Why Freeze State Happens in Two Different Ways (and Why it Matters)

Season 4- Episode 52

Ever felt completely stuck in the face of stress—unable to act, speak, or even think clearly? Or do you find yourself saying “yes” just to avoid conflict, even when you don’t want to? These are nervous system responses—freeze and fawn—and they’re not just habits, but survival strategies.

In this episode, we’re breaking down:
  -Why freeze happens in two different ways (and why it matters)
- How fawning keeps you stuck in people-pleasing mode
  -Simple, actionable steps to shift out of these patterns
Your nervous system isn’t broken—it’s doing what it was designed to do. But with the right tools, you can teach it a new way forward.

If you haven't already, check out Five Ives to see how strategies like this can be applied to adults, especially in the workplace. Five Ives works with staff in high burnout jobs to help them incorporate regulation strategies into their daily routines.

Try at Home Tip:
Think about if you are a sympathetic freezer, a parasympathetic freezer, or a fawner and think of one micro practice you can integrate when either you feel it and you're reacting to it or to prevent it from happening.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer:

“I am so stoked for this episode because I feel like what I'm about to explain is so hard to understand. But then, when you hear it. It's gonna make sense to to so many of you.

So let's just get right into it. Today we're talking about why. Like freeze and even Fawn freeze Fawn State. So we're back to the nervous system. Why freeze Fawn State can happen in like 2 extremes and how to how to address it.

So let's go backwards a little bit here in the last, many, many episodes. I can't keep myself not talking about the nervous system, so we've talked about the nervous system. We talked about the window of tolerance. I've asked you to kind of visualize this like 3 things stacked on top of each other. The middle zone is your window tolerance. How much can you tolerate before you go up to the sympathetic side or down to the parasympathetic side, and you can be a person that goes up or down, or both and different things will cause you to go up versus down. But for me, as like a person, and I regularly think about my own nervous system because of childhood because of young adulthood because of history. How I became wired that I'm working to undo. Still, today is, I'm a person who goes up into the sympathetic side. I am much more like tense, defensive, like anxiety prone versus. I don't really resonate a lot with what it feels like to go into the parasympathetic. I don't feel disconnected, dissociative. more depressed. I've just never had those types of experiences, but it is not good nor bad, wrong, right or wrong, to do either. It just is. So that's the biggest thing is like just learning to accept that this is where I am at, and once I have not even just let's scratch that reverse it, strike it not. Accept step into awareness of this is where I am. and now that I know I can do something to change it, because the beautiful thing about the nervous system is it's like a muscle, so you can kind of do work in the opposite direction. To get yourself back into the window of tolerance, to grow your window of tolerance, to keep yourself in the window of tolerance. But let's talk a little bit more specifically about the freeze. Fond state, because most people think about the freeze. Fond state is only parasympathetic. It's only when you're a person that goes down and is is in that more like disassociative, disconnected, more depressive like state. And that's not actually true. So in this episode, we're gonna talk about how or why freeze happens. Kind of in 2 different spectrums of the nervous system. We're going to talk about how fawning, which is similar to freeze, but different, keeps you stuck in this people pleasing mode, and what are some simple, actionable steps to shift you out of these patterns and back into your window tolerance. The biggest thing to note here is like you are not broken. Your nervous system isn't broken. It's doing what it was designed to do. As Dr. Wood would say: You've got a little glitch, and we just got to fix that glitch or become aware that the glitch even exists, and that it needs to be fixed. But with the right tools and the right awareness, you can actually change these things. So think about this kind of visualize. Have you ever felt completely stuck? Once trace, once raised when faced with stress? It's like I'm so excited about this. I feel like my adrenaline is pumping, and I'm talking too fast. Oh, because it's so exciting to me, because it just answers so many questions, and I know that this understanding and this work is going to change so many people's lives. So you're in a state of stress. But you're in such a state of stress that you feel completely stuck like, I have experienced this with personal life, things affecting a blend of like work life. And I'm like 6 email accounts. And like, they're all just flooded with emails. And I've got something in my personal life that are affecting. How I'm like, how much energy I have at work, and then I have just overloaded inboxes, and I'm like I don't even know which inbox to start with, because I am overwhelmed that that is like me, stuck in just complete overwhelm and stress in my brain. What it like subconsciously says, or maybe even consciously says I don't know. He's like run away like, but I can't like I'm just stuck. and I find myself saying Yes. When every part of my internal body is like No, no, say no set boundaries. Say no, and it's like, Yes, yes, it's like I can't. I can't control it. So this is an example of what it might be like, if you're in this freez fawn state of your nervous system, and that's why we're really breaking down what happens here, and why you feel paralyzed, or maybe overly accommodating. And we're going to talk about how to shift yourself. Shift yourself out of those patterns, because here's the thing your nervous system is not working against you. It's working for you, and it just needs make some new instructions. It needs some guidance. And it's misunderstanding the information.

