The freeze response is often misunderstood. While fight or flight tend to show up as obvious actions, freeze is quieter, sometimes mistaken for calm. But for many trauma survivors, freeze feels like being locked inside your own body. Like you're watching the world through glass.

Freeze is a dorsal vagal state that is activated with the perception of extreme threat, when neither fight or flight is accessible. The body floods with stress hormones, but instead of gearing up for action, it creates significant disconnection in the body. While this state is protective in the short term, chronic freeze can lead to emotional dysregulation and numbness, making it difficult to feel connected to the present moment.

This is not laziness or avoidance. It’s an adaptive survival mechanism designed to protect you in moments when there is no safe way to act.

For those with trauma histories—especially complex or developmental trauma—the freeze response can become a habitual pattern. If your early experiences taught you that movement, expression, or speaking up weren’t safe, your nervous system may have learned to default to immobilization as a form of protection.

This can look like:

• Feeling numb or checked out
• Difficulty initiating tasks or making decisions
• Disconnection from sensation or emotion
• A sense of fogginess or dissociation

Coming out of freeze needs to be slow and intentional. Each moment of noticing, each breath, each movement- these are all signs of returning.

In order to move out of freeze, the nervous system needs to experience safety and integrate past experiences. This can be achieved through:

• Creating a sense of safety: Establishing supportive relationships, setting boundaries, and engaging in calming activities.
• Integration: Processing past trauma and emotions in a way that reduces their impact.
• Micro-moments of safety: Gently touching upon defensive activation and returning to safety (this is great work to do with a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner!).
• Social Connection: Engaging in calm, supportive interactions to activate the social engagement system.

If you're in freeze now, or moving through it, I see you.
Your body isn’t broken. It’s wise.
And it’s okay to move slowly.

Thank you for letting me see you,