Episode 86: Thawing Out: 10 Techniques to Escape Chronic Freeze

“Don’t just stand there…” 

Sometimes responses under stress make no sense to us, or the people around us. And that is because your nervous system is wired for one thing, Survival. 

It is often why we look back at moments in life and say things like “I should have run away,” because we don’t choose how we respond. 

And when we experience ongoing stress or trauma, the system can get stuck in a fight/flight/freeze response. Potentially experiencing ongoing chronic stress responses in the body. Leaving you exhausted, struggling with brain fog and even physical health complications. 

However, you can train your brain to heal, shift, and respond more healthily with practice.

In this week’s episode, Pam will share 10 strategies to get you unstuck from the fight/flight/freeze and even functional freeze response in a few as 5 minutes a day. 

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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 we are talking all about how to get unstuck from fight or flight. Now, last week we talked about if you might be stuck in the freeze response. And this, we talked about chronic freeze, but also like what the freeze response looks like and 10 signs that you might be in freeze. So if you have not listened to that yet, go listen to that if you're not sure. But today we're talking about how to get unstuck from those places and also how to help your kids get unstuck. So we're talking all about strategies to get the nervous system working with you. So let's dive in. Okay. Don't just stand there do something if you've ever uttered these words to your child or had them uttered to you when you were a kid Chances are the kid is in freeze response it's the moment when the glass of milk falls and the Milk spills everywhere the glass breaks and your kid just stands there looking at it and it's not a long time But there's like a pause Right. And that pause is as a result of the nervous system going, Oh, what do we do? And most kids when they're confronted with a threat. So whether this is a growling dog or a screaming parent or some other trauma, the nervous system has to decide in that moment, what do I do? And the very first decision the nervous system makes is the amygdala goes, Hey, is this a threat or is this not a threat? If you're if, if you grew up in a household where like your parents screamed all the time and there'd be huge punishments for spilling something, then your nervous system might be saying, yes, this is a problem. And we need to do something about this. So from there, it's going to decide fight, flight, or freeze. And it makes that decision based on best. Likelihood of survival, because it's a survival response and we live in a culture where our nervous system gets triggered a lot. There's a lot of stimulus and that stimulation, that, that stimuli creates for us nervous system responses that maybe are beyond survival. Right. They're not just about, are you going to run over by a bus? They're also just like day to day stressors, right? Our stress response gets triggered because of day to day stressors or because of traumas we've experienced in our lives. And of course it makes sense that small children would freeze because they don't have the strength or capacity to fight off their attackers. Now I talked to a lot of moms and a lot of Women and men that I've worked with through the years that have struggled with this idea of like being stuck in a freeze response Because there's like shame and guilt associated with it, right? I should have been able to do this. I should have responded this way What is wrong with me? And I just want to reiterate as I said in the last episode You don't get to decide you don't get to decide whether you freeze whether you run or whether you fight and so The only thing we can do is figure out how to move from there. Now this fight or flight response is under 90 seconds, right? So there should be a 90 second response that happens or under 90 seconds. 90 seconds is usually the mask, max. There should be an under 90 second response that happens and then you can move from there. So if you're stuck beyond that, it's likely that this is triggering old wounds. This is triggering and opening old stories and keeping you stuck based on your thoughts. It's fueling more emotions and compromising your mental and emotional health and wellbeing because that's what happens. And unfortunately, but it does, it happens. So here's the thing when you go into the police, the military, uh, firefighters, uh, martial artists, a lot of different You know, scenarios, when you go into scenarios where you're, you could be at risk of life, you know, life or death situations, you can train your nervous system. And that's what a lot of like police academies and bootcamps and fire academies and all these trainings, that's what they're for. They're, they help you, they teach you lots of skills, but a big chunk of those skills and the practice that goes into all the work that you do in those environments is to literally rewire how the nervous system responds. to stress. Otherwise, you would have firefighters and police officers and military and, you know, some martial artists or whatever other places, you know, fighters, whatever other scenarios, you'd have people freezing all over the place. And when we're talking life or death, that's, that's a problem, right? You, that's a problem. So the other side of that problem is that when we Rewire the nervous system to not respond to those stressful situations so that we can think rationally, what often happens is we lack the ability to feel our emotions. And so that's a whole nother complicating factor that we will talk about in future episodes. And this is why it's important to like let our kids feel is because. Our generation, my generation was kind of broken with