35. Understanding the Freeze Response: When Your Nervous System Shuts Down

What if the reason you feel stuck, numb, disconnected, or unable to move forward isn't laziness at all?

In this episode of The NeuroHeir Podcast, we're continuing our Nervous System Through Movies series by exploring the freeze response through the lens of Disney's Frozen. While Elsa's story is often viewed as one of hiding her powers, it also offers a powerful picture of what happens when the nervous system learns to survive through shutdown, isolation, and emotional containment.

Leanna breaks down what freeze actually is, why it's often misunderstood, and how it can show up in everyday life as procrastination, exhaustion, brain fog, emotional disconnection, withdrawal, or feeling completely stuck. You'll learn how freeze differs from fight and flight, why there is often hidden stress underneath shutdown, and how these patterns can be connected to both personal experiences and generational survival strategies.

Through nervous system science, personal stories, and practical somatic tools, this episode offers a compassionate reframe for anyone who has ever wondered:

"What's wrong with me?"

The answer may be simpler than you think.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• What the freeze response actually is and why it develops
• How Elsa's story in Frozen reflects nervous system shutdown
• Why freeze is often mistaken for laziness, apathy, or lack of motivation
• The connection between anxiety, overwhelm, and functional freeze
• How stored survival energy remains underneath shutdown
• The role of generational trauma and inherited survival patterns
• Why shame keeps freeze stuck and compassion helps create movement
• Practical somatic tools to help gently reconnect with your body
• How the Four N's Framework (Notice, Name, Nurture, Navigate) can support healing

If you've ever felt disconnected from yourself, emotionally numb, exhausted, or unable to move forward despite wanting to, this episode will help you understand what's happening beneath the surface and remind you that your nervous system may be protecting you, not working against you.

Remember: Freeze is not proof that you're broken. It's often proof that your body has been carrying more than it was meant to hold alone.

Somatic Tools for Freeze
Freeze often needs something very different than fight or flight.

Instead of intensity or activation, freeze often responds best to:

• warmth
• gentleness
• safety
• small movement
• sensory support
• co-regulation
• slow reconnection

The goal is not to force yourself out of freeze. The goal is to help the nervous system slowly experience enough safety and support to reconnect again, one small step at a time.

Tools to Support Freeze States

Small Movement

Freeze often responds better to tiny movement than overwhelming activation.
 
Try:

• wiggling your fingers or toes
• rolling your shoulders
• gentle stretching
• small body movements

Warmth & Comfort

Warmth can help communicate safety to the nervous system.

Try:

• a blanket
• warm tea
• a heating pad
• sunlight
• a warm shower

Gentle Rhythmic Movement

Rhythm can help the body feel safer reconnecting.

 Try:

• gentle rocking
• slow swaying
• slow walking
• calming repetitive movement

Humming or Soft Singing

Vibration can help stimulate the vagus nerve and support regulation.
 
Try:

• humming
• soft singing
• calming music

Orienting Slowly

Freeze can narrow awareness inward. Orienting helps reconnect to present safety.

 Try slowly looking around and noticing:

• colors
• textures
• light
• shapes
• supportive objects in the room

Butterfly Hug & Bilateral Support

Bilateral stimulation can support grounding and reconnection.

Try:

• butterfly tapping
• bilateral music
• slow cross-body movement

Grounding Through Texture & Pressure
Sensory input can help the body reconnect to the present moment.
 
Try:

• a weighted blanket
• holding a soft pillow
• hands on your heart
• bare feet on the floor
• noticing comforting textures

Hydration & Nourishment

Freeze can disconnect us from basic body needs.
 Small acts of care matter.

Try:

• taking a sip of water
• eating a small snack
• offering your body something nourishing

Sometimes healing begins with reminding the body:
 “I’m here.”
 “I matter.”
 “My body deserves support.”

Safe Connection

Freeze often heals in safe connection.

 Support may include:

• a trusted person
• a regulated voice
• a calming presence
• co-regulation and emotional safety

Sometimes the nervous system needs help borrowing safety before reconnecting on its own.

