(#117) Rest, Guilt & the Freeze Response: A Nervous System Perspective

Do you ever feel guilty for resting? Do you shut down when overwhelmed and then judge yourself for it?

In this episode of Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women, Rae explores the freeze response, nervous system burnout, and the guilt and shame that often accompany rest.

This conversation is especially timely during winter (or any “inner winter” season of life), when your body may naturally crave slowing down even if your external world doesn’t.

✨ In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What the freeze response (hypoarousal) actually is from a nervous system perspective
• How overwhelm, burnout, trauma history, and sensory overload contribute to shutdown
• Why freeze is not laziness, weakness, or failure — but a protective survival strategy
• How to gently “thaw” freeze without flooding your system

If you’ve been feeling:

• Disconnected or checked out
• Unable to respond to texts or make decisions
• Burned out and overwhelmed
• Stuck between doing too much and doing nothing

This episode will help you understand what’s happening in your body and how to respond with compassion instead of criticism.

✨ Rae also closes with a powerful reflection from Nicola Jane Hobbs on ease, striving, and permission to choose the gentle path.

📩 Want more support?
Sign up for the Somatic Healing newsletter in the show notes for biweekly nervous system reflections + access to the Breathwork Resource Library (15–20 guided practices).

Resources Mentioned: Window of Tolerance and Nicola Jane Jobbs Poem

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

Transcript

Why Rest Feels So Hard

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Ray. I'm a schematic coach and breath work facilitator. And if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you are tuning in for today's episode. And for today's episode, I chose this topic of rest and the phrase response. If there's any guilt or shame associated with rest, and talking about all that from a nervous system perspective. So I chose this topic because it is a conversation that I've been having a lot. And it is layered. It shows up different for everybody. And I'm also not surprised that it's coming up right now, given the time of year that we're in. We're in winter, it's the end of February when I'm recording this episode. And that's at least the case for the people that are tuning in from New York or the US. There are over a hundred countries that tune into the podcast. So even if this information isn't necessarily something that you relate to around winter, it could be helpful for like the inner winter that we feel for that freeze response. If there's any guilt or shame uh connected with rest, I think you'll also find a lot of value in this episode. And so what we're going to be diving into is this idea that when we rest, it's bad or shameful, or there's this coupling with guilt. And we're going to talk about all of this from a nervous system perspective. And the first piece that I want to touch on is this idea of knowing the seasons of your nervous system and embracing what those seasons might be. So right now we're in February. This is a wintering time. We just had um, you know, a few snowstorms come through. It's been like freezing cold in New York. And this idea of wintering, it's something that I've also talked about on the podcast before last year. I believe it was episode 59. And it's this idea that just like we see in nature when the all of the leaves fall off of the trees, and the trees are all of their roots are still alive, but it's all under the soil. So there's kind of this like retreat that happens, this inner retreat, and things tend to be cozy and they tend to be slower. And we see this with animals in nature as well. And what can happen is sometimes we're experiencing our nervous system is responding to our environment, and we want to be in this inner winter, but maybe our external environment isn't necessarily slowing down, right? Like work might be busy, or we're traveling, or we're caretaking. I mean, there's so many things that can prevent that natural ebb and flow from happening. And what can happen sometimes is that there's so much going on, but we're not necessarily slowing down. So there's this overwhelm that can happen. And that can lead to, oh my gosh, there's so much happening. I'm so overwhelmed. And then boom, we're in like a freeze response. And this can also happen from past experiences, trauma, burnout. So it doesn't only happen in winter. It doesn't only happen in this season, and it will show up differently for everybody. So to tie this all into the nervous system, we're really speaking about the freeze response. And in terms of like the window of tolerance, that's a uh what is that called? Like a paradigm I like to use uh often by Dr. Dan Siegel. If, and I'll put the link to a visual of the diagram in the show notes, uh, but there is what's called hypoarousal, and that is when we go south of our window of tolerance. And the window of tolerance is the part of the diagram, the part of our nervous system that is operating at optimum performance. So we feel like we are in our zone