So let's talk about freeze response first. So most people again think of like freeze as what it is. You freeze, and then think of it as like freeze, and your body shuts down. This is what happens when your nervous system sees no other way out or no other way forward, and it gets stuck. But the interesting thing is, most people view the freeze response in the nervous system as the parasympathetic side, so that lower tier side, disassociative, disconnected, shut down. And that is true. But that type of stuckness is like a deep collapse. If you really want to go like super sciencey, we would say, the dorsal vagal response kicks in, and everything starts to shut down. It's the I can't do anything kind of freeze, and it's it's like extreme burnout, but heavier like you're literally frozen. And if you've ever felt like emotionally numb or so absolutely exhausted that you like can't even get the mail, or can't even make a basic decision. Then you've been here. And again. It's a protective measure, measure, productive mechanism. So it's not a bad thing, but we need to recognize it so we can come out of it, but the one that I feel like a lot of people, miss or misunderstand, maybe is when you freeze from being in this sympathetic side, the upper tier and overwhelm in that side. So this is when your system is flooded with stress that it short circuits into shutdown. So I've always kind of talked about it as like kind of feels like you're sort of in the parasympathetic shutdown, except you're not. So let me give you like a scenario that might help. You understand this side of overwhelm or this side of freeze. Imagine a kid who's been yelled at a lot too many times and initially, maybe was like reacting would react to being yelled at. But now, after being yelled at so many times, this Chad, just like blankly stares at you. And here's the difference between parasympathetic shutdown and sympathetic kind of overwhelm is when a child that's been yelled at a lot stops reacting. But just like stares because they're in this Freeze state. Their body internally is still full of the stress hormone, but there is no way to fight or to flee. There's like nothing they can do. They feel helpless. So they just stop. But internally, there's still a lot of stress, and like a lot of heightened things going on versus the freeze from the parasympathetic side. This, like deep collapse, is more of like where your body's kind of shutting down like it's like, I don't know what else to do so. I'm just going to go into a state of like done. So what's going on internally is quite different and very much like the opposite. It's important to know the difference, because how we move out of freeze depends on which side of freeze you're in. So we'll come back to that.

Let's skip down to Fawn. Fawn. So if you've not heard of fawn response fawning is like. I think of Stockholm Syndrome, where it's like the best way to explain. Fawn is like to just to just give in to just do whatever everyone's asking you to do, to just submit like extreme submission, because it's what keeps you safe if you just agree. So think of like someone that's this is like trigger warning, like not the best example, but like such a clear example is. if someone is being abused like let's say husband to wife, wife is being abused. A fawn state might be like the wife just submits, and does every single little thing that the husband asks, and like caters to him, because fawning and doing everything he asks is much easier than dealing with the abuse that would come of not fawning. So it's the art of keeping the peace at your own expense. So fun is the survival response that says, if I can't make everyone happy, or if I let me read that, if I can just make everyone happy then everything will be good. I will be safe, everything will work out, which isn't quite true, because even though you have made everyone else happy. It's like a false sense of safety, because what's really going on under that is, it's all at your own expense, and that's eating away at your cellular level, which is a whole other thing that's going to cause weakened, immune, and health problems and sickness and disease. So let's break this down. Fawn again. Fawn, much like freeze can be the sympathetic side up at the top, or it can be the fawn down in the parasympathetic side. So let's talk sympathetic side. First, sympathetic fawning is like high energy, high anxiety. This is over, explaining over, apologizing, over, committing, like circularly spiraling, ruminating thoughts. The nervous system is in fight or flight state. It's in the upper tier, but instead of fighting which it would normally do. It's become so overwhelmed that it just goes into like, I'll just fix everything. Just just fix. So you're fawning, and you're doing what others need you to do, but not because you're like shut down. not because you're detached. It's because you're in such a heightened state of anxiety that you're like I must fix. I must do. I must. versus down below the window tolerance, your parasympathetic fawning, which again, we would call your dorsal vagal. If we're going sciencey, polyvagal theory. This is really low energy. This is detached.