Reflection Questions

• When do I notice myself shutting down?
• What does freeze feel like in my body?
• What situations make me feel emotionally disconnected or numb?
• What tends to happen right before I withdraw, collapse, or go quiet?
• What helps me feel even slightly more present, connected, or safe?

💬 Have a Question You’d Like Answered on the Podcast?

If you have a question around the nervous system, healing relationships, or generational patterns, you’re invited to submit it anonymously using the link below.

There’s also an optional box you can check if you’d like to be considered for a short audio coaching conversation on a future episode.

👉 Submit your question

Connect with me:
Instagram → @aligningwithleanna

Website → leannahunt.com

Disclaimer:
Although I am a licensed Associate Clinical Mental Health Counselor, The NeuroHeir℠ Podcast is not a substitute for therapy, counseling, or medical treatment. The tools and practices I share are for educational and coaching purposes only. Every nervous system is unique, and what we discuss on this podcast should not replace your own individual therapeutic work or professional support.

The focus of this podcast is my coaching work, which centers on education, nervous system practices, and generational healing tools designed to support—not replace—your personal journey with a qualified provider.

If you are struggling with your mental health or experiencing overwhelming emotions, please seek support from a licensed professional in your area. You don’t have to do this work alone.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Nervo Air Podcast, the show for cycle breakers, parents, young adults, and helping professionals ready to understand their nervous system through a generational lens, heal what isn't theirs to carry, and consciously choose what comes next. Hi, I'm your host, Leanne Hunts, an associate clinical mental health counselor and certified performance coach. Each week you'll get stories, science, and somatic practices plus my signature for and framework. Notice, name, nurture, and navigate to help you honor resilience, break silence, and build deeper connection with yourself and those you love, all while shaping a legacy of safety, freedom, and possibility. Welcome back to the Neuroair Podcast. Okay, apparently we're turning this series into Nervous System through movies. So we're continuing the trend. After talking about fight and flight through movies the last couple weeks, I thought, why not continue it? And honestly, frozen might actually be a surprisingly good example for the state of freeze. Because there is a line in the movie that honestly feels a very nervous system coded conceal, don't feel. And while it's meant to be about Elsa hiding her powers, for a lot of people, that line also describes survival. Hide what you feel, disconnect from your body, stay controlled, stay quiet, don't overwhelm anybody, and don't let anyone see that you are too much. And what's interesting about Elsa's character is that when she becomes emotionally overwhelmed, her nervous system doesn't really move into outward fight. It doesn't really move into frantic flight either. It moves towards shutdown, towards containment, towards isolation. She even pulls away from Anna. She avoids connection. She suppresses what she's feeling and tries to control herself constantly. And eventually she isolates completely. Even the castle she creates alone in the mountains almost feels symbolic to freeze sometimes because it's disconnected, it's protected, that sense of numb and it's hidden away from overwhelm. Because somewhere along the way, her nervous system learned if I stay contained, people stay safer. And if I hide what I feel, I can stay in control. If I disconnect, maybe I won't hurt anyone. And maybe looking fine on the outside, which is the interesting part, while internally feeling disconnected from themselves. Maybe there is this sense of wanting connection, but feeling unable to fully move towards it. Or maybe there are these feelings of overwhelm because of all this stored emotion, conflict, or stress in the body. And instead of reacting outwardly, the system simply shuts down. Because, like the other states, freeze is also a survival response. And today we're going to talk about what happens when the nervous system no longer fights or tries to run, but instead begins slowing down, collapsing. And sometimes the system shuts down altogether. And the thing about freeze is that it's often one of the most understood nervous system responses. And it was like that way for me too, because from the outside, freeze can easily get mislabeled as things like laziness or a lack of motivation or procrastination or maybe even apathy or disconnection or this sense of weakness. But freeze, like the other states, again, is a survival response. And many people living in freeze are still trying incredibly hard internally. They care deeply. They want to move forward. They want to respond. Most times they do want to connect, but the nervous system has shifted into protection and freeze can show up in a lot of different ways externally. Sometimes it looks like withdrawing from people, maybe canceling plans or scrolling for hours without realizing how much time has passed. Maybe it's avoiding emails or important texts or difficulty