of genius, we might feel grounded, we might feel at peace, we are able to be resilient with our nervous systems. We have more flexibility, more access to capacity. That's all in the window of tolerance. When the freeze response comes up, we move into what's called hypoarousal, and that is south of the window of tolerance. And this can look like maybe our executive functioning starts to shut down. We might become forgetful, maybe we start showing up late or we forget about appointments. Um, overwhelm can also happen followed by that shutdown switch. We might uh spend some more time even scrolling. We're like so exhausted, so tired, or just so overwhelmed that we're just like checking out. So we're gonna lay in bed, maybe we'll scroll. And we might also not have capacity for conflict. So if some kind, and and this is little or or big, um, if something comes up, we might shut down and disconnect instead of engaging and having that capacity to talk things through or flexible thinking. Um, and we might also feel like a little bit disconnected from our life or what's happening. So there are so many different moments that can happen to lead to this response. I mentioned overwhelm, trauma history. Uh, there might be a sense of like sensory overload. I feel like that definitely can contribute, whether that's busyness in your environment or loudness or the lighting, just the the sensor, your your sensory system being overwhelmed. Um, and then burnout. So that's also something that I I mentioned. So there are so many things that this response connects to in our everyday life that we might not even recognize because it's like so subtle, um, or it can be so subtle. It's not always, it's always different for everybody, but um, yeah, maybe we struggle to like respond to a text message, or we cancel plans, or we um, like I said, we aren't able to have those harder conversations, or we check out instead of checking in. So this is all a normal nervous system response in the sense that it is not laziness, it is not failure, it is not weakness, it is part of a survival strategy that is actually quite intelligent because it is trying to keep us safe. And so when this response shows up, we can use some of these tools that I'm going to share with you now, and we can also get curious about it and we can say, Oh, here we are, and we can, you know, acknowledge the response for trying to protect us and try out a few of these tools. So there are a few analogies that I like to use when it comes to the freeze response. And the first is that just like when ice is frozen, we want that ice to melt, we want it to thaw out, and that can happen in so many different ways. Uh, but the first is really allowing the body to rest deeply. Uh, because right now it's like if we were driving a car, we have one foot on the gas and we have one foot on the brake at the same time. And it's like the car is stuck, we can't, we can't operate in that in that state. So some things that come to mind for me when it comes to like that deep, deep rest, I love yoga nidra, I love sound healing, those are like show up to a class or put on a course on YouTube, like a clip a YouTube video, and be. And like that can be really challenging, but if we can give ourselves the time and space to really, really thaw deep rest. And so that's what that can one way that that could look. Another is often what happens with the freeze response is it happens because there is a cycle that wasn't able to complete. So we want the body to be able to respond to the overwhelm, to the freeze in a very gentle way, but not in a way that it would like flood the system. So this is more of like a practice, I think, that you can do with the freeze response. But we whatever we're doing to kind of like thaw the system, we just want it to be in a way that's gentle and that it doesn't overwhelm or flood the system because that can also feel pretty disorienting. So some things that could help is doing very gentle movements, and this can be, you know, right in your right where you are. You don't need to like, you know, um like go anywhere to do this, like just like gentle movements that feel very restful and restorative to you. So this could look like stretching in the morning. This could look like putting on, again, one of those YouTube videos that's like a restorative class, a yin yoga, something that really lets the body move in a way that thaws out that freeze. This can also look like having a warm blanket, having warm tea, a cacao, and orienting to the space that you're in. Orienting is something I think I've mentioned on the podcast before, but I'll mention it again briefly here, just in case. And that is uh noticing your surroundings and taking in the space around you. So whether you are inside or outdoors, it could look like noticing the four walls around you, noticing the ceiling, noticing the floor, looking over both of your shoulders. If you're outside, noticing nature, noticing the leaves, noticing the sand, if you're at the beach like me, noticing our surroundings. So it's orienting to the space that you're in. And you'll also notice that in nature, when there's these moments of great overwhelm and that freeze response happens, you'll see it when a