Understand Functional Freeze Mode: Empower Your Healing As An Alienated Parent

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 90 stay tuned hey y'all um just before the episode I just want make a couple quick announcements one is that as always I'll be live in the Facebook group on the private Facebook group at noon eastern time on Friday again as usual and then also I am going to start the the Tik Tok lives I just haven't I've been so busy with um all the other work stuff that I really need to spend the time this weekend and really figure out how to do it which is probably going to take me five minutes anyway no excuses I am going to be doing that I don't think any of you probably even remember me saying

for start big deal but yeah also I noticed that while I was doing the extensive editing for this episode and sorry because it's super long but I noticed something really interesting and I thought I would share it with you is that I don't even know if this is a thing like I'm just coming on and doing this now like recording this pretty much right before posting it on Wednesday um so I haven't really gone and googled this but I knew I was this was going to be the topic I noticed myself just because I was thinking about being in a functional freeze flipping into the at least having the symptoms of a functional freeze wow while I was recording which I thought was really

really interesting and I don't know maybe it's a coincidence maybe I was just having um some moments two hours of moments but I I do think that words and thought are so powerful and that our mind picks up all of it just because I was thinking about being back in that functional free state my body actually revers Ed back there and you'll see or you'll hear in the episode um it's I mean I think it's got great information but sometimes you'll notice that my my transitions are pretty choppy and that is because during it and I don't know that I um actually articulated this as one of the symptoms but I I think the way that I see it showing up for me um when I am at a functional freeze is that

I'm all over the place right that um my thoughts are scattered and you know I did kind of mention it because I was talking about foggy brained basically what I'm saying is my transitions are a little uh harsh I don't know if that's the right word but as long as you have the patience to keep up with the this episode then I think that you'll really get something out of it I in the end of this episode I actually go in go into talking about how our children are experiencing this very thing um and it might help you to sort of reframe how you're thinking about their experience and your experience of them if well I'll leave it but just know that it is worth it to stay through or you know um maybe

cut it up into two separate listening sessions but it is it is worth it to to stay through if you notice that you are having problems with energy and not being able to get your task done um and any of the other symptoms that are associated with me and um prolonged free state the second half of the episode is a little less um choppy you know but and maybe you guys won't even notice it I just noticed it when I was editing today so that's all just a interesting little tidbit not that I need to to make that episode any longer than it already is oh and what I forgot to mention too is that later on I talk about getting misdiagnosed as being depressed and the biggest difference is that depression is

a chemical it's coming from the inside internal where functional freeze or freeze mode altogether comes from an external circumstance comes from a traumatic event that that happened so depression is internal and functional freeze or freeze is as a direct result of an external Factor upgrade y'all um have a wonderful week and enjoy the episode hey you guys so today we're going to be talking about functional freeze functional freeze mode I have a feeling is where a lot of you guys that are listening to this either you have experienced it or you might actually be experiencing it right at this moment as you probably know the functions of a stress response system is fight blight freeze Fawn right

all the SS there's also um there's flying here so if you see me looking elsewhere that's what it is so you've got your sympathetic nervous system that controls your fight ORF flight also in Fawn I believe it's the energy creating even dopamine is part of that too but like the adrenaline the cortisol the endorphins that the brain releases during stressful dangerous situations what the body is deeming as dangerous situations we need both in all of our daily tasks right when we're going throughout our day we want the go in the morning when we wake up our body releases cortisol it releases all of the chemicals that cause us to motivate to go do things right so

we do need um sympathetic nervous system in order to feed and to get excited about things you know it's really what's behind any sort of motivation or drive to do anything that you're doing right and then the parasympathetic nervous system is there to help you to digest and relax to um counteract the go go go chemicals okay and so when we're in a freeze mode like out in the wild you always hear the comparison like a deer is getting ready to rain prey is is being chased down by a predator when the Predator I see this with my cat all the time unfortunately um he will go and catch run down a bunny and the bunny will I'm sorry you guys but nature I guess um the bunny will just collapse right not

because it's dead but because it has gone into freeze mode where it sort of dissociates from its mental emotional State inside right being present the freeze response is there to protect you in the moment and so that you don't feel pain I believe that when you're in a freeze response in a acute danger situation that your body releases an natural opioid in order to relax you numb you both physically and emotionally right mentally dissociate you so that you don't don't feel the pain of whatever might be coming at you so functional freeze mode is just as it sounds it's your body's way an extended version of your body's way of protecting you it's an action executed by your stress response system

