Strategies for Clients and Therapists to Overcome the Freeze Response

Posted On November 16, 2024

Have you ever experienced yourself slipping into the freeze response? That feeling that you are too overwhelmed to move or speak when in therapy? This article will focus on strategies for you and your therapist to respond to and treat the freeze response.

What is the Freeze Response?

You may have heard of the fight or flight responses, but the freeze response is foreign to many people even though they may experience it. The freeze response feels like dread that leaves you unable to move or speak. Often you will dissociate, leaving the room and your therapist behind.

The reason you may feel shutdown is that during freeze, parts of your brain become unavailable, making it arduous to process what is happening and thus suppressing your ability to act.

Unfortunately, upon awakening from the freeze response, many blame themselves for “wasting” their therapists time and regretting you have lost precious minutes in their office. Because of self-blame and dread, people who are healing from dissociative identity disorder and many other mental health problems, are difficult to treat because the freeze response blocks their progress.

It is vital to overcome the freeze response as without that control, treatment cannot be effective.

What is Happening in the Brain to Cause the Freeze Response

Neurological activity causing the freeze response comprises of the parasympathetic nervous system which includes the amygdala. The amygdala is taxed with watching for danger and threat and when it perceives something is a danger, it triggers the dorsal vagal complex.

What danger or threat could possibly be in a therapist’s office, you might ask? Think about it. What work are you doing with your therapist includes horrendous memories? Thinking, and especially talking about those memories can cause you to experience fear and suspicion leading to the freeze response making sure you do not interact with your therapist.

In response to the amygdala recognizing danger (even if it is only perceived danger such as talking about what happened), your autonomic nervous system, through the hypothalamus, is triggered into life. It is these brain regions that are dominant in your brain responses during the freeze response.

Physiologically, when you are experiencing freezing, you feel like your breathing has slowed, your muscles feel tense, you feel numb, and you have a detachment from the world around you (dissociation).

Where Does Our Ability to Freeze Come From?

All animals, including humans, experience the fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses. In nature, freeze helps the animals to survive because doing so helps to camouflage their whereabouts through lack of movement.

In humans, the need, for the most part, to freeze is mostly unused. However, freezing is involuntary and will activate when you feel endangered.

So, it is not your fault when you freeze when in a therapy session. As I have already said it is involuntary even when the danger is imagined or you are not in real danger.

How Your Therapist Can Overcome the Freeze Response

Your therapist can aid in overcoming the freeze response by utilizing grounding techniques. Below are a few of these techniques.

• Grounding exercises such as trying to recognize your surroundings
• Gentle movements performed by you to re-engage the whole body
• Utilizing deep breathing exercises
• Education about the freeze response

As one can see, these techniques are performed before the session begins to help ward off the freeze response.

During the freeze response in its beginning stages your therapist can offer you one end of a towel while she takes the other. Then your therapist will then gently tug on the towel to help bring you back into the moment instead of freezing and drifting away in dissociation.

Similarly, your therapist can use a beach ball and toss it to you with you tossing it back. The movement of the ball between you and your therapist helps to anchor you.

The Most Important Key to Overcoming the Freeze Response

The key to overcoming your freezing in therapy is to, along with your therapist, gradually build a deep trust with your therapist. This key will take time and patience but is necessary.

Explore your emotions while being mindful that these thoughts and memories are deeply engrained and taught you not to trust anyone. You must work at your own pace and ignore what books, TV, or the Internet tells you. Healing will come, all you need to do is to work with your therapist.

It is critical that your therapist honors your boundaries during therapy. If you say you are done talking about a subject or don’t want to talk at all, your therapist needs to allow you do so. You will not get far down the road less taken that way, but you will gain a new trust in your therapist.

What Not to Do With a Client Who Experiences the Freeze Response

This portion of this piece is written for therapists.

There are many methods to treat the freeze response that are contraindicated. Some of these include:

• Trying to force the client to talk
• Ask them to engage in an activity requiring immediate action
• Applying verbal pressure
• Initiating strong confrontation
• Touching the frozen client

The list above is not all inclusive and should contain anything that feels intrusive, overwhelming, or further exacerbates your clients sense of being trapped or unsafe.

There are many reasons to avoid intrusive interventions. One reason is that trying to force a frozen client to engage with you will lead to increasing their anxiety, panic, or dissociation.

Another reason to avoid intervening when your client is frozen is that you can retraumatize them. Aggressive or demanding approaches will often trigger past traumatic experiences forcing them to the surface and violating any trust you may have gained from your clients.

Ending Our Time Together

I had a terrible time with the freeze response. Something would trigger me and before I knew it I was leaving the room in my mind and dissociating away from my therapist.

At first, my therapist tried to engage with me by asking me where I was, but this was unsuccessful. I was very exasperated by my inability to stay in the office and allow my therapist to help me. Not only that, but I was losing precious time I could be spending engaging with my therapist and getting better.

Finally, my therapist knowing about my wanting to remain with her, began to sit and wait for me to return. Almost inevitably I wouldn’t return until our time together was over. She would calmly announce that it is time for me to leave. After a few sessions with this result, I finally was able to remain in the office and get the help I needed.

My hope is that you will find ways to help yourself remain in the office during your therapy sessions. Show your therapist this piece and talk about your freezing. In the future, you will stop floating away and engage with your therapist in a fashion that is healing.