starting new tasks, or maybe there's a sense of shutting down during conflict or sleeping more than needed, or feeling stuck when trying to make decisions. Maybe it's wanting to respond, but not being able to access the energy to do it. Or it can be that feeling of, I know what I need to do, just can't seem to move. And what's important to understand is that freeze is different from fight and flight. Fight moves towards the threat. Flight moves away from the threat, but freeze immobilizes. The system is essentially saying, I don't know how to safely fight this, and I do not know how to escape this. So I am going to shut down. And sometimes freeze isn't actually the beginning of a stress cycle either. Sometimes it's actually what's happening after the nervous system has been activated for too long, after there has been too much stress, too much pressure, too much survival energy, that sympathetic energy without enough safety or recovery. And I think that that distinction matters a lot too, because sometimes when a client comes into me and they say, I'm dealing with both anxiety and depression, that's kind of my little light bulb to realize, okay, that means they're spending a lot of time in sympathetic, that hyper-arousal energy. And then the system usually holds too much. And then it gets to a point where it's like, I can't do this anymore. And then it goes the other direction down to freeze, which is in the state of hypo arousal, right below our window of tolerance. And I want to briefly come back to the impala example that I've touched on before, which I think can help make freeze a lot more relatable. So again, when this impala is being chased by a leopard, the nervous system first moves into fight or flight, right? It has that sympathetic activation. The impala, maybe it was trying to run away. I didn't see the beginning of the video, so I don't know. But most of the time, if someone, something does try to fight or fly away first, there is that sympathetic activation. The body mobilizes, there's adrenaline surging through the body. Everything is preparing for survival to run, escape, and stay alive. But when the impolla becomes trapped or the nervous system recognizes I can't fight this or I can't escape this, something else happens in the body. This is where the body shifts into immobilization, into the state of freeze. The impala goes still. And again, not because it gave up, but because freeze is also survival intelligence, too. And maybe it did give up. I don't know. You think about a lot of different animals in nature that actually have this freeze response. I think even rabbits do that too. It's that deer in the headlights. I'm trying to think of others, possums too. There's others I just can't think of right now, but all of that is the nervous system gets to this point, which is all this stored energy, and then it freezes at an attempt to survive. The nervous system is essentially saying if I cannot escape the overwhelm, I'm going to reduce the stimulation, I'm going to disconnect, and I'm going to conserve energy in order to try to survive this. And humans do this too, not usually being chased by predators, and sometimes that does happen. And for those of you that have experienced that, my heart feels really heavy for you. But most of us are not being chased by predators. But we do have this sense of being chased emotionally, maybe mentally, relationally, or physically, through emotional shutdown, disassociation, and collapse, going blank during conflict, feeling disconnected from yourself, feeling numb, feeling far away emotionally, feeling unable to respond, even when part of you wants to. Because honestly, the nervous system would often rather disconnect than being completely overwhelmed. So if the system is going to have that hyper-arousal energy, that sympathetic sword energy, it feels easier to shut it all down. And something else that's really important about the Impala example is what happens afterwards, which I think I've talked about too. If the Impala survives, you'll often see the body begin shaking or trembling afterward before returning to normal activity. Why? It's crazy to watch it too. And a lot of my clients, when I show it to them, they think it's at fast forward speed. And I'm like, this is not. Because there is stored survival energy in the body. Okay. The nervous system had essentially hit the break through freeze, but that didn't mean the energy disappeared. So underneath the shutdown of freeze, there is most often still activation that needs somewhere to go. And honestly, this is important for humans to understand too, because sometimes people think that freeze means that there's no activation there. Does that make sense? Like the system is just shutting down. But that's not necessarily true. Often there's still stress energy underneath the shutdown. The body just no longer knows how to safely move through it. And honestly, this even connects back to Elsa in the movie Frozen. Now, this makes me want to go back and watch it again with my kids because the more overwhelmed and emotionally suppressed Elsa becomes, I want you guys to think about it. The more her powers build underneath the surface. I'll say that one more time. The more that she's trying to hold it in and hold it in and hold it in, the more intense her powers become