I'm not going to get into all the unnecessary lingo about it and science of it there's plenty of information out there for you guys to look further into it what I would like to talk about is how it might be showing up for you and then of course how you can deal with it how you can move yourself through to the other side a functional freeze and start reconnecting with yourself and with the world really in a more um genuine authentic way and so that you can start to feel better because when I go through some of the symptoms you're going to Chances Are you're going to be relating to a lot of them I guess I was probably aware of this but it it really hit me

today that I think I've probably been in a functional state of freeze ever since my brother when I was 6 years old I think that the rest of my life I led in a fawn freeze Fawn and so I think that that actually explains a lot of how I got into relationships and why I sort of butter fed around throughout my life and I've always used that that comparison with the butterfly because I was constantly feeling like that I want to say agitated feeling but like that anxious like got to do something got to move got to move got to move feel it that was literally I was the person and I'm sharing this with you not to just tell you all about me but maybe this is going on with you too or maybe you have

one or two of the same symptoms so um that's why I'm that's why I'm sharing it all with you but I was also the person that um bumped into a lot of door jams hip checked a lot of counters I still I still do but it's much less than I used to I used to go through my life like Full Speed Ahead right completely disconnected from myself though like if you were to ask me what I was feeling you know some years ago I'd be like what are you talking about I don't I don't know I'm doing fine right and or maybe I would tell you if I was angry or one of those surface emotions that didn't get to the root of anything yeah I might have told you I was felt angry or agitated for sure that was one of the

ones that I used but I was Full Speed Ahead always going somewhere no plan ever you know so um I do believe that dysfunctional state of freeze had for me me has had both um because I still shift in and out of it today been going on for decades many yeah probably about four decades without even realizing it and that is usually what happens with us if you've had any sort of childhood trauma and you felt like and this is similar to what our children are experiencing now um but if you were abused as a child or you were in a position where you had to hide your true emotions you felt like you weren't able or wasn't appropriate to express your true self Chances Are you

um as a child made it about you right oh it must be me it's not them that's the problem so you had to change yourself um in order to fit what you thought that they needed back then I don't tell you any of this stuff to so that we can go back and like drone on about our our childhood but I think the first step to Healing is becoming aware so that we can find understanding right and then once we understand oh okay this is might be go way far back some of these things some of these discoveries with me I'm only just now like putting together the dots for me where I started my work was not in my childhood although I did go to therapy like with a counselor with a few different

counselors for lengths of time several different times but I think that when I really started to get the the majority of my work done it was when I started this work that I teach you guys working with my thoughts and my emotions and how my thoughts create the results that I have in my life that's where most of my work really got done and it wasn't in looking back and trying to explain my childhood right because back when and I started what I really needed was to get out of thinking and droning on and blaming other people in my life like for my life blaming my parents for the upbringing that I had and all that so I really needed to focus on what I was capable of doing at the time and that's

what I teach you guys right but once you've got a little bit of healing under your belt and you feel like you're starting to be able to manage your mind it is really useful this is the way that I did it anyway you can do it in any order you want just really depends on you you know and what's what works for you I don't think that there's one right way to do anything I think that for me I'm always wanting to learn and evolve and I love incorporating new ways ideas and methods you know into what I've already put into action in my life you know up until now but what I was just saying is is that I needed to in the beginning I didn't want to go back keep droning on about my past T that was

actually keeping me in that extended freeze response I needed to get moving because the freeze mode you're in that put the brakes on everything and you've got like the low energy chemicals being released from your brain in order to counter that I needed to get myself into action right and work on what I could control and move forward and now of course that I've got the healing under my under my belt now I can go back and kind of make sense of what was happening with me as a child and because I now have the tools the mental emotional tools and the emotional confidence if that's a thing and trust with myself um capabilities to bring myself through and out of any quote unquote emotional

danger uh by going back into my past now I I'm fully capable of doing that just being here at my house by myself if I wanted to and wouldn't need to be under the supervision of a counselor or somebody else around me right there's no I don't feel any danger or worry about my emotional stability now so that's why um I really really love the way that I'm teaching you guys you know throughout all these episodes is really to find the things that you can control now and like let's say if you're just finding out that you have been alienated you're just realizing there's a term for it and you're seeing the the negative effects on your life and how you're putting the

dots together whatever but you're just exhausted and taxed and feeling like you have no energy and no drive to do any of the work or do anything really because most of your energy has been spent and maybe still is being spent on trying to save your children from the situation or manage your own mind and emotions around the fact that they're there I mean there's so much that goes on from when you learn like maybe you're still going through court but I think basically what I'm saying is is that if you have been feeling like you're labeling it as being clinically depressed or just depressed in general you have high anxiety you don't you notice that you can't motivate

