What Does Freezing Look Like In Relationship?
By Ally Wise
Shared With Permission
We recognize the freeze state by the dual opposite activation:
- urgency + stuckness
- anger + helplessness
- flight + trapped
This creates internal confusion, friction and contraction. Imagine riding a horse and giving it different messages; go and stay, both simultaneously. The horse would not know what to do. Will feel activated yet, confused, trapped, and helpless. This happens with freeze.
Or imagine you long for or you want to invite purpose or intimacy in your life but feel emotionally disconnected from these experiences. You can’t quite connect emotionally. This is freeze.
Freeze doesn't mean total immobility. The main characteristics of freeze are low self-regulatory capacity and emotional connection/regulation. If we've spent a long time in the freeze, the system has been deprived of regulating life experiences like discomfort, various emotion, conflict or vulnerability. It will avoid or fear them.
Someone who has been in freeze for a long time will find herself/himself in situations where he/she will feel trapped, unheard, unsupported or helpless, especially emotionally and energetically. Without acknowledging the pain of freeze and supporting the nervous system to regulate it, the freeze will project itself over and over.
We can't think or will our way out of freeze. No matter how hard we try. We've learned to solve problems through thinking, fixing and understanding, but our nervous system is not a "problem" to be fixed. It's a life process that requires a different approach and skills. The frozen, unheard, unseen, suppressed and unsupported nervous system would highly benefit from less fixing and more safety, acceptance and attunement.
Ally Wise is a life transformation mentor with a focus on self-reconnection, trauma resolution and nervous system empowerment. You can find her content and the resources she offers on her instagram account.
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