underneath. The energy just doesn't disappear, she has. She's trying to contain it. And eventually it has to come out somewhere. And that's often true for our nervous systems too. What we think we're suppressing from, what we think we are trying to disconnect from or freeze around doesn't necessarily disappear. Sometimes it simply gets held underneath the shutdown, waiting for, do you know what it's waiting for? Waiting for enough safety to finally move again. Sometimes it's also waiting for enough support from other people or to feel enough capacity that it can get up and move. So what does freeze feel like in the body? I think that probably if you're like, I don't think I experience freeze, I think maybe you've had moments where you've experienced it before, even if you've not had language for it. For some clients, they will describe it as this sense of just heaviness. Like your body, body suddenly weighs a hundred pounds. Sometimes they will say, I feel like I'm carrying around this backpack of rocks or this bag of bricks. Sometimes clients will describe it as this sense of numbness. Sometimes they will describe it as brain fog or exhaustion that never, never catches up, or this sense of collapse where the body just literally shuts down. Sometimes for my clients and high school kids too, difficulty concentrating or inability to make decisions or finding the right words. Sometimes clients will describe it as I just go blank, like their mind suddenly just stops working, or like you know what you want to say and you try to say it out loud, but your body cannot actually say the words. And freeze for a lot of people feels incredibly disconnecting. It can feel like you are disconnected from your emotions, maybe even disconnected from your own body or disconnected from people around you. And sometimes you even feel disconnected from yourself. And I think that's one of the hardest parts about Freeze and working with so many clients is how much shame people often carry around these patterns. Because from the outside, right, if you're struggling with this and you don't have language to it and people around you are noticing, it can look like you just aren't responding, or people are wanting to know why you are withdrawing. And this can be in your personal life or at work or with your friends. Again, sometimes it's canceling plans or the sense of procrastination or scrolling for hours and you feel like you just can't stop, or staring at your to-do list without ever moving. And internally, this is where we can start telling ourselves stories. Again, going back to that question of what's wrong with me, or why can't I just do this, or why can't I make myself do this, or why do I feel so behind, or why does everything feel so hard? But sometimes people in freeze aren't incapable. And I believe most of the time they're not. It is that their nervous system is overwhelmed. That is the main thing. And this is important too. Freeze can sometimes look similar to depression on the outside. As I kind of already talked about with that high and low, the hyperarousal and the hypo arousal energy. Low energy is usually with freeze on the outside. Sometimes it's withdrawal or again, that disconnection or numbness. And while freeze and depression are not exactly the same thing, there can absolutely be an overwhelm with someone that's feeling depressed and being in a state of what we would call functional freeze, meaning they're still functioning, they're getting up, they're doing things, but it the client would describe it as not loving or being in their life or thriving. And especially when the nervous system has spent long periods of time in chronic stress, survival, or overwhelm, it can look like this combination of maybe depression and freeze, because the body is getting to a point where it's like, I cannot do this anymore. And oftentimes with the state of freeze, something that's the hardest is we do not know what to do next. And sometimes this can also feel really lonely. I've heard that too from clients, especially in a culture that constantly tells people to push harder, to try harder, to just quote unquote do the thing, keep going. And so if you relate to that, I just want you to know that I feel for you too. Because when sometimes the nervous system is actually saying, I don't feel safe enough to keep moving. And until we face that and that sense of safety, the system is most likely going to stay in that state of functional freeze. And this is where understanding the nervous system can bring so much compassion to freeze. Because, from that nervous system perspective, freeze, you guys, is not the body giving up, even though it can feel like that. It is the body trying to survive that overwhelm. And according to Stephen Porgis and polyvagal theory, freeze is often connected to what's called a dorsal vagal shutdown response, which I'll just try to say it really simply, which is a state connected to immobilization, to conservation and protection. And sometimes the body moves here because it no longer believes that fighting or escaping is going to work. So if the body feels like, I can't fight this, I can't run away from this, then the nervous system can shift towards conserving energy to reduce the overwhelm. And that is what the body can show up in a state of freeze. And freeze does not