yourself you just want to go to sleep a lot you don't want to take a shower or you have trouble like it's just like so feels so hard for your difficult to do such a simple thing like take a shower every day or when you get out of the shower you just dread getting yourself dressed put together hair blowdried getting clothes on to go Outdoors if that seems like near impossible or just like so much effort and for why if you procrastinate or have difficulty starting or completing the tasks that are in front of you if you find yourself canceling plans if you this was a huge one for me is there would be texts loads of texts that I wouldn't respond to like sometimes the simplest text now I say

this and just the other day I put my phone down on Sunday I put it down for like basically a 24-hour period And I picked it up and there were 33 texts on there on Monday mid morning but it was different just because I just put my phone down and I got so much accomplished you guys so so so much accomplished it's amazing what you can do when you put your phone down and stop this is another thing that we do when we're in functional freeze is we we'll be like scrolling mindlessly shopping mindlessly maybe your TV's on while you're scrolling and you're just like L dah and even more it's TV on scrolling while you're laying in bed if this happens and you're just feeling numb all

of these are signs of being in a functional freeze self-isolation if you work outside of the house and you just can't wait to get home and shut the doors and shut everybody out right um disconnect canceling yeah cancelling plans um avoiding calls or even listening to your voicemails you're just like I just can't deal with it these are I mean I can't even tell you I still actually um I'm not it's not terrible now but I I H do have to talk myself into and I think it's just become a brain habit too of uh calling people back you know I I think I shared this with you guys in another like earlier earlier episode last year sometime where it took me so much to call even my parents back you know I

mean weeks sometimes it just felt like so much to do it like I was like scaling a building it just seemed like so much effort the other things you might be feeling is numbness and tingling in your limbs also dizziness in Vertigo light-headedness I used to be this was a a problem I went to the to the doctors back when I was living in the house in the hill and it's back when they were doing all the testing on me but anytime I turned my head to the side everything sort of spun it was like everything was catching up to my eyes right and I believe now that this was because I was still in a very active very active form of prolonged Breeze does that make sense yeah so I was I was my parasympathetic

nervous system was like putting the brakes on it's called dorsal vagel shut down basically it's your prolonged state of freeze shallow or or regular breathing to me I felt like there was like an elephant standing on my chest you know where I had to take deep breaths it felt so much better to expand my chest and hold the breaths in because I felt like I wasn't getting enough air or oxygen and I remember back then like am I have a heart attack like I would Google it just felt seemed off like just very heavy here and I didn't feel like I was like breathless like it just felt like I had to take in so much more oxygen this is also a a sign that you are in extended form of free okay um

difficulty starting tasks I think I I mentioned low obviously low energy weakened immune system is another one two I think this actually just goes into like if you've experienced prolonged trauma and your body is used to releasing cortisol cortisol is actually an inflammatory it draws all of the water from the surface of your skin it draws everything close to your belly to try to store that water for any sort of emergency right I haven't done the research on this but it would make sense that because your body is was releasing cortisol for so long like extended periods of time like that and because there's some disregulation with your nervous system that this would also be

the case even in your prolonged state of freeze so the body will store all the water bracing itself for catastrophe just like when we suck up for water before a hurricane or whatever kind of natural disaster you might have in your area the body does the same thing and so when the when the water is drawn away from the surface of the skin well obviously you look more dehydrated but you can also develop things like psoriasis you never had psoriasis before and all of a sudden now you have psoriasis or eczema acne even and rosacea difficulty getting out of bed this is huge for all of us as alienated parents I cannot think of one client in the last six years whatever

it's been that hasn't had this symptom right of feeling exhausted don't want to get out of bed or want to get back into bed you know two or 3 hours into the day or anytime really during the day you could just crawl right back in bed and you just want to lay there because you feel like you have zero energy like you could go into a slumber for into like a deep hibernation right and it seems like that's just all you want to do you just want to RW to your bed that's like all you have the energy for I remember being back in um Texas and that was another one of my symptoms was this extreme fatigue to the point where what was so weird for me was it was always when I got in my car and

started driving like when I needed to be the most alert right um even at the most alert but that's the time when I definitely repor for me to stay awake but the second that I got in my car and I would roll the windows down my eyes desperately just wanted to close like I could have there were times I would I would almost fall asleep like my eyes and I'd be like nodding off while I was driving it was intense fatigue and so because of that too you've got this intense fatigue and you know when you're in freeze mode your body is shutting down all of your non-essential functions and so that is why we have the brain fog right because we dissociated with ourselves your body doesn't know what's