this, like, you're not allowed to feel, don't feel feelings bad. And so now we have all these underlying things that are showing up. Anywho, so how the hell do you get unstuck from the fight or flight response? Now, the very first thing to understand is that the fight or flight response is a nervous system response that lives in your body. It lives in the tissue of your body. Right? Your muscles go rigid. Your body collapses. Those are both freeze responses. You're you're, you get tunnel vision, your respiration increases, your heart rate increases so that you can run or fight off an attacker. Those are physical responses. This is why the strategies to get unstuck are often through the body. So we're going to walk through 10 different ways that you can get unstuck. And that you can teach your kids to get unstuck from the fight or flight response. Now the very first thing that I just want to say here as like a, a side note is that if you are parenting a kid that gets, that is in any one of these responses and recognizing that big behaviors are often a triggered fight or flight response, right? There's a, there's a feeling or an experience of them not feeling safe. And, even if you as the adult and your rational mind is like, I don't understand why they're acting this way because of course they're safe. It doesn't matter. Their, their nervous system is just trying to protect them. So let's start there. Step number two is you want to be really careful not to shame kids. around the response of their nervous system, right? So like when when they break something or something, they spill something and they just kind of stand there and stare at it and do nothing saying to your kid, what the hell is wrong with you? Get a towel, clean that up. What that does is it gets them it gets them re, like, entrenched more in the freeze and it gets them starting to feel guilty and shameful about how their nervous system is responding. And they can't do anything about that until you teach them how to move themselves through the fight or flight response. Now, I've said this a million times. You guys have probably heard me say this in previous episodes or any other content that you've listened to or participated in with me, but One of the big things about the fight or flight response is you have, it's a cycle and you have to close the cycle. So let's talk about 10 different strategies to do that. Strategy number one, move the body. Move the body is always the best way to close the cycle. So this works really well for kids that have maybe been triggered or stressed out. If you have a kid that kind of holds it all together. So these, these strategies are gonna work for when they're triggered by the fight or flight response, but also when they're just overstimulated when they're when they seem a little stressed, right? They're not, maybe not in a full blown fight or flight response, but they're having a stress response experience. These same strategies will work. So strategy number one is move your body and move your body in a way that increases your heart rate, right? That the increased heart rate works with. So, something that's like overtly physical, not some, not like, all right, I'm just going to walk around the room. Walking around the room is not a terrible thing if that's where you're at in your journey, in your life, in your physical capabilities. But for kids, getting them to do jumping jacks, getting them to like run around the house, getting like, And I mean like outside the house, if you, if you're in a place where you can, like, my neighbor does this with her six year olds all the time, if, if it's been like a long cold winter or if they've been sick or if like they've been cooped up in the house, she'll be like, okay, five laps around the house and she sends them out the door and they run and I'll see them. I'm like, what are you, you sending your kids out to run laps around the house again? She's like, yeah. And we think of it as like burning energy. And that's what's happening when the fight or flight response happens, you get, uh, Adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, and acetylcholine, right? So you get all these chemicals that get flooded into your system and they need to be used. So step number one is move your body so you can use those chemicals, right? You can use those hormones, the neurochemicals in the brain, all of that. Strategy number two. Breathe breathing is one of the things in the body that lives in both hemispheres of the brain that lives in both nervous systems that you can breathe automatically and not have to think about it.'cause because you imagine if you had to think every time you breathed, uh. None of us would be alive because we wouldn't be able to sleep. But you can also focus on your breath and use your breath to slow things down. Right? If, if it's body reactions, if your heart rate is up, if your respiration is up, if your pupils are dilated, if you have all these physiological responses happening in the body, you can use breathing to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Now this will work whether you're stuck in like a functional freeze, like brain fog and all that kind of stuff we talked about. in previous episodes. Or whether you're like panicking or really stressed or in a full blown fight or flight response, right? Breathing, the exhale in particular, activates the relaxation response. That's the parasympathetic nervous system. So, inhaling into the belly. For kind of like three or maybe four, and then the exhaling for twice as long, six or eight, is going to immediately pull you into, uh, the relaxation response, which is the opposite. It's the other end of the fight or flight response. Right. So that's number two. Number three is focusing your attention. Now this might be like, seriously, but mindfulness practices are really amazing. These work great for