always feel calm on the inside either, as I explained about the Impala. Sometimes you can still feel the anxiety underneath the numbness. Sometimes when you're shutting down, you can still feel the stress underneath the exhaustion or the fear underneath this sense of disconnection. Almost like the nervous system has both the gas and the brake pressed at the same time. Have you guys ever felt that way? Literally, like you're like, I can't go anywhere, but it truly feels like I'm pushing the gas and the brake or back and forth and back and forth. And that's why freeze can feel so confusing. Because outwardly, someone may look shut down while internally their body is still feeling completely overwhelmed. And people often think, if I'm exhausted, why is my mind still racing? Or if my body feels so shut down, why do I still have this undercurrent of extreme anxiety? Because freeze is not always the absence of activation. Sometimes, again, it's what happens when the nervous system has carried activation for too long without enough safety, without enough support, or without enough recovery. And then eventually, because the body can only hold so much for so long, the body does what it does best. It shifts into conservation mode instead. And understanding this is important because the body is not trying to punish you. It again is trying to protect you the best way it knows how. Does that make sense? Just something really, really powerful to sit with. And honestly, I used, as I talked about flight last week, I think my whole life when I started understanding nervous system work, I was look at my whole life and be like, I was constantly in either flight or appeasement. But freeze, I think, as I've gotten to know it more, is a response that I did experience. Growing up, I remember so many moments where I thought someone was mad at me. And I generally would never know what to say. I would just sit there. And now I could probably use the word frozen. And internally, it would feel like I wanted to cry. Like there was emotion building in my chest or in my throat, or I would get this really bad stomach ache, but I couldn't make sound out of my mouth. It was like my body just shut down. And looking back now, I can finally start to understand why. And I can see that more as a freeze response. Because growing up with my dad's really intense controlling energy, there was not a lot of flexibility emotionally back then. And I want to say this compassionately because so much shifted in my dad in his later years. But when I was younger, when I was growing up, it honestly did not feel really safe to try to negotiate. I could not push back if he was telling me something I had to do. I could not ever try to change his mind, especially around rules and expectations or conflict. So my nervous system adapted and I learned to stay quiet. I learned that I couldn't say what I wanted to. And I learned to keep my mood in check to not escalate, because oftentimes, if I had more emotion, that would make things worse. And so now I can see that freeze pattern and how it followed me into adulthood. I got married really young, you guys, at the age of 20. And I married someone who wanted to process things. And for him, he has to talk things through. He has to work through conflict and he has to do it pretty quickly. And because of the patterns that my nervous system learned growing up, often this felt so terrifying to me. I genuinely did not know how to stay present in hard conversations. And you guys, I am still learning this. You can ask my husband, David. We have come a long way, but it's something I'm still learning. So for years, probably at least 20 years, my nervous system would either look for the exits, watch the clock, which I think is some of that flight, right? Find a reason to leave, or completely shut down internally. And sometimes that's where that fight energy was too, wanting to escape, wanting to flee, not because I ever felt like my husband was going to hurt me, but because I did not know how to stay in difficult moments. I would just want to get out of there and to avoid discomfort as quickly as possible. And then other times I would literally just freeze and go quiet and disconnect. And oftentimes I would zone out and not even hear what David was saying. And neither of those responses help repair happen, in case you guys didn't know. But over time, and through this work and through both of our work and our journeys, things have shifted dramatically. Especially as both David and I began understanding nervous system language where we could actually share it together. And now he understands so much more about me, too, that sometimes I need movement while processing. Some of the thing that helps me the most, especially when I can see there was flight and also freeze, is I have to move, get up and walk, walk around the house and go for a walk around the block. Or sometimes I need a few minutes alone before I can fully reconnect. And there's so much more patience now from both of us. There's more ability to share feelings, more ability to stay present, more ability to say things I once thought I could not say safely. And this is also where I began noticing huge shifts in my relationship with food, too, because so much of my nervous system had spent years disconnecting from discomfort, as I talked