OUCH! How to Go from (Brain) Freeze to Flow

Have you ever experienced a sudden freeze while speaking—where your mind goes completely blank, your mouth won’t move, and panic sets in? That kind of speaking brain freeze mirrors the dreaded popsicle brain freeze from our childhood. In this mini-sode, Lauri dives deep into the subconscious fears that lead us to stop breathing in the first place. She also shares a simple yet powerful way to break free.

TAKEAWAYS

1. Breath leads to inspiration: When we freeze, it's often because we've stopped breathing. Opening your mouth and inhaling air is the quickest way to find your flow again. 

2. Trusting the pause can transform your presence: Silence always feels longer for the speaker. The pause that feels endless to you is actually a gift to your audience, allowing them to absorb your message.

3. You are enough: Discomfort in silence often comes from a deeper belief that we need to prove our worth. Your presence alone has value—anything you say simply compliments that inherent worth. 

Story Magic
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Chapters

• 0:00 Popsicle Brain Freeze & Speaking Paralysis
• 3:21 The Real Root of Brain Freeze
• 5:51 The Dance of Words & Silence

Transcript

Lauri: 1:08

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I grew up in Southern California. I loved to eat popsicles and ice cream and I loved to eat them really fast on a hot day right up until I got brain freeze. So today I'm going to talk about speaking brain freeze because it's a really similar feeling to that popsicle brain freeze a really similar feeling to that popsicle brain freeze. Both create that cold freeze, I can't do anything or move kind of feeling. When eating a popsicle, we eat it so fast that all of a sudden our head hurts and it's cold and we can't make it go away. When we're speaking and we get brain freeze, all of a sudden our mind goes completely blank, cold. We get all tight, we stop breathing and we frantically try to think our way out of it. I used to get the question how do I cure brain freeze? At least once a month Sometimes, because things tend to come in waves, it would be more like once a week, and the answer, when that kind of speaking brain freeze is happening in the moment that it's happening, is actually incredibly simple it's to open your mouth and inhale air. When we get popsicle brain freeze, what do we do? A lot of times we go like this. Yet most of the time when that speaking brain freeze hits us, it's partially because we're not breathing. We've stopped. Our body might be in fight, flight or freeze, and it's really hard to think. When we're not breathing we're subconsciously feeling or sensing treating the audience as if it's a big, hungry bear that's about to eat us. So we go deer in the headlights, we stop breathing, we stop moving, we stop inspiring air, and when we're not inspiring air it's almost impossible to inspire creative thoughts. When we inhale, when we inspire air, we are way more likely to get inspired about what we want to say next. It seems simple enough, right? So why don't we do it?

Lauri: 3:21

You know I love to get to the root, to transform things at the root. It's so much more effective than chasing symptoms. To transform at the root, we have to explore why we're not breathing in the first place and, as I've explored that with thousands of clients over the years and myself, things like this are what come up. I have to go fast to earn their attention. Kind of like a dancing monkey. I feel like I'm an imposter and I'm afraid people will find that out. If I slow down, I'm afraid people will cut me off if I'm ever silent. If I'm not working constantly and hard, then there's nothing of value happening. I'm uncomfortable in the silence. Trust me when I say that breathing and getting comfy in the silence is the way out of all of those.

Lauri: 4:23

The person speaking always thinks the silences, even the brain freeze ones, are longer than they are To change things at the root. Yes, we can excavate our values and, you know, come up with our why and all of those things, and we also need to dedicate some time and space to doing it differently and sometimes to healing it in the process. Discomfort in the silence may mean that, deep down, we don't believe that we're worthy. We think we need to be saying or doing something, proving ourselves, in order to be valuable. You are a unique and beautiful soul. Your presence, your one in eight billion on this earth presence, is valuable all on its own and it's also desperately needed. Anything you do is icing on the cake of you, of who you are.

Lauri: 5:32

In my experience with the pause, when I ask people to stop talking and breathe, the first step is the moments of silence feel at least 10 times longer for the speaker than they do for anyone in the audience. Here's the thing. It's because we out in the audience are digesting what you're saying in that silence like a fine meal. In music. The space is as important as the notes In visual art. It's the white space that reveals the image.

Lauri: 6:04

In speaking, the words and the silences dance together to create the meaning. The audience doesn't notice those silences like the speaker does, because the audience needs those silences just as much as the speaker, for a different reason. You are not being selfish or boring when you breathe. The audience needs those silences just as much as you. This touches on coming back around to treating speaking as a conversation. Their half is silent. If you don't take those moments of silence, you're being selfish. It's rude. Finding a safe space will give you the most help in actually clearing out and changing this root thing, with somebody you trust or people you trust best of all, someone who you trust, who can pause you, ask you to breathe and help you change your habit into the new, more trusting, present, grounded habit. So the next time you're speaking, if you start to even wonder what you're going to say next, open your mouth and inhale, inspire that air and that will help you to inspire thoughts. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back soon.