danger what's not and you've experienced it for so long and been in and out of dangerous situations your body is so out of whack that it's treating everything as such right so we end up having brain fog inability to make future plans right we just can't even think about the future like how I was talking about before and your memory your memory is probably piss poor feeling constantly overwhelmed or like frozen stuck like you just can't you can't think you can't conceptualize like there's like ideas that you have in your head fragments of ideas but you can't articulate them or even try to write them all down because it's just too exhausting and maybe you can't even fully develop the concept

that you have going on in your head even though you might know it very well so basically it is a difficulty an almost an inability to do pretty much anything except for go to sleep or vegge out numb out in front of a TV with a remote or whatever that's at its worst at its best I guess you can actually function in your every day and go you know complete all your tasks and live your life not even probably not even knowing that you are completely disconnected from yourself you're completely disconnected from your emotions and what is even happening in your world you don't sort of feel like you you're out of your own body and nothing really phases you and you're just numb to everything thing a

lot of people dissociate um after having prolonged periods of you know traumatic events traumatic event after traumatic event over and over and then with us too when we've been through so much pain the body just decides listen we can't connect with our emotions anymore because it's too painful that's the thought we have somewhere in us that it's too painful so we're just going to completely disconnect from all that and so you just go through life going through the motions this happens a lot for people even after like an unexpected uh death in the family too they're just going through the emotions I can imagine it's what somebody might feel like on high doses of lithium just very num to

the world and nothing is up or down right you don't really know what you're feeling because you're just not really present present present in your body so you there's not the spectrum of emotions so yeah functional freeze is there's like I guess it goes from being in freeze mode and an extended period of freeze mode to a functional every day you're still going through the motions in your life but nothing seems like it's worth it a lot of times we'll get mixed up with and misdiagnosed with depression and so if you have been on anxiety medications depression medications and nothing seems to actually work like none of the prescriptions well beon or whatever it

is that you're taking isn't working this could very well be what because it has really nothing to do with any sort of depression it's because you are in this prolonged maybe for years and years and years and years and years like me state of freeze mode it's a iteration of it I guess being that I'm almost positive that most of us have experienced this or are experiencing this at this very moment it would be helpful for you if you want to stop feeling like this like the the the downfalls to staying in this state is that you don't you feel like you're not even living you're existing right you're just going through the motions of this life paying your bills maybe if if you're doing that but if

you're pretty functional and to the outside world you seem to be doing just fine you're managing maybe you look strong and even from your family's perspective but on on the inside you just feel like what's the point to all this I don't think that there's a downside to trying out some of the solutions I'm going to offer and any solutions you might find for being in a functional free state okay prolonged free state so I'm going can't hurt to try and none of the solutions that I'm going to offer anyway are anything that takes up too much time definitely not um don't have to cost you any money really the solutions I'm offering you won't cost you anything um and then of course

if you wanted to jump start that then of course you could always look to going to counseling you do somatic healing is another way of moving your body along and getting there a little faster right um learning some sematic exercises but um yeah so there's there's hope for you yet is basically what I'm saying your life is not doomed to being is this as good as it's going to get like if you just feel like life is just you're existing um you're not doomed to that forever if you don't want to be okay that's that's the whole message today is that you know I didn't know about all of the like the ringing in the ears and the vertigo the dizziness the shallow breathing right all of that stuff I

actually up until maybe I don't very recently the last year or so I didn't know that those were associated with being in functional freeze and and so maybe after me explaining this you're like oh yeah maybe I am actually in that place um then it's great news because you you have a lot more power over your own happiness and your life um than you think you know that's the thing is I think we come from this place where we feel like we have no power and like that are especially depending on how far out you are from this holy alienation situation going on in your life and how active you you are in your child's life at this Mo moment and how active your ex or whoever's alienating your children

from you how active they are right now in the alienation strategies but I can feel so overwhelming and feel like they're always going to be controlling my life they've always got their hands on something and they're always like they're so obsessed with me that no matter what I do no matter what move I make and this is what could be keeping you what I won't venture to say this probably what is keeping you in that freeze mode so if you've been feeling like you're not at Liberty to to make a move your basic needs aren't being met because you feel like they are a threat to you if you do go and get a new job if you do put yourself out there in some way if you wanted to work for yourself um

or whatever it might be you know I get that because that's where I was I felt like it was a fact that my ex and his wife were controlling me monitoring my every move who I spoke with who I didn't who my friends were which members of my family even talked to me because there was a lot of meddling you know what I'm saying I was painfully aware that I couldn't control how they acted painfully aware that I couldn't control that and that was the actual crups of the that was my whole problem in the way I was seeing it was like yeah I know I can't control them and that's what's so upsetting right now because they are controlling me so how are they doing this to me but I can't do anything back