about last episode, disconnecting from emotion, disconnecting from my body. And healing wasn't about becoming perfect at communication overnight. But you guys, it has been about slowly teaching my nervous system that it is safe to stay in uncomfortable moments. It is safe to feel difficult emotions. It is safe to use my voice even if what I say comes out wrong the first time. It is safe to remain connected even inside discomfort. And this kind of healing takes time, but it is so possible and so beautiful. And just like fight and flight, you guys, freeze can also be generational because there were absolutely times in history where staying quiet, staying small, disconnecting emotionally or becoming invisible actually helped people survive. Think about generations who live through war. Do you have ancestors or relatives that have been in world wars? Think about children hiding silently during bombings in World War II, or families fleeing violence during the Holocaust. People hid all over in attics, in train cars, in basements, or the backs of vehicles, trying to not be discovered throughout history. There's been soldiers on battlefields learning to emotionally shut down in order to survive what they were witnessing. People have escaped captivity, abuse, violence, or persecution were being quiet and still could literally save their lives. So sometimes being quiet is still a survival skill. And unfortunately, these things are still happening in different parts of the world. And throughout history, people surviving slavery, segregation, or racial terror, where drawing attention to yourself could have become dangerous. Think about being a woman in generations where speaking openly, having needs, or expressing emotion was punished or dismissed, or children growing up in homes with addiction, or with a parent with constant rage or unpredictability. These children have learned, if I stay quiet, maybe I will stay safer. There were generations of nervous systems that learned don't react and don't say too much and stay out of the way. Don't draw attention to yourself, because in some environments, freezing has actually kept people alive. And I take that very seriously when I share that because so many of my clients that are working through the state of freeze had to freeze in some point to stay safe. And think about too, and your ancestors and your relatives that people in previous generations, we did not have nervous system language. There was not language for support and therapy or nervous system understanding that we have today. So a lot of survival stayed unprocessed in the body. The nervous system adapted through containment. The nervous system has adapted by compartmentalizing, by disconnecting, by surviving first. And over time, those patterns can absolutely get passed forward. Just so fascinating to think about. Because sometimes what got passed forward was in our family, we don't talk about this. Or we hold it all in. We don't share our emotions. Or we quote unquote just stay strong, or we just move on. And some nervous systems learned that being invisible felt safer than being fully expressed. And when we begin to look at freeze through that lens, it can help to create so much more compassion. Because sometimes the shutdown patterns we carry today were once these survival strategies in environments our families lived through. And that doesn't mean that we have to keep them. It doesn't mean that we have to stay stuck forever. But it does help explain why the body may have learned those responses in the first place. And if you've listened to this podcast for a while, this is something I've talked about several times. You've probably heard me come back to it again. Because we want to try to reframe continually that instead of that question, what's wrong with me? Start asking more questions about what is this pattern trying to do for me? Because this pattern can help shift things. And freeze is often trying to reduce overwhelm. Freeze is trying to help you conserve energy the best way it knows how. It is trying to numb pain. It may even be trying to prevent further threat. And it's protecting the body from emotional flooding, or it's helping the nervous system survive something that feels too big to hold all at once. And if you can start to look at freeze through this lens, through your own life and through your families and your relatives, it can help you move out of that shame and inter understanding and move away from something is wrong with me, or I'm weak, or I'm broken, or I'm lazy. And it can turn into my nervous system learned shut down as a form of protection. My body did its best to keep me safe. My body learned this response for a very important reason. And this awareness matters so much because we cannot gently work with patterns that we only criticize, judge, or shame. And I think I said that last time too. And this is important because freeze is not laziness. It is a nervous system that tried everything that it could to deal with all the energy the best way it knew how. And for many people, healing begins the moment they stop seeing themselves as failing and start recognizing that their body may have been trying to protect them all along. And why this practice matters is because freeze often gets misunderstood in healing spaces. Maybe it's you're feeling forced