How to understand the freeze response and its purpose

Have you been in situations where looking back you should have felt intense fear but instead felt nothing? Did you minimize or deny rather than assess the circumstance accurately? This upside down response to threat is part of the freeze response.

We often talk about the fight or flight response to threat, but the freeze response is also common among complex trauma survivors. This makes sense when fighting or fleeing were both impossible, so you would protect yourself by doing nothing.

A freeze response can be accompanied by denial of what's happening. There may be some disassociation and numbing out to a clear and present danger.

For example, you find yourself in a threatening situation that anyone would agree is scary. But your freeze response protects you by shutting down instead of planning an escape.

Childhood freeze response

This is one of the many ways past trauma cuts us off from our lifesaving intuition and guidance system. As with many of our trauma responses, what kept you safe as a child becomes maladaptive as an adult.

Your learned freeze response compels you to shut down when a person or situation turns threatening. This prevents you from assessing the situation accurately and taking necessary steps to keep yourself safe.

Growing up with an emotionally abusive mother, the freeze response became my go-to. Realizing there was nothing I could do to appease her, my body learned to detach until the tirade was over.

As I got older, my mother would berate me for my "stoicism". In fact, my lack of response to her ranting was a way to keep myself safe.

It had the dual purpose of defusing her out-of-control emotions (though that never worked), and preventing me from feeling the full force of her ire.

Numbing out in other areas

My freeze response allowed me to check out and avoid feeling the pain of the abuse. This numbing out extended to other areas of my life, however.

Like many sexual abuse victims, I never said 'no' or even pushed my attacker away. I let it happen which is what many survivors tell themselves, adding to their guilt and self-blame.

This is the tragic way trauma begets trauma. The ways we learn to cope become so maladaptive that we fail to protect ourselves in the most basic way.

Maybe I handled my attacker the same way I handled my mother. Knowing that disagreeing or protesting would only escalate her ferocity and thereby my level of threat.

So, in some ways you could say my narcissistic mother primed me to be date-raped. She taught me to never say no, never set boundaries, and never have a voice.

She taught me that what I wanted didn't matter. I dare not breathe an opposing viewpoint or I'd be dead. (That's how it feels to a child).

Growing up in an abusive home primes you to suffer abuse in your future relationships. Parents can be accomplices in crimes against you even when they are nowhere near the scene.

They conditioned you to stop protecting yourself as the only way to keep yourself safe. (Wrap your head around that one.) Then they put you out into the world with a body and brain trained to abandon you and work against you.

And then the world tells you that you need to forgive them. Think about all they've been through. Well, I say 'no' to that. What say you?