine what that person across the room is thinking about you. Maybe somebody's looking at you and you're like, Oh, what are they thinking? Or you're looking to see if you have something on yourself or you get stuck in this anxious thoughts about yourself or the environment or the other person. On the surface, people may not be able to tell if there's anything wrong, but on the inside. Maybe it's just you. You're on edge looking for danger and most often in chronic freeze as adults, the danger is not physical danger. It's emotional danger, right? It's the danger that comes when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and we connect with the people around us. Number nine is feeling tired all the time now when you're in freeze mode It can be really rough on the nervous system because there's lots of firing of stuff happening inside the nervous system which makes day to day functioning really exhausting. So feeling tired, sleeping more, changing the pattern around how you interact with people. So maybe you still have people in your life that you're interacting with, but instead of going out dancing or going out and, out on the town, you just want to stay home in your pajamas and binge watch Netflix. And eat microwave popcorn because you're just so that's a sign that you could be in freeze mode. And finally, you might be in functional freeze if you can't remember shit. If you Or somebody that's walking in and out of rooms, can't remember what it was that you were doing in there, what your plan was, if you can't find your grocery list, if you can't remember what was on the grocery list, if you can't remember what the tasks are that you need to be doing, like buying your kid their damn yearbook or signing them up for the thing, and you're that parent that's always missing the sign up, you could be in functional freeze. Do any of these sound like you? Do any of these scenarios, you go, yep, that's me, I'm experiencing that. Now this is not a diagnostic that you're in functional freeze. I just want you to recognize that there could be more going on than meets the eye. So what do we do with this? These are the symptoms, essentially, that we talk about when I'm talking about regulating the nervous system, right? I'm talking about Fight response, flight response, freeze response, how your nervous system responds to stress and how to rewire the nervous system. How to get your body, your breath, your mind, your emotional state, responding differently. To stress. Now with functional freeze in particular, one of the most effective ways to start moving your body through functional freeze is to start moving energy through the body, which means physically moving the body. It could be breath. It could be, yeah, that's a movement of the body, right? It could be. Like going for a run, doing some jumping jacks, physically moving the body, moving taking a yoga practice and flowing with a yoga practice. But any scenario in which you're actually moving the stuck flow of energy will start to rewire the nervous system. So some of the tools we use are tapping. We use meditation. We use breath work, right? But one of my favorite tools, one of the things that I teach all the time is focusing on one thing at a time. This is in essence, the entire picture of what mindfulness is, right? A mindfulness practice is all about being present in the moment and focusing on one thing at a time without judgment. So that's a great step forward in clearing and. Getting yourself unstuck from the chronic freeze state. If you're starting to recognize that, Hey, you might be stuck in a chronic freeze state, then it's time to start moving through that stuck energy. And this is exactly what we do inside the Align Mom Society. We dive into. Unsticking the nervous system, clearing out the old stories and beliefs that are getting in the way, building our communication, and getting a really strong foundation in mindfulness. So I would love to have you join us. Click the link and check it out in our in the show notes and I will see you soon. Take care.