This is where you like, just completely submit. And you agree just to avoid conflict like you don't even feel connected to your own preferences anymore, like at least in sympathetic side. You're like kind of aware of, like, I'm doing this, but I'm choosing to, because it's the wise choice to to just agree to make everyone happy, to stay safe versus like dorsal bagels like I don't even know I don't even care. Just do whatever you want and both for safety reasons like both conscious and subconscious. more subconscious is your your system is just like this will get me safe. This will keep me safe. So this is what I'm going to do to stay safe.

If you resonate with any of these. You're not alone, I mean, even as someone who I go up in the sympathetic side again way more than I go down to the parasympathetic side. I'm much more familiar with the sympathetic side, but I'll usually like hang in the low part of the sympathetic side, but sometimes I will. I will go up to the sympathetic freeze or the sympathetic fawn, probably more of the sympathetic fawn than the freeze. But it's hard to recognize that like when I'm completely detached and disassociative and disconnected. You can see that in people. But when people are over, explainers over, apologize over apologizers, over committers, over yesers, over givers. You don't always necessarily see it. You just see them as like a kind person, but there's a level to which it goes beyond just kindness, and it starts to wreak havoc on your system. Many of us learned that keeping others comfortable was the safest way to exist. Don't rock the boat. Good news is we can undo that work. Because again, it's like a muscle, and your body and your subconscious has been trained to act in that way to keep you safe. But now that you are actually safe, if you are safe, and if you're not, that's another issue that we have to kind of deal with first.st But if you are actually safe, but your subconscious just thinks you're unsafe. Then we can untrain it to feel that if you are actually unsafe, then you can't train yourself to think that you're unsafe. You are safe because you are actually unsafe. And that issue and that need has to be taken care of first.

Okay? So that's freeze fawn in sympathetic side and parasympathetic side in a nutshell. So how do we move out of these freeze fawn States? And if you remember earlier, I said, it's different, because, even though being in the sympathetic side of freeze, Fawn kind of feels a little bit like

parasympathetic Freeze Fawn, what you would do for the opposing sides isn't quite the same.

So how do we shift out of these patterns?

One, recognize the state that you are in awareness is the 1st step. There's a beautiful quote by Viktor Frankl. It's like something like between the stimulus and the response is like this teeny, tiny little zone. And that's where the change happens. That's where you recognize. That's where you become aware of like, where am I at? Okay, now I'm going to do the thing to change the pattern, to have my body react a different way. So recognize the state that you're in. Are you revved up but stuck, which is your sympathetic freeze, or are you completely shut down? Which is your parasympathetic freeze? If you are in the sympathetic freeze? That's me. Because there's so many things moving so fast inside the body, because it's in this heightened state. You need to release the energy. It's all pent up in there, and you just need to let it out so you could shake your hands. You could hum and activate your vagal nerves, essentially activating like the opposite side of your nervous system. The parasympathetic side, which is also known to be the rest and digest sides and sometimes opposing forces in the nervous system, really. Helps. So if I activate the parasympathetic side. When I'm high in the sympathetic side, it can kind of bring me to equilibrium. Or maybe I need to actually do some some slow. Deep breaths, because even though I'm like a little bit disconnected and like shut down my heart rate's still going fast and by moving my body it tells my body it's safe to complete and close out the stress cycle. It also carries oxygen to the brain through your blood system, and then oxygen in the brain helps you bring like, bring you back online with your thinking brain. So movement is great. For for this particular zone on the opposite end of the spectrum. If you are stuck down in the parasympathetic side, you're stuck in that dorsal vacal freeze. You're disconnected, dis-associative. You need to re-engage gently so small steps of like what would bring you kind of back to life, warm, warm sun on your face, wiggling your toes in in the sand or on the floor, and the grass, or the mud, or whatever it could be, something like drinking water, just drinking water in general. Maybe it's drinking water that's a little bit warmer, like a tea or a little bit cooler, with some ice again. Not too much too fast. You don't want to like Dunk yourself in an ice bath. but a little bit of cold exposure, a small step of gentle re-engagement can help move you back up closer to that window of tolerance. So again. We're not pushing ourselves from being disconnected to like full speed mode. We're just reminding our body that it can come out of freeze, and that it's safe to move about. Okay, if you're in Fawn State. The anecdote to this is tiny acts of self-advocacy with anything I think it really has to do with tiny acts, little movements, gentle re-engagement. Because when you go from one end of the spectrum to the other, it's usually not sustainable. What's sustainable? What promotes longevity is little tiny micro apps. Maybe through the support of apps that help you make it a routine to make it a habit. So if you're an automatic. Yes, person, maybe, instead of automatically saying, Yes, try. Let me think about that, even if you said the yes, and you're later like, it's not a yes, anymore, like I have said yes, and then felt so exhausted and felt like, I'm a people pleaser. And I said I would go, and I'm personally my words. I have to go versus having a little bit of self-advocacy, and saying, I really want to come, and I really want to support you, and I am feeling utterly exhausted. So I really need to recognize where my body is at and what I need right now, and and give it that. And some people may be upset by that. And that's okay, because your job isn't to make everyone happy. It's going to keep you in the fond state. So instead of over apologizing because you don't need to always apologize. Try pausing. and then even try like a thank you like when I am running late for something I don't. The 1st thing I say when I arrive isn't like