kids in classrooms. I like to use the five senses and a lot of classrooms still have those analog clocks that tick or those really annoying ones from childhood. I don't know. Maybe I was the only one that thought it was annoying. I now use it in therapy sessions with kids. I'm like, does the clock in your classroom? Tick and they're like, yes. Okay. What I want you to do is when you start to feel this way So maybe not when you've already gone overboard but when you're starting to feel stress when a test is coming when people are getting really loud and you're starting to get overstimulated when you're feeling frustrated or Rejected or isolated or alone or any of the other emotions that can trigger these stress responses I want you to look at the clock and I want you to count The ticks. I'm going to listen to the ticking and I want you to watch the clock and I want you to sync it up. So you're watching the second hand and you're going one, two, three. For as it's ticking away and I want you to use your ears to tune into it stay in Tune with what your ears are telling you but also watch the ticking of the clock and as you do So see if you can start to slow your breath and so I will teach them. We'll do it in practice I'll put a clock on my like my table In my office when I was in a physical office, now I do everything on the computer, but I'll, I'll put up a clock and have them watch the second hand and count and just start breathing. Inhale. Okay, let's inhale for one. One, two, three, exhale, one, two, three, four, five, six. And so they're using some sort of practice to tune in counting is a great mindfulness practice, especially for kids tapping, like just tapping your fingers or tapping there. Fingers on their legs and feeling the fingers as they tap on the thighs of their legs. And it's the whole process is about tuning in to the five senses. So what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you smelling? What are you tasting? What are you feeling? Like, what's the last one? What are you feeling? Right? So like, what are the five senses telling you? How are you feeling? Into the experience of the, of the timeframe of the space. Mindfulness is about being present in the moment without judgment, focusing on one thing. And so if you have a kid that maybe struggles with anxiety in the classroom, it's going to be really important that the teacher understands that this is what they're doing. Because when they're practicing mindfulness, they need to be practicing mindfulness, which means they need to tune in. To whatever practice we're giving them and you can do this yourself, it's much easier as adults because most often we're not being micromanaged like obviously if you work in like a factory on a line and you might need to, you know, request a step away to do this because otherwise things go haywire because you're not doing your piece, but for most It's much We don't have somebody watching us every second of the day, and this does not have to be a long practice. This could be like 30 seconds. It does not have to be long. Mindfulness is just focusing on, I like to also focus on like, you can focus on the tip of your nose when you breathe. You could do that while you're doing other things, uh, but I, but the majority of the attention is focused at the tip of the nose while you're breathing, right? So focused attention. The fourth practice is grounding. Now my favorite way to, to ground, my favorite way to teach grounding is to just say to people, take off your shoes and walk outside and feel the earth underneath you. It does not matter to me if that earth is paved, if that earth is a wood or a, like a poly vinyl deck. If the earth is dirt or grass. Because what you're going to do is you're going to step out and you're going to imagine that you're directly on the earth. That you're directly on the ground with your feet in the dirt and you're feeling the cool or the warm or whatever it is. Like obviously if it's like the summer in Texas or Florida, somewhere where it's really hot and the sun is beating down on something, like don't burn your feet, find a cool spot, a cooler spot to put your feet, right? But experience the sensation of being connected to the earth. And breathe. You'll notice most of these exercises involve breathing as well. Strategy number five is something that we call somatics, right? And somatics are about getting into the physical body. It's like feeling a sensational experience. So that might be putting a cold ice cube in your hand. It might be like if you have one of those, like a heating pad or one of those little like warming things that you can throw in the microwave that you can use taking that and putting it in your hand, wrapping it around your neck, wherever. You can experience it or would like to experience it and then feel the warmth of that and notice its impact on the muscles and the tissue. Like, can you notice if you're using something cold, can you notice like a, a contracting of the muscles and can you mindfully kind of start to release the muscles? Can you tap into or tune into what the body's experience is? If you've ever sat in meditation, sometimes at the beginning of practice, we'll say, like, just notice what's going on in your body, tune into areas, and then we breathe and we get going in practice, and I want you to then tune into, like, what you noticed again before, and maybe you've let go of some stress. Somatics are all about being in the body. Now, one that works really well, so you can do temperature stuff, but one that I love to do is somatic healing strategy. Progressive muscle relaxation is when you contract And then you release, that's it. And so you could just be contracting and releasing your hands, contracting, releasing your shoulders. You can do it, like I do it sometimes when I'm sitting, like I I do, I sit a lot when I'm recording, when I'm creating content, when I'm writing. And so one of the things that I'll do to help release my hip flexors is I push my thigh bone down into the chair and it activates the muscles along the back of my leg, the upper leg and my glutes. And so that's a somatic, that's like a contraction and then release. And then contract and then release, and you can do that anywhere over a period of time. It also works great when you're laying in bed and you're trying to get the body to settle, or you're trying to get your kid to settle. You can get them to just do like, squeeze their hands, squeeze their feet, scrunch their face, shoulders by the ears, you know, contract their body, the whole body. