OVERVIEW OF THE FUNCTIONAL FREEZEÂ RESPONSE
Functional freeze, which is a blended state of shutdown and flight, can be characterized as the state of autopilot. In this state, we have mobilizing energy to go through the motions, yet our shutdown state pulls us down into the suppression of our emotions. Just as the name implies, we’re functioning and going about our daily lives, yet we feel little to nothing.
 Here, you are disconnected and detached from your body and often dissociated. Emotions are suppressed and therefore flat, numb, and unavailable to you. Like the “walking wounded,” you go through the motions and seem to be unfazed by either good or bad experiences in your daily life. You’re externally oriented. Disconnected from yourself, you tend to blend in with the world around you as you “just go with the flow.” Because you have suppressed your feelings, you often lack the necessary charge and emotion to take offense or protect yourself--like anger, for example—creating an environment prone to abuse and limited boundaries. You often just take whatever life throws at you, adapting like a chameleon to survive whatever challenges you face.
Breaking free from any chronic survival response requires:Â
- Learning the language of your unique nervous system: sensation, emotion, feeling, impulse.
- Understanding how your nervous system is reenacting these protective patterns and responses in your present day.
- Somatic completion: allowing the nervous system physiology to do now, what felt too overwhelming to do back then. This turning point happens when you explore Core Wounds work. For example: advocating or setting a boundary, walking away, expressing or emoting, etc.
- Building nervous system capacity/resilience to tolerate discomfort (anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, shame, etc). This is done through routine experiential practice.
- Integrating a nervous system-centered lifestyle across your external world: relationships, health & wellbeing, career, finances, etc.
 "We may not be responsible for the world that created our nervous system, but we can take responsibility for the nervous system which creates our world."
-Dr. Gabor Maté
LET'S HEALÂ
Somatic Practice for Functional Freeze
"CHAIR DROPS"
This tool strengthens your vestibular system (balance, stability, and center of gravity), which is in constant communication with your nervous system. While sitting down on a chair, gently lift the front of the chair up and backward (either with your feet or hands) allowing the front legs of the chair to rise above the ground up to six inches. Don’t lean back to the point of feeling like you don’t have stability. Next, you’ll allow the front of the chair to drop back down—feeling the of gravity of your body meet the ground, feeling the thud below. Do this slowly up to 5 times. As you do so, do you feel more weight in your body? Do you feel heavier? More grounded? More stable?
Here's a BONUS, just for you! Enjoy behind-the-scenes access to this 40-minute Nervous System Guided Practice on "somatic boundary setting and mapping." This exclusive recording is from our weekly Nervous System Gym call in the Body-First Healing Program.
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