#256 - Fight-Flight-Freeze Response and Sensory Processing Challenges

We recently completed a 2-on-1 mentoring session with a mother who described her son as “continually shutting down - won’t talk and won’t participate in anything.”

Sounds very similar to the FREEZE response in fight-flight-freeze.

The fight-flight-freeze response is a physiological response to stress, or to danger. Our children who have experienced trauma, or experience sensory overstimulation, often experience this stress response.

We give you some tips and tricks to help proactively manage this as well as in-the-moment strategies.

Make sure to check out all of our links below!

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Links

All Things Sensory Podcast Instagram
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Healthline Article
Episode 199 - The Covid Regression
Episode 172 - Diving into Trauma
Episode 242 - The Overstimulated Parent’s Guide

Transcript

Rachel Harrington: 0:00

So we're going to break down what the fight flight freeze response is, why it's important to know about it, what it can look like, especially for our kiddos with disabilities, or specifically sensory processing challenges retain primitive reflexes. And then we're going to give you some strategies to help them if that is what they are going through, if they are struggling with that fight, flight or freeze response. I'm Rachel.

Jessica Hill: 0:30

And I'm Jessica. And this is All Things Sensory by Harkla.

Rachel Harrington: 0:34

We are both certified occupational therapy assistants and together with Harkla, we are on a mission to empower parents, therapists and educators to help raise confident and strong children of all abilities.

Jessica Hill: 0:45

On this podcast, we chat about all things sensory, diving into special needs, occupational therapy, parenting, self care, overall health and wellness, and so much more.

Rachel Harrington: 0:55

We're here to provide raw, honest and fun strategies, ideas and information for parents, therapists and educators as well as other professionals to implement into daily life.

Jessica Hill: 1:06

Thank you so much for joining us.

Rachel Harrington: 1:12

Welcome back to another podcast episode. We are happy to have you here today.

Jessica Hill: 1:19

We recently had a two on one mentoring session with the mother of an eight year old boy. She described how he continually shut down, he wouldn't talk and he wouldn't participate in anything. And it just made me think that this sounded just like the freeze response that we see during fight flight or freeze reactions to stress. So we're going to talk about that today.

Rachel Harrington: 1:45

Yep. So we're going to break down what the fight flight freeze response is, why it's important to know about it, what it can look like, especially for our kiddos with disabilities, or specifically sensory processing challenges, retained primitive reflexes. And then we're going to give you some strategies to help them if that is what they are going through if they are struggling with that fight, flight or freeze response. And we're also going to see how many times we can say fight flight or freeze without tongue tying ourselves.

Jessica Hill: 2:19

You have to like slow it down because if I say it too quickly, I'll mess it up. Yeah.

Rachel Harrington: 2:24

Okay, let's do it. So what is the fight flight or freeze response?

Jessica Hill: 2:28

It is a physiological response to stress or to danger. And I'm going to read this quote for quote from a healthline website where it describes that fight, flight or freeze. And we'll link this in the show notes. So specifically, fight or flight is an active defense response where you fight or flee, your heart rate gets faster, which increases oxygen flow to your major muscles, your pain perception drops and your hearing sharpens. These changes help you act appropriately and rapidly. It's basically an adrenaline rush. Yeah.

Rachel Harrington: 3:07

And it's normal. And it's supposed to happen. But our body isn't supposed to be stuck in this fight flight or freeze response. Yes, freezing is a fight or flight on hold were you further prepare to protect yourself. It's also called reactive immobility or attentive immobility. It involves similar physiological changes, but instead you stay completely still and get ready for the next move. I always think about biology in nature and like the enemy or the deer in headlights.

Jessica Hill: 3:35

That's exactly what it was. So fight flight, or freeze isn't a conscious decision. It's an automatic reaction. You don't get to control it when it's happening. And what this article goes on to explain is that the sympathetic nervous system drives the fight or flight response, while the parasympathetic nervous system drives the freeze response. And how you react can depend on which system dominates the response at the time. I thought that was really interesting. And I'd like to actually learn more about that and look at the studies on that. But in general, when your ANS is CIP is stimulated, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormone. And Rachel made a really good point that these fight flight or freeze responses happen during certain situations, but our bodies aren't meant to be in them all the time, constantly. And so if your body is in fight, flight or freeze all the time, just think about the stress levels and the different effects that is going to have on your or your child's ability to get through their day.

Rachel Harrington: 4:56

I also just think about the past couple of years that we've gone through. It is is 2023 right now so if you're listening to this episode in like 2030, and you're like, what are the past years they're talking about? It's the COVID years, right? You think about the amount of stress that everyone had and was going through from 2020 to, you know, now still ongoing, correct? Yeah. And I think that can really that has really impacted some kiddos a lot of kids a lot of adults we haven't we have a previous episode on the on the impact of the COVID. That will link in the show notes just in case you want to learn more about that.

Jessica Hill: 5:33

So specifically for our sensory kiddos for our kids with SPD or just general sensory challenges or potentially learning disabilities. What do these fight flight freeze responses look like? The first one is fight. So this is going to be aggression, hitting, kicking, spitting, yelling, crying, that fight response in reaction to stress.