deer survives a chase. Like if you look up, I don't know why I'm big on the YouTube videos in this episode, but I am. If you look up on YouTube a deer that's being chased by an animal, you will see that they are frozen for a second, then they run, and then after they shake it off and they release the freeze response. So they're like, uh, and then they react and then they shake it off. So sometimes even like shaking can be helpful for this, uh, movement. So it's really just working with that sensation, working with the body, working with that thawing out of the system in a way that feels really good for you because we're all a little bit different. And then one other thing that I want to name that I think often comes up with this response is, and it's like with that overwhelm, is that so often we think that there's something that we need to do, right? Like our to-do list is so long, or we're we're so overwhelmed with work and with life, and maybe we're caregiving or parenting, and so we our to-do list is so long, but our on our to-do list sometimes is not rest, and sometimes rest is the to-do, so like the thawing and the gentleness and the slowing down, that is the to-do of of the day, and that is what's going to help with that overwhelm and with that thawing out. So I always like to name that sometimes it's like our doer is online, and the doing is the resting. And so the next time that you notice this feeling happening, you notice that an overwhelm is increasing, that that freeze or that stuckness or that burnout is coming back online, it's like don't judge it, give it maybe something that it may need. Would it be warm tea? Would it be an hour of rest? Would it be a heavy blanket, shaking, going to a yoga needra class or a sound healing class? So, like I mentioned before, but I'm gonna mention it again, that this is not laziness, this is not failure, it's not weakness. It is a super smart survival strategy that was used to keep our keep us safe, to keep our nervous system safe and to keep us in a in a place that feels more uh safe to us in that moment. So you can thank this response for happening, for trying to protect us, and then you can use some of these tools and see how it responds. And then I'd love to close today's episode with a poem by Nicola Jane Hobbs. And I've read one of her poems in a previous episode too. She is her whole brand is around being the relaxed woman. And it's just so good. She she shares some some kind of like blurbs on uh Instagram and she has a book, and so I'm always um like inspired by what she's sharing. And this one, coincidentally, when I planned this episode, landed right in my inbox, and I was like, Okay, ask and you shall receive. So I had to I had to share this with you. So it goes like this. You're allowed to choose the easy option. Not everything worth doing is hard. Some things worth doing are gentle and soothing and kind. You don't need to struggle so much or strive so relentlessly to be safe. Ease is not a trap. Calm does not always mean the storm is coming. The other shoe doesn't always drop. Struggle might feel productive, but it's rarely what heals us. When your nervous system has been shaped by years of stress and striving, suffering can feel like home. Effort can feel safer than ease. But there is another way of living, one that does not ask you to exhaust yourself, to prove your worth, where you stop pushing and proving and forcing, and slowly discover that some of the most beautiful, meaningful things can only flourish in ease, in presence, in letting yourself receive healing, creativity, love, intuition, wonder, joy. These things are suffocated by struggle. The easy path is where life blooms. And that is by Nicola Jane Hobbs. And so that is what we have for today's episode. I hope that you feel like you have the permission to rest. I hope you can make that 30 minutes or that hour on your calendar if you're feeling overwhelmed or anything like that this winter season or any season of your life. And yeah, if you want to stay connected, you can sign up for the monthly newsletter, which also gives you access to the Breathwork Resource Library, and that is all in the show notes. So you would get uh biweekly emails, and you would get about 15 or 20 uh breathwork meditations that I add to throughout the year. So, yeah, I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. I hope that you have an incredible rest of your week, an incredible rest of your day, and I will talk to you soon. Thank you for being here and tuning in to Somatic Healing for Wellness Focused Women Podcast. If you were moved or inspired by today's episode, please take a moment to leave a reading and review on Apple Podcasts. It truly helps the podcast grow and helps more people find me on their healing journey. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for the monthly newsletter, links to more resources, opportunities to work with me, and ways that we can stay connected. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram to follow me at Ray the Somatic Coach. Send me a DM. I'd love to connect with you, and I answer each note that comes in. I am so happy you're here, and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the podcast.