 I'm so sorry I'm late, because that's fawning. That's perfectionistic people pleasing tendency. Instead, I say thank you so much for your patience or thanks, for you know, for being patient while I arrived. I don't feel the need any longer to apologize, because I didn't try to be late. I could have done better, maybe, with time management. But if I didn't try, and I'm not going to apologize, I can thank them for being patient because they were being patient while they're waiting for me.

These shifts may feel like so nuanced, so small, but they do send incredibly powerful little spikes of positive messaging to your nervous system that tell your subconscious I'm here, and I'm allowed to take up space, and it's safe to take up space. So that's what we want. Again, there's so many nuanced pieces to this, because if you are in an unsafe environment that may not be true, and we have to get out of the unsafe environment first, and we need help and support to do that. But once we are out of it and our subconscious tells us it's not okay to take up space even when we're in a place where we are now safe enough to do so. We have to train our body and train our nervous system by micro acts to feel safe again. And remember, it's a practice. It's a daily habit. It's integration. It is not pass fail, did it? Didn't do it failed at it. I'm done. I can never heal. I'm just an injured person. It's 1 step at a time, and you might be injured but you can heal.

Okay, here's what I want you to take away today. Your nervous system isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was wired to do, keep you safe. And when you understand why it reacts the way that it does and why you react and respond the way that you do. You then have enough self-awareness to rewrite the script, and that's what we're aiming for. So if this concept, these concepts resonated with you and you think someone might need to hear it. I would ask you to send it to them, or to re-listen with them, or to kind of like chat about it, have a little micro book, book, club, podcast club. Because healing is possible. And when we heal the like heightened state of healing in 5 Ives in our businesses is hive is like sharing the information with someone else or being a mentor to someone else, or being the carrier of the information to someone else, and it starts with understanding that your body is already working for you.

Okay, to wrap up the show. I'm gonna share a try it at home, Tip, which is actually just. I want you to, I want you to like, actually pause and think about are you a sympathetic freezer. Are you a parasympathetic freezer, or are you a fawner? And again, not bad, not wrong, which one do you resonate with? And when you heard me talk about how to kind of like, re-engage your system and make yourself feel safe, depending on which one you're in. What's 1 little micro practice you can integrate when either you feel it and you're reacting to it or you want to prevent yourself from even getting into it. I gave you a few think about which one works for you and like, lock it into your brain. That's your try it at home, Tip.

And if you're looking for more support in the areas of stress and trauma and behavior and the brain support. 5 Ives, Jessica Doring, Dr. Jessica Doring and I created this organization to help organizations with high burnout high stress. Understand how the nervous system works as an organizational whole leadership boards, frontline staff. Even the people you serve understanding from a trauma sensitive perspective. How do we move from nervous system, dysregulated to nervous system, regulated? Not even as individuals, yes, as individuals, but as a whole organization. How do we get up into this upper tier of the 5 Ives.

So if you want to learn more, pop into the 5 Ives website onto the 5 Ives website FIVE, IVES. Ping us, we'll schedule a call for you, and we'll talk about what's going on, and see if or how we can support you, and what resources we can give you. And don't forget to lock in what you learned right away. Bye.

Thinking about your try at home tip, and really like putting a sticky note or putting a reminder on your phone or doing something to make sure that there's an easy way to do this, you can also comment below. We'll hold you accountable. or any takeaways comment with your takeaways. But until next episode I'm Lauren Spiegelmeier. Thanks for joining me.”

 

Calming & Coping, Emotional RegulationLauren SpigelmyerComment