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze all the muscles. And then just let go of them all and let the bones get heavy and that's semantics, that's semantics. So that's a fun one. Number six is laugh. Laughter has a great impact, a positive impact on the nervous system. It triggers the nervous system that like, oh, hey, this isn't stressful. And so you might be like, well. That's great. If I can, if I find something funny, but there's this strategy, there's this practice out there called laughter yoga. And I don't know if it's still big, but it was when I did my yoga teacher training back in the early 2000 and, I don't know, 2010, maybe the laughter yoga was big. It was like this This big thing we were doing and it is literally creating laughter. So it's like in community. So you're together and you're laughing and you do all sorts of exercises. And there's one that I remember that's like this, you're like, everybody lays on the floor and you've got like your heads on this person's stomach and somebody else's heads on your stomach and somebody else's heads on, you know, like whatever, like you're laying on your back. And these are obviously, these are all people that I knew that I was connected with. And like one person just starts laughing and it becomes contagious. Like laughter is contagious. Right? So, so just even if it's like you have your favorite clips on on YouTube or on Tik Tok or on Instagram, or you have favorite standup comedians that you like to watch or just like little snippets or funny memes, just finding things where you can go and like create laughter. And you can do this with your kids as well. Sometimes just, just being overtly silly will bring up some laughter in you and in your kids. Laughter is a great one. Number seven is natural eye movement. Now one of the things that happens when we are in a fight or flight response, fight, fight or fight, flight or freeze is that we get what's called hypervigilant, which means you become hyper aware of the surroundings. in order to keep ourselves safe. So we're looking for like attackers or like, you know, people in the shadows or, you know, bad guys coming in, you watch too many like, uh, gangster movies, right? Like bad guys coming in through the door. So the The opposite of that. So there's like a lot of darting of the eyes and all that kind of stuff. So the opposite of that is natural eye movement. So this could be just something as simple as watching some things in nature. It's kind of gentle eye movement, watching, like if the, watching a tree where the, the wind blows and the leaves are blowing on the tree. It could be watching like the. The running of water like through a brook or a river, it could be sometimes like if you're drawing and you're just kind of like watching your eyes or if you're reading and you're kind of, you know, you're the experience of moving your eyes across the page, that's natural eye movement. Right. So like having a conversation with someone and making eye contact with them and looking across the room, kind of looking at the greenery in your room and just kind of exploring it. So I have a bunch of plants that sit right off the side of my desk. And sometimes what I'll do just to kind of, you know, create this relaxation response in my body is I'll come back to that actual eye movement place. And I will literally start at one end of the plant. And I will just start like as if I'm tracing with my fingers. I'll just kind of trace with my eyes. And I'll, you know, trace down the stems and down to the, you know, uh, base of the plant and back up to the other, you know, just kind of following along just to, just to tap in and see, just to observe it. And we start to move into natural eye movement and the nervous system naturally starts to settle. Number eight. It's like the cold stimulating the vagus nerve on the side of the throat, side of the neck. I use this strategy all the time and it's something that I use with my therapy clients. And I actually had a therapy client say to me recently, and this is a kid that I've worked with like for the last 12 years. And I said, and I taught her this strategy and she was like, Oh, my, it's been really stressful at work and school. She's doing both right now. And she's like, you know, it's funny. I have this, like, I need to go do the ice pack thing. And I started telling people at work about it. She works in the vet clinic. Yeah. That's great. And she, she's like, I started putting ice packs on the side of my throat when I'm at work, when my stress levels up. And she's like, so now it's become like this. I like, I'm stressed and I'm like, okay, I need to go get my ice packs. And people are like, oh, they're on the door. They're all set for you. Whatever, whatever. Like people just know, uh, it has a. Using ice packs on the side of the throat will activate the parasympathetic nervous system through stimulation of the vagus nerve. This is the calm down response. It works great. It works great with kids. It works great for adults. We see this like you see it in movies where you splash cold water on your face. The side of the cheeks is great, but it's really the side of the neck that we're trying to get cold