there's no recip you know reciprocation I felt like no matter what I did no matter where I turned which way I tried to go that they were there to cut me off and so this can cause you to get into that more active form of freeze makes you feel like you're not safe even in your own home you're not safe when your own yard or to be on the phone with somebody that you normally before felt very safe talking with right it can start to cause you to be like the hyperarousal to kick in functional freeze is usually described as being tired and wired right being exhausted like you cannot move your finger like your eyes want to shut your body wants to curl up into a like

literally curl up into fetal position and just go to sleep right or you sleep like with your hands arms like tucked in like a like a T-Rex also a very protective posture for your body so although you're like getting you may be getting things done in your daily life you may be able to pull yourself together like I said there's like it's sort of a spectrum whether or not you're able to pull yourself together and get into the shower and go and get your stuff done it may take you a little longer and it may be more of a fight maybe you're still getting the stuff done it just feels like you've got lead feet and Lead hands and a lead everything in order to go do it you're

doing it's just exhausting but you also have these this heightened anxiety um that you feel distant from it feels like for me anyway it felt like there was like this uh anxiety with like a heavy sponge over it if that makes sense like a heavy full sponge that was like plopped on top of it um at all times and it feels um like a little Ary a little like o right for a long time there and I kep I I remember always looking this up and I swear either Google has gotten better at pulling up information or more information has been I'm sure more information is being put on the web all the time but like um just even four five six years ago I remember doing a Googling this like obsessively

really which of course is another one of those like anxious sort of behaviors but when any noise I could be in like smacked in public like with people all around me and if a noise or a person walked in front of me that I wasn't expecting even though I was in public and probably should be expecting it I would shriek it I was so easily startled it was noticeable anytime if anybody walked up behind me and said hello I would jump I mean literally my heart would go into my throat I was in a heightened state of like even though exhausted many things startled me scared the B Jesus out of me sometimes there was nothing there I remember being in my garage a lot because I was back then

doing a lot of woodworking but I remember seeing like Shadows that weren't there things in the corner of my eye that weren't there a dark shadow like something that seemed like threatening and I think that this it's a direct result of of the prolonged stress and Trauma and danger danger situations that I was in but I do think that that's part of being in that functional state of freeze not freeze so much but functional State it's like that anxiety with the sponge on top and that did eventually mostly go away actually I now that I'm saying that I was in um Home Depot or something like that a few weeks back and somebody again I'm in public people could probably just walk up right

next to me at any time and somebody did while I was looking at like Outlet thingies and I scared the beesus out of me so I guess it still creeps up here and there but whatever so I could actually there's a lot to address in talking about functional free state and I think I in the future I'm going to do another episode on this um because I believe it warrants it this this topic is definitely not finished for me but because given the fact that I've already talked as much as I have I'm want to be able to offer you Solutions and not keep you hanging for a part two at least to to to help you in the meantime so yeah we're going to do another episode probably sometime soon but having said

that if you feel like you might be going through or in a state of functional freeze right now there are things that you can do right now to help you to emerge from it when we're in a state of freeze it's our dorsal vagal Nerf shuts your body down shuts your brain down and all the non-essential functions pretty much maybe you're able to function for every day this turned into a coping mechanism that has become your body's default way right but just because it's default now doesn't mean that you can't pull yourself out of it with some very simple actions so because it's your dorsal vagal nerve in order to get out of it we have to counteract that and the way that we do that is with the ventral

veel ventral veel nerve is responsible for um your socialization your desire to be around people to connect with yourself and with others when your dorsal vagal nerve is activated um your your brain is going to tell you that you need to isolate at all costs right that you need to go home that you need to not answer these people back that you need to unfriend whoever whoever that you need to go back to bed that you need more week that you need more time that you need you know that it's going to try to keep you close in in survival mode and not doing the things or it'll tell you that you can't um get your tasks done it's too much for you right now you need to wait or you know anytime you

feel and you notice yourself sort of shutting in like that it could be as a result of being in this prolonged state so what we need to do is activate the ventral vagel okay your brain is going to come up with all of the very convincing reasons why you should not do whatever it is that in the moment your body is probably telling you that you're going to die from doing right it may not give you that language but it'll be like that is not a good idea that seems like it's going to be uncomfortable and so I just want to prepare you even before I give you the simple tasks to do so that you can prepare yourself in a moment for some responses to that part of your brain when it's telling you that