Rachel Harrington: 6:00

The next one is flight, which can look like elopement. So a child is running away from the activity, running away from the adult, hiding, and also even refusing to participate in a specific activity.

Jessica Hill: 6:13

Or even like trying to avoid a certain situation because it's overstimulating. And then the freeze can look like shutting down where they just they won't talk, they can't communicate with you, they're refusing and they can't tell you why they're probably not communicating in any way during the freeze response. Now we've worked with children who have exhibited all three of these reactions, and it just depended on the situation. Or we would have kids who every session they would be aggressive, or every session they would try to elope or every session they would shut down. And it was always our job in the session to figure out why they were doing it, what was triggering them, and then what we could do to help them. So, you know, it's important to remember that there's always a reason for these responses, there's something happening that's causing the child to have that release of whatever chemicals going through their body to cause them to go into that fight, flight or freeze.

Rachel Harrington: 7:22

Yeah, so it depends a lot on past trauma. A lot of kiddos, have kids and adults, have experienced trauma. So things like being in a foster home, or in an unsafe home environment, or children who have extensive medical histories they have been in and out of the hospital, they have traumatic experiences as it relates to those medical events. And children who don't feel safe in their body due to those retain primitive reflexes, that lower brain stem processing. They're just in that dysregulated state, their nervous system can't organize itself. And then also children who have experienced a death in the family, abuse, neglect, going along with just in their home being exposed to trauma and having difficult, difficult upbringings.

Jessica Hill: 8:14

And then like Rachel mentioned, just the past couple of years have been traumatic for many people. And so trauma doesn't have to be a big huge event, it can have, I think what they call like little T trauma, where you know, something that seems small happened, but it was traumatic for you traumatic for the child. You know, the death of a pet dog can be traumatic for a child I know for my son, he will still cry if he talks about our dog that died, the dog that we had when he was born. And we actually we had to put him down because he had a brain tumor was heartbreaking for my son, and he still has, you know, just some trauma associated with it. He still cries over it when he talks about it. But, you know, thinking back to that those experiences can cause our kiddos to go into these fight flight or freeze reactions/responses.

Rachel Harrington: 9:14

So there's a lot to unpack here, we're not going to unpack it. All right now we do have some past episodes that we'll link that go into a little bit more detail on the specific areas of trauma and you know, the impact of COVID on the nervous system. But today we're gonna focus on some strategies that you can do if you're noticing that your child is just either in this constant state of fight or flight, freeze, or if they are kind of going in and out of it on the

Jessica Hill: 9:47

The first one is co-regulation and empathy. So regular. you as the adult need to be able to help your child regulate you need to be a safe space for them. They need to feel safe with you and you need to be able to practice keeping yourself calm when your child is dysregulated. And then showing empathy and letting your child know that it's okay that they have these feelings, you see that they're struggling, you understand that they're having a hard time, and you're there for them.

Rachel Harrington: 10:20

The next one is to participate in activities the child is good at, and they enjoy. So if they are in their own world, and they're focused on Legos, but you can't stand Legos, you don't want to play, you don't know how to play, you just, you can't get into it, you got to put that aside and really step into their world and build them up and get down on their level and let them teach you something. So if they're setting up like a, like a Minecraft Lego world, and you know nothing about Minecraft, ask them, ask them to teach you about it. And you might fall asleep. I feel like that's what Jessica does often.

Jessica Hill: 10:57

I don't fall asleep, but I definitely zone out. And I have to pretend like I'm not.

Rachel Harrington: 11:02

But you know how the child take a video of something that they want to teach you and show it to you and just really try to get into their world and let them be good at something and teach you about it.

Jessica Hill: 11:16

And in doing that this is going to help build up their self esteem, build up their confidence. Oftentimes, if a child is dysregulated, in a constant state of fight, flight or freeze, they don't have confidence in themselves or their body, they don't feel safe in their body. So by coming into their world and building them up and showing that you're interested in what they're doing. This is going to build up their confidence and you can start to set them up for success throughout their day.

Rachel Harrington: 11:46

The next thing we need to look at is the sensory environment. What does the room look like? What does their house look like? What does their room look like? We need to focus on keeping the lights low, we want to avoid fluorescent lights, we want to keep the sounds down, we don't want you know gunshots in the background or you know, loud... I don't know... video game, gun shooting video games going on in the background. We don't want clutter everywhere and books and trash stacked all over the house and toys everywhere always covering the floor. We really want to facilitate a calm environment as much as possible.

Jessica Hill: 12:29

I think neutral colors are helpful using storage bins and closets for clutter to reduce that visual stimulation. Like Rachel said, the noise and the lights are also impactful. So turn off the lights use natural lighting as much as possible, use lamps or red lights. You can use therapeutic listening in the background of the bedroom. Things like that make a huge difference.