to have to work through something, right? Or push harder. But freeze rarely responds well to force, guys. The nervous system is already overwhelmed. So how is force going to help a state of freeze? And when the body has moved into shutdown, what it often needs most is your gentleness. It needs to feel safe. It might need a little bit of healthy co-regulation. And it's going to need a lot of small steps and slow reconnection. Does that make sense? It's so powerful when we kind of look at would it be okay for me to be gentler with myself? Because your nervous system, a nervous system and freeze, does not need more criticism. It does need that support and safety to be able to reconnect. And healing freeze might look really, really slow at first. It might feel just like a bunch of small moments helping the body feel safe enough to come back online instead of one giant breakthrough. So we look at this as tiny moments of movement, tiny moments of connection, tiny moments of presence. Because as I've said before, the nervous system learns through repetition. And when freeze has been practiced for a very long time, the body often needs gentle experiences of safety repeated over time, too. And sometimes the bravest thing a person in freeze can do is take one very small step towards reconnection again. And this is where the four ends can become really supportive as a way to begin meeting the nervous system with awareness instead of shame. So the first is notice. And just think about this for a minute. What happens in my body when I shut down? Do I know what happens? Do I go numb? Do I disconnect? Do I get quiet? Is there this complete loss of energy? Do I avoid people? Do I feel far away from myself? Second is name, and maybe a few things to offer once you practice noticing. Maybe it's a part of me feels overwhelmed. Or a part of me learned shutting down as protection. Third is nurture, offering yourself a little compassion, such as this response developed for a reason. My nervous system is trying to protect me. I do not have to shame myself for a survival response. And then navigate. Now you gently get to help the body reconnect. Just slowly thinking about what would help you feel just a little bit more support or a little bit more safety, gentle movements and small moments of regulation over time. I've compiled a list of somatic tools for you guys for the state of freeze. And some of them might feel familiar, some of them might feel new. There's a few that we've talked about for fight and flight because again, remember that what is going to work for you in one state is not going to work for somebody else. So we have to try out different things. And sometimes freeze needs warmth also, and safety and small movement, gentle ways to activate and wake up the system. We need moments of co-regulation and sensory support. And we want to do this in gentle ways, as I talked about. So the first, small movement. Sometimes the first step is incredibly small, just like wiggling your fingers, wiggling your toes, rolling your shoulders back several times, tiny little stretches in your body. Because freeze often responds better to small movement than overwhelming activation. And the next that I think we also had for freeze is warmth and comfort. So again, a warm drink. Sometimes it's holding it, sometimes it's sipping it, a heating pad, laying in the sun, warm showers or baths or a sauna. Warmth can help communicate safety and comfort to the nervous system. And I have a few clients in Freeze that find more support in cold therapy, cold exposure, like a cold shower, a cold plunge, splashing cold water on their face, drinking really cold water. So again, you will have to experiment and see which one works better for you. Then we have that gentle rocking and movement. So even in the state of freeze, think about where your body normally freezes. If it's sitting in a chair, it would just be gently starting to go back and forth in your chair. If you're laying on your bed, it might be rolling side to side. It might just be taking a slow walk around your house, around your yard, or even around the block. Also, when we look at humming or soft singing, humming is also great support to the nervous system. Or listening to music that feels really motivational and singing along. The humming vibrations can help stimulate the vagus nerve and slowly bring more regulation online. And again, I think we talked about this with freeze is orienting, letting your eyes slowly look around your space and just find one thing that feels really supportive to look at. We can almost call this like an anchor, something that you can anchor into that can help your body move to be able to get up and do the next thing. So gently reconnecting with your environment can help signal present safety. And another one of my favorites that we talked about last time was that bilateral support. So some of my clients in Freeze find a lot of support with the bilateral stimulation music. If you didn't hear that on the last episode, you can go to your favorite music platform like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Google bilateral stimulation music. I do recommend you have headphones on. You want it as close to your brain as possible because you'll hear the music going back and forth through your left ear to your right