all of these things that I'm going to tell you all the solutions are a bad idea just the way that I do it is like oh yeah I knew that I was going to say that I knew that this part of me I have memes I actually call sounds funny when I'm saying it to you guys but I talk to the that part of me like I'm having a conversation with another person but I know it's me you know so I I usually say we or I like we knew that this was going to happen we knew that you were going to come up with this and you were going to tell tell me that this wasn't a good idea and that we should not do that and we should go to sleep so just come up with a response for it in the moment

expect that your brain is going to do this to you and if you expect it then you'll have an easier time moving through it if you don't expect it you'll then you'll want to listen to it okay that's said so there are a couple ways that I like to get myself out of being in this state oh and what I was saying holy [ __ ] Shelby um what I was saying is that I was in that prolonged state right of being in this this freeze mode this protective mode for my entire life so it would make sense that I since I just learned how to sort of bring myself out of it that I would kind of go in and out of that window right of going back slip I hate the word slipping like when I'm using it

in this context because it's like feels like it's out of my control and I know for a fact fact that it is well within my control if I know um so first off the first step is to before I give you the solutions is to have compassion for yourself right just understand be understanding of the fact that you are there there's nothing wrong with you right like I used to be like what is wrong with you why can't you just get up this is such a common um practice for those of us who have been in an extended period of freeze mode right we're like God what what the [ __ ] is wrong with me why can't you just be like everybody else why can't they've had stuff going on in their life why do you have to be

like you've gotten nothing done and now you're losing time and it's going to be too late for you to get anything done I mean this is like in the scope of my you know entire life and then also like in the moment when I'm talking about just the daily tasks so it's everything but I would beat myself up and I just want to again be before you even go to doing the solutions just know that that will come up for you probably likely come up for you and just to offer yourself some compassion and some Grace in these moments because it makes sense this is your body's way of protecting you it really has nothing to do with your personality or your you know your your makeup you know as far as like your your

genes right your DNA I mean it does on the on the larger scale like it's a human experience right um this is the human body way of coping and keeping you safe so there's nothing that you have done wrong and there's and just the you are doing the best that you can now that you know if you're just learning that this is what has been going on with you now you can offer yourself the grace the compassion and then you can employ these little actions in order to continually uh tease yourself out of this place okay so there's nothing wrong with you so you're going to want to fight you want to as much as possible you don't need to go stick yourself out in a group

of people because that might be too much but find one person one or two people that you really trust and if you can share your feelings with them share your experience even just what's going on about this hey this is what's going on I don't need you to solve this or anything I just want to share with you and I want to just be able to connect with you so that's one of the ways breathing um I usually breathe you can do Square breathing or people call it box breathing right where you imagine in your mind a square and you breathe so I do you could do six eight some people just do three counts of breathing inhaling for six counts and and imagine drawing a line up for the square and

then holding your breath for six counts and drawing the line across right horizontally and then and exhaling for six counts right and Drawing the Line downwards and then inhaling and exhaling that six counts going horizontally again to complete that so box breathing um also I think there's like a seven what is it 47 that's what it is 478 breathing anyway you could look it all up breathing exercises as long as you are holding your your breath for equal or longer amount than you are inhaling so inhale 1 2 3 4 hold for six or seven whatever it is Count hold it in expanding your chest which will also help if you have the symptoms like I was describing earlier and then you want to

Exhale for much longer than you're inhale twice as long ideally okay so there's that breathing exercises are are fantastic to also connect your mind with the rest of your body and that is what we deal with when we're going through this uh prolonged state of freeze is that we've dissociated with our El so the breath is always a way to reconnect reenter yourself to yourself um okay here's a way that I actually learned from I feel like it was either like one of the message boards like readit or I don't think it was a Facebook post it was couple couple years ago I read this technique or this method that uh girl was talking about it was maybe it was in the like the cptsd or PTSD group

on Reddit and she I don't even know if it was a girl but this person was talking about their what their counselor would lead them through in order to reconnect them to their own body when they were stuck in freeze mode right and what they would do is they would stand up and it feels really awkward um I have been doing this now since I also wait before I even tell you this one another thing I'm sure you've heard me talk about um in the episodes before that have dance parties in my house all the time dance parties are amazing amazing for you um gaining some energy and getting yourself out of freeze mode and will lift you up it's amazing the change in your internal environment right and your