exposure to. Number nine is co regulation. So this might mean co regulating for your kid. If you're Kid has been triggered. It also might mean being in company of someone that can co regulate with you, whether this is a therapist, a coach, a trusted family member. I don't like when I was even as an adult before my dad passed, when stressful situations would arise, I would call him and I'd be like, Oh, this thing's going on. And he was always so calm and cool about everything. Like, I don't know that in his later years. anything caused him stress. Like he was like, it's fine. It's not the end of the world. It's all going to be okay. That's kind of his, his energy and his attitude. And he wouldn't say like, calm down. It's no big deal. He would be like, okay, yeah, we'll figure this out. Not, let's not, let's not get overwhelmed by it. Let's see what we can do to to fix this. That's co regulation because he was standing in his calm. So as a grown ass adult in my 40s, I'm calling my dad and he is co regulating me, right? So it's not just a like your young child and, and you and you write co regulating them. But it really is, it could be part of your partner, a friend, somebody that you can. Go to, not because you want to dump on them, but these are the people that like, you're like, Oh, when I'm stressed and I want to be around people, these are the people I want to be around. They're the ones that are calm and regulated because you can co regulate from them. Just remember that if you're the one that's often needing co regulation, you can also pull them out of regulation. So just be mindful of that when you're relying on people in your life. If co regulation is something that works really well for you. To either spread the wealth or pay someone, pay a therapist, pay a coach, and let them know one of the things that you rely on to really help rewire the nervous system for you is co regulation. And then they're prepared for it because it's, there's nothing worse in your personal life than like spending time with someone have them kind of suck like be a vacuum to your energy because you don't have the skills It's a little bit more complicated, I guess. So but I think I've kind of described what the process is to buffer or to like hold space for, I guess, when somebody's really struggling. So just kind of keep that in mind. It's totally fine. We co regulate each other all the time in life. But just kind of keep that in mind if you're starting to feel like, Oh man, maybe I'm relying on this person too much. There's a chance, a good chance that you probably are if you're having that thought and it's okay. but that's what professional therapists and coaches and people like us are for. And number 10 is to use your hands to create that creativity, whether it's singing, whether it's knitting or crocheting, whether it's drawing or painting whether some sort of creative expression that you enjoy. will help to bring the nervous system back into regulation and will help to rewire the nervous system for regular regulation. Now the things to keep in mind here is that feeling is normal and feeling is healthy. If you're like, Oh, I shouldn't be feeling these things. I need to shut down my emotions. That's not what this work is for. This work is to help you so that you don't spend your whole life suffering. This is to help relieve and alleviate suffering, and then rewire how the brain responds to stress. But you still have to feel it. Feeling is extreme. It's like one of the most important things we have. And, you know, it's really funny because we do a lot of work around here on like feeling is a good thing. And my husband and I are both therapists. And he said the other day to my to our 14 year old. Oh, she's almost 15. next month. Less than a month now. And he said, man, kid, I am looking forward to seeing you in the world. I love your spunk, your strong opinions, your kind of, like snappiness and quickness with things. And I just wish it wasn't always targeted at me. And I was like, I laughed and he laughed and she laughed and he was like, yeah, I know, I know. Like, right. You can't just say, I want my kid to be independent and strong willed and to be a great leader and then not allow them that space in the house. And it is normal. Like our prefrontal cortex cannot handle, like as kids, we don't, our prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed. That's a logical part of our brain. And so when we're feeling. This happens so often and I see it happen in therapy offices a lot, so I'm just going to say it so that if you're in therapy and you experience this with your therapist or if you're a therapist listening that when you are triggered, your prefrontal cortex, your thinking brain is offline. It's like the computer has shut down. Your Wi Fi is no longer working. So to try to talk someone through, or to get someone to talk about how they're feeling in the moment that they're feeling, The only strategy for getting through the fight or flight or freeze response effectively to do some healing and to do some rewiring or wiring the brain for success. So we, as adults, we often rewire with our kids, we're helping them wire the brain for success. And the only way to do that is through the body first. So all of these strategies that I just gave you come through the body and then allow you to kind of go to the next place. So, I would love to hear from you. Which of these strategies are you going to try? Which one is like, you're going to be your go to or what have you tested out? What works for you? Send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. My Instagram is at Parenting Therapist Pam and I love, I will get back to you. It'll be, you'll mess, be messaging me directly and I will get back to you just as soon as I can. So thanks guys so much. Have a great day and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care.