ear. And the music does not need to be loud, barely audible. So you can have headphones in and be doing other things and see if that helps you be able to wake up. We're gonna look at body tapping. You can cross your arms over your chest and slowly tap your shoulders. You can literally just take one hand if you can hear that microphone, literally just going down my arm and tapping my arm. And I'm gonna do that on the other side. You can do that on your legs and down your body. All of this is just inviting the nervous system that it is okay to have these little movements. Sometimes pressure and textures help with freeze. Feeling different fabrics, feeling your feet on a different surface, holding your favorite blanket, sensory grounding can help the body reconnect with the present moment. Sometimes my clients like a putty, slime, play-doh, little beads, other things in a state of freeze to just hold in your hand to help you wake up, like wake the system up. Sometimes it's fidgets. Another one, too, is hydration and nourishment. Sometimes your body might just need a little snack, water. Again, try with warmer versus cold, something nourishing and even very small acts of care can begin reminding the body that I'm here and I matter, and my body deserves support and safe connection. Freeze often feels like it can heal in safe connection. This is where co-regulation comes in. Thinking about someone else's energy that feels really supportive to you, such as a trusted person or your partner, supported presence. Sometimes it's even going to be with an animal or out in nature where your nervous system just feels some extra support from someone or something around it. And in all of this, the goal is to slowly help the nervous system experience enough safety and support and capacity to begin reconnecting again, one small step at a time. And again, as I shared before, if you guys want help practicing this, this is why I created the NeuroAir Regulation Support App. It is currently free inside the NeuroAir Coaching Membership. You get to log in, you have access to the app, and you can just work through the app, tell it what's going on, and it will offer a lot of these tools and support using the four ends. It actually has my whole book built in and all my frameworks and somatic tools to help you be able to just come up with the very next step for you. And before we close, I want to also offer you a few reflection questions as I've been doing the last few episodes. And you will find them and the somatic tools in the show notes that you can come back to anytime. So the first question: when do I notice myself shutting down? What does freeze and the state of freeze feel like in my body? What situations make me feel emotionally disconnected or numb? What happens right before I withdraw or collapse? What helps me feel even slightly more present or connected? And I want to leave you with this. Remember that your shutdown, if that happens to you, is not proof that you're broken. It is probably proof that your nervous system has been overwhelmed for a really long time. And your body has been doing its very best to protect you. And healing is never about forcing yourself out of freeze through shame. It is about slowly helping your body experience safety, experiencing genuine connection and enough support to begin coming back online. So I want you guys to think about that. Just what would it be like for more of your body to spend more time online? And sometimes it is through just one intentional breath, those little small movements that we talked about, or little moments of trying to connect. And I think the goal is, like I've said, with all these other states, actually, I know the goal is it is not that we never are going to shut down again because sometimes maybe we need that temporarily because we have carried something so big. But hopefully the goal is becoming differently with ourselves when we experience freeze, that we can give ourselves more compassion, that we have more understanding for our nervous system states and more support than our nervous system may have ever received before. That's the goal. And next week we'll kind of wrap up this series with appeasement, also known as fawning. And this is where we see people pleasing. This is where we see conflict avoidance, shape shifting, and the nervous system pattern of learning to stay safe through connection by bypassing what we need to make sure that everybody else's needs are met. So until then, I hope you guys have some time this week to reflect. Please send me any questions or messages at aligning with Liana on Instagram. And as always, make it a beautiful rest of your week. Until next time. Bye guys. Thanks for joining me on the NeuroAir podcast. This work is about honoring resilience in yourself and also those who came before you, all while finding freedom from what was never yours to carry. With the help of stories, science, somatic tools, and the four ends, notice, name, nurture, and navigate, you have a path toward deeper connection with yourself, your loved ones, and the legacy you want to pass on. If today's episode spoke to you, share it with someone who's ready to step into this work too and follow the show so you never miss an episode. Remember, you may not have chosen what you inherited, but you can choose what comes next.