Strategies for Clients and Therapists to Overcome the Freeze Response
Learning to Stay With Your Therapist
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.
