The flight response happens when we encounter something stressful, and our sympathetic nervous system takes over and tells us to RUN! This was great when tigers were chasing us, but how do we manage this when the danger is a …
6 Ideas to Unfreeze
I wanted to share a few ideas of things that might help when you feel you have gone into a freeze response. The freeze response occurs on a continuum, one day, something might happen, and you feel a little numb, …
I Stay Too Long In The Wrong Relationships
Most of us have been conditioned to ignore or block out our feelings and our bodies. Part of finding our way back to health and wholeness is through reconnecting with our thoughts and feelings in a healthy way. We can …
When the Freeze Response is Chronic, It Is Related to Depression.
Your automatic response in any stressful situation will be the one that your autonomic nervous system found most effective in the past. The freeze response takes over when we cannot fight or run away from the situation, and it is …
When Your Defence Mechanism Is to Freeze
You make sense. I hear so many people feeling confused about their response to a stressful situation. Asking for years: “Why didn’t I scream?” “Why didn’t I run?” “Why didn’t I kick?” “Was I being complicit?” NO, NO, NO, NO!!!! …
The Freeze Trauma Response
The freeze response is an INVOLUNTARY physiological change in your body and mind when you feel threatened. In a split second, we have established that we can’t run (flight) or defend ourselves (fight), so we freeze. Freezing allows us NOT …
When you are a Cycle Breaker…
The more Cycle Breakers I meet, the more I hear this story. This feeling of not really belonging to your family of origin, of feeling innately different, like you are a completely different species. For a while, this often causes …
Adaptive Survival Strategies
Let’s talk about Complex PTSD, childhood trauma, and its effects. The fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses are known responses to trauma, and they are ways that the body responds to danger, overseen by the autonomic nervous system. When we …
You are all Star Dust
There is something about this idea that gives me relief. To know that you and I are made up of the same cosmic matter. That the elements that make up your body: Oxygen 65% Carbon 18.5% Hydrogen 9.5% Nitrogen 3.2% …
The Johari Window
Do The Work – Part of my work as a therapist is to explore my unconscious, what might be known to others and not to me, and what is unknown by others and myself, to explore my blind spots. Why …