Rachel Harrington: 13:00

The next one we want to talk about is heavy work or proprioception. So your proprioceptive senses one of your hidden three senses. And it is your all calming, all grounding sensory system. So it's provided by heavy work compression, stretching and stimulation of the joints and muscles and tendons. So things like crawling, things like swinging in a compression swing, big hugs, deep pressure,. laying under a beanbag or like jumping on a beanbag, even vibration, like a vibrating massager can be really helpful for that proprioceptive sense.

Jessica Hill: 13:41

And then you can look into some different listening programs. We've got advanced brain technologies, they have created some amazing programs that are super beneficial. And then there is also the safe and sound protocol, which is an amazing program specifically for those individuals in fight flight or freeze.

Rachel Harrington: 14:02

Another one is oral motor input, it can be very regulating it provides that proprioceptive input to the oral structures, things like drinking a smoothie from a straw or blowing bubbles or blowing a cotton ball on the floor with a straw. So think about chewing gum, or maybe sucking on Hard Candy if they're safe to do so that can provide a lot of calming input as well.

Jessica Hill: 14:30

And then we want to work on emotional awareness. And so this starts with you as the adult modeling emotional awareness. This is identifying your emotions out loud when your child is around whether the emotions are positive or negative. And then showing your child that you can use strategies if you're having a rough time so this could look like cooking in the kitchen, your child's nearby. You are feeling stressed out because there's so many things going on in the environment and you're trying to cook and your child is talking to you, you can stop what you're doing, and you can say, I'm feeling really stressed out right now I need to take a five minute break outside, I'll be back in five minutes and you go outside and you take a break, you come back and you say, that five minute break felt so great, I feel a lot better. I'm going to finish cooking dinner. And I would like to talk to you as well. And just modeling, this can be so beneficial for your child to see that everyone has these emotions. And there are strategies that you can use when you're not feeling great.

Rachel Harrington: 15:40

So hopefully that gives you a bit of an outline. Nothing specific here. But just some overarching themes of how to support a child who is in fight or flight or they're freezing. We always recommend in person occupational therapy services as well. Definitely keep in mind that this is not medical advice. This is used for educational purposes only. And we are here just to give you as much information as we can, as pediatric occupational therapy assistants who have worked with kiddos, who just strive to help kiddos thrive in their own skin.

Jessica Hill: 16:19

Also, if you're a parent, and you are finding that you are in fight, flight or freeze often, which is common with parents of children with sensory processing disorder, then definitely make sure you're using these strategies as well. We do have a podcast episode talking about overstimulated parents. So we will link that in the show notes because that would be very helpful for you to listen to as well. But just keep in mind that you can help your child best if you are regulated. So it's the oxygen mask example again. I think we've used it many times in the past that you can't help others until you help yourself first. So just keep that in mind.

Rachel Harrington: 17:05

One other thing that I was thinking about strategy wise is to get outside. So so helpful to connect with nature and have your feet touch the earth to regulate the nervous system. So have your child get outside, get outside yourself, go for a walk, play at the park, swing, climb trees, play in the water, just focus on getting outside and connecting with nature,

Jessica Hill: 17:28

Even just getting the natural sunlight that's not filtered through a window. So you can even if you just sit on your porch in the morning sunlight for 15 minutes every day, that can make a huge difference.

Rachel Harrington: 17:43

With that being said, we hope this episode was helpful. If you have any follow up questions, send us a DM at all things sensory podcast, and make sure that you share this podcast with someone who could benefit.

Jessica Hill: 17:57

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Rachel Harrington: 18:09

Whatever you think, thank you for spending time with us today. We will plan on seeing you next Wednesday. Okay, bye. Thank you so much for listening to All Things Sensory by Harkla.

Jessica Hill: 18:19

If you want more information on anything mentioned in the show, head over to Harkla.co/podcast to get the show notes.

Rachel Harrington: 18:27

If you have any follow up questions, the best place to ask those is in the comments on the show notes or message us on our Instagram account which is at Harkla_family or at all things sensory podcast. If you just search Harkla you'll find us there.

Jessica Hill: 18:43

Like we mentioned before our podcast listeners get 10% off their first order at Harkla. Whether it's for one of our digital courses or one of our sensory swings, the discount code sensory, we'll get you 10% off. That's s e n s o r y.

Rachel Harrington: 19:01

Head to Harkla.co/sensory to use that discount code right now.

Jessica Hill: 19:07

We are so excited to work together to help create competent kids all over the world. While we make every effort to share correct information we're still learning.

Rachel Harrington: 19:17

We will double check all of our facts but realize that medicine is a constantly changing science and art.

Jessica Hill: 19:22

One doctor or therapist may have a different way of doing things from another.

Rachel Harrington: 19:26

We are simply presenting our views and opinions on how to address common sensory challenges health related difficulties, and what we have found to be beneficial that will be as evidence based as possible.

Jessica Hill: 19:38

By listening to this podcast you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or your

Rachel Harrington: 19:45

Consult your child's pediatrician or therapists for any medical issues that he or she may be having.

Jessica Hill: 19:51

This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast.

Rachel Harrington: 19:57

Thanks so much for listening