Freezing is not giving consent, it is an instinctive survival response. Animals often freeze to avoid fights and potential further harm, or to 'play dead' and so avoid being seen and eaten by predators. Flop: similar to freezing, except your muscles become loose and your body goes floppy.
A 'flop' response results in a total bodily collapse, which might involve blacking out or loss of consciousness, loss of control over bodily functions or total disorientation. This is also referred to as collapsed immobility where the muscles become all floppy like a ragdoll.
The freeze response involves a different physiological process than fight or flight. Research from 2015 describes it as “attentive immobility.” While the person who is “frozen” is extremely alert, they are also unable to move or take action against the danger. Freezing causes: physical immobility.
Many times, when a client goes into freeze, they might look back at the event and think, “I should've fought back.” They might ruminate on what they could've done differently and ultimately blame themselves for what happened.
One of the three most commonly recognized reactions of the stress response, and the initial response to danger in which fight or flight is temporarily put on hold. The freeze response involves an immediate stilling of movement, with vigilance to the threat, and in preparation for active fight or flight response.
Psychologists generally recognize “The Four Fs” as the altered-states that make up the trauma response – fight, flight, freeze and fawn. By understanding these four states, we can identify them if/when they arise in us, and undergo treatment programs designed to properly regulate them.
Freeze – Feeling stuck in a certain part of the body, feeling cold or numb, physical stiffness or heaviness of limbs, decreased heart-rate, restricted breathing or holding of the breath, a sense of dread or foreboding.
Due to having impaired executive function, people with ADHD can become overwhelmed more easily than those without it, and can experience “overwhelm freeze.” Feeling overwhelmed can be perceived as a certain kind of threat, even if it's just to your mental well-being, causing a freeze reaction much like others might ...
Types of trauma that can lead to a fawning response include any prolonged situation in which a relationship power difference is present, and the perpetrator uses their power via threats, abuse, violence, and/or neglect to manipulate and control others in a cycle of abuse.
“Fawning” refers to when an individual copes with a perceived danger by attempting to appease whoever is causing the danger in order to prevent them from causing harm. Sometimes, trauma and abuse survivors will fawn in response to their abuse in an effort to keep the abuser happy.
situations (such as childhood abuse, natural disasters, unstable home life, etc.) the nervous system may be overwhelmed by the inability to eliminate or escape the threat and may move to the freeze response.
“In the face of physical or emotional pain, or a traumatic incident, our sympathetic nervous system has three responses: fight, flight or freeze. Emotional numbing is freezing. Our brain shuts down as a protective response to keep us safe when our nervous system is overloaded,” he says.
In fact, if you're under chronic stress, then your body may be in a perpetual state of fight or flight, and that's not good for your health. Here are some of the ways you can tell if you're constantly in this mode and how your chiropractor can help you get out of it.
The 5 F's of Trauma Response
We actually have 5 hardwired responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, flop, and friend. In a moment of danger, these responses all happen automatically to try to keep us safe.
The freeze response, which makes the body immobile. You might feel paralysed or unable to move. This response is most often linked to dissociation. Dissociation in humans is like when animals freeze when they're in danger.
Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.
Dissociation is an adaptive response to threat and is a form of “freezing”.
Hypoarousal occurs when we feel under-whelmed, it is associated with low arousal levels and can impact our sleep, eating habits, mood and energy levels, it can be described as: a 'freeze' response.
Polyvagal theory states that individuals have a hierarchy of physiological responses (Porges, 1995). The bottom of the arousal hierarchy pyramid consists of our social engagement system, the middle is our fight/flight response, and the top is the most primitive of defenses, the collapse or freeze response (See Fig.
The trauma-informed approach is guided four assumptions, known as the “Four R's”: Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatization.
3 – Shutdown/Collapse. As the path of last resort, if we are trapped or action taking doesn't work, our nervous system takes us to the bottom of the ladder, into shutdown/collapse. We see this in animals when they “play dead”. The same nervous system pathway is activated for them as it is for us.
Signs of Trauma. “Trauma is different for everyone,” Choi says. But two of the more common reactions, she says, are feeling very strong emotions or feeling little. “You might have overwhelming negative emotions or not be able to stop crying.