energy levels and and your thinking and all of it when you just turn on some really fun music and just start dancing amazing what it'll do for you so that is like I if I could be the poster child for dance parties in your house I would be they're seriously the best the best medicine laughter speaking of the best medicine laughter also a great way there's a a type of yoga that laughter Yoga basically that's what you do is you teach yourself how to laugh and it's a big big laugh out loud right and it also helps you to connect with your inner self and your emotions and can be a very emotional experience actually so that is another one sematic exercises as well

sematic healing exercises hip openers always always amazing for you but the last one is so the one that I was reading on Reddit is the counselor had her and I I reenact this I've been doing this for I don't know ever since I read it the counselor had the person get up and just start shaking their bodies like you can shake however you want but like I may get end up being like sort of rhythmic but start shaking your body and listen to your body and move it the way that it wants to move I was reminding myself of it today while doing this and I was just tired I don't think that I was in freeze mode or anything but I got up and I started doing it and I'm watching these two dogs and they looked

at me like I was a martian it was the craziest I don't know if you can see them are they behind me oh yeah well you could put now I don't know if you can see anyway they're they're one is there I don't know where the other one is but they were looking at me like I was crazy so you just so you shake and just do whatever let your body take you but like you really want to move and then after 60 seconds or so you stop and you balance on one foot for 15 or 30 seconds and then you go and you balance on the other foot and then you repeat that whole process three times start shaking listen to your body and just move around almost like I I kind of imagine it to be

in the way that I do it is like almost like think like tribal dancing that's my iteration of it anyway and it's amazing your spirits will lift almost instantly I it's anyway that's been my experience mostly too because you know how goofy it looks you know how goofy it is it feels but it helps you it's actually can be an emotional experience as well because once you start reconnecting like your movement with your inner self um you can start to reconnect with the emotions that you thought you lost if you do feel like that numbness and like what's the point you feel like you're just disconnected with the world and like you're just going through the emotions this can be

like a returning to self right and it can cause you to feel some emotions and just know to that when that does happen it's okay you're going to be okay the reason that we've gone into this freeze mode and dissociated like I well I think it's probably common sense right just like if we're an acute threat of something happening right acute danger we leave our body if you will so that we don't feel right so that we are numb and and and don't feel the physical pain and the same thing with our when we're in this you know have gone through any sort of psychological abuse emotional what we've gone through with with alienation right with being needed from our children the psychological trauma the

emotional mental space that we've been in the body wants to disconnect from that your central nervous system is like no we can't handle this so you learned either during the alienation or my bet is earlier on in childhood you learned that experiencing emotion connecting with that emotion was too much right it's dangerous it's like doing that you didn't feel safe doing it in the place you were in when it happened like if you were a child and for whatever reason no matter what kind of abuse might have been going on you didn't feel able and safe enough to express your true feelings and your true self in the moment or thereafter right maybe like somebody abused you but you felt like

you couldn't tell your parents because in doing that it might have cost you their love right like it wasn't appropriate to tell them you would have been blamed or whatever and so you had to hide that away and so from that point on you could have been in functional freeze kind of like how I think that it was happening with me where it wasn't safe for me to say anything to anybody I didn't know how to express that so as children that is the only option we have we think anyway you know because we don't have the option to run away or to fight the situation because we're children a little you know and so what can we do our system just jumps right over fight flight and we go straight to

freeze and so if we learned that as a child and we had trauma after trauma or carried the one trauma for so long and felt like we needed to hide away then it may be your default to go straight into freeze now as an adult you know so my point of telling you that is well two things come up it's because one and what I was initially getting at is that it it may feel the idea of connecting with your emotions may feel scary but remember that emotions are just vibrations that are happening inside of our bodies that's all an emotion is it's the story that we attached to the emotion to the experience of the emotion that really causes us the mental pain and discomfort

but if we ow for the mental part to just be it's just a story it can't hurt us it's nothing we're in a safe place right now as we're experience this emotion hopefully that you are in the safe place you know um that you're not in any physical danger then you can your nervous system can start to settle down and start to feel safe you just have to reinforce the reality of your safeness of your safe Hood right that you're not actually in physical Danger it's like the difference between when you're watching a movie a scary movie we've talked about this before right it's probably common knowledge but like when you're watching a scary movie and something scary is

happening same thing happening to you it's two entirely different things one you're not in danger the other one you are in you know maybe grave danger if it was happening to to you right but your nervous system has no idea the difference if it sees it it thinks it's actually happening to you and that's why scar like scary movies some people love them because they release those that the endorphins and all of the you know the feelings that you get when you're scared um some people like that some people don't I me I do not like that but this is why your body feels like it's happening to you at the moment but the other point I was going to make is that I think coming from last week's

episode where you're talking about you know if you are maybe in the place right now I think many of us go through this where we're angry at our kids or we're just feeling like fed up with the fact that they are still rejecting us and why don't they understand and why don't they respond and you know how I was talking about last week um then maybe that this will give you a little bit more insight into what they're experiencing now and maybe a little bit more compassion because in their situation being if they are over at the person who's alienating your kids from you if they're over there most of the time they've had had to likely they're switching in and out from

freeze fwn freeze Tha freeze th right and in in that freeze mode they have learned to disconnect with their feelings of love for you they've had to do that because they have not felt safe to to express that they got that message from whenever this started the other parent would withhold love they wouldn't speak to them they would either express it verbally or non-verbally their dis displeasure and and disapproval of speaking about you in a loving way right we all know that as one of the strategies but what they learned from oftentimes very young ages is that they could not ex be themselves they could not express themselves as they are in their true feelings so they have learned

to dissociate from their feelings right they and that is essentially a form of freeze mode they're in they're in uh an emotional freeze move have to move away separate themselves from their emotions because those emotions are bad and they're not they won't serve us here in this house so and after so long it's the it becomes this prolonged State because they aren't um permitted to even grieve like we as animals I think we when we lose a relationship even a friendship maybe you know friendship is broken for whatever reason you guys don't speak to each other anymore there's a grieving process that we go through even animals out in the wild grieving process that we

go through when we are not in connection daily connection with a person that we love and that we once looked to guidance for and all the things right but because they can't actually it's this unsupported disenfranchised grief that they are going through they had to disconnect from their emotions so likely this is and I'm not saying this to upset you in any way but more I guess just to remind you you know that if you are feeling impatient with them or you know wishing that they would just finally understand or learn or stop accusing you or whatever it is this is why this is like the body's response to this they were not safe and if you can identify with that in your

own experience from when you felt like you couldn't be yourself or Express or feel your own emotions um like that those were those emotions were bad as children we I think it's like 80% of children if something happens and we don't feel safe to share our true emotions as children made it about us our own selves and not about the other person it's like like either strange or danger right those people are bad they don't support us or we make it about ourselves and if it's the coming from the people that love us we make it about ourselves so anyway um just so you know I guess hopefully it'll help you to have a sense of compassion for what they might be going through and also you

provide your own self with the compassion and Grace for your experience growing up and you know we just don't often consider whatever we did go through in our past it you know our mind our stories our view of the world is like a map of all of our experiences all of the rules and ideas and beliefs that you have are all come from somewhere our brain is like this mental map of how the world works that we kind of put together right based on our experiences through out our history or each of our histories all of the things that you do the frustrating idiosyncrasies that you have the ways that maybe you're not getting ahead the way that you want to or that you are excelling in other areas it's all

explainable the human body the nervous system all of our functions nothing that goes on with us is unexplainable and comes from nowhere you know oh it's just out of nowhere the symptom that we're experiencing is just a fluke no it's really all explainable and so so much of the time when the doctors are telling you that that there is no explanation like they were for me it's probably most like L this is my opinion is that it has to do with some sort of uh dissociation from yourself from somewhere in your history you do not have to go and sit and dig through all the trauma of your life in order to explain your life now but just have compassion for yourself an

ongoing mindset to adopt about yourself is that this is all explainable there's a reason that I have these symptoms or that I want to shut down in certain situations or that I am getting more sleep than than maybe had planned on getting there's reasons you're tired there's always an explanation for it and it's not just because you're falling short you know give yourself the grace to pull out of this the functional freeze mode you must it just made me think of uh Seinfeld episode where castanza decided he was going to do the opposite of everything that he did because he just had such bad bad luck and like dating and like his life um by listening to his first instincts so he

thought oh well if I just do the opposite of what I really want to do then everything will be fine that's is that when he was like doing art vlay or whatever anyway um that just reminded me of it but yeah when you're trying to get out of vental vagel or sorry dorsal vagel shutdown extended free you want to do the opposite of that opposite of what you're tempted to do and move your body move your body when you feel like jumping in bed have dance parties shake your body breathing exercise get back in touch with just feeling hearing your breath also there's something called voo breathing which is um look it up I don't have enough time I've been talking and talking and talking but Vu breathing is

another way to reconnect with yourself and stimulate your vental Vegas nerve okay and reconnect with yourself okay all right so that's enough there are plenty of other ways you can do this um and more specific you can get into like sematic healing exercises hip opening exercises yoga is really helpful for um opening up the hips which is also where we store a lot of our trauma as well as up in the neck in the back in the joints okay all right I got to stop because I've been talking for a very long time I'm going to go all right guys I'll see you next week