The 5 Nervous System Response Mechanisms in Love: The Freeze Response (Immobilisation)
198. The 5 Nervous System Response Mechanisms in Love: The Freeze Response (Immobilisation)
The 5 nervous system response mechanisms in love: the freeze response (immobilisation)
This episode is part of a series of 5 episodes on the 5 nervous system response mechanisms and how they impact your relationship, starting at episode 195 and ending at episode 199. If you are new to the podcast and unfamiliar with the influence of the nervous system on your relationships, I invite you to listen to episodes 152 The impact of the nervous system on your relationships, 153 The 4 categories of love patterns and 154 The 3 states of your nervous system and the polyvagal scale. You can also read my book S’ouvrir a l’amour, and if the solution lay on the side of the vagus nerve? if you want to identify your own mechanisms and patterns.
This episode is for you if you have the feeling of being blocked on the outside and hyperactive on the inside (thoughts, agitation), of being a “head on legs” (lots of thoughts but little body awareness), you want to act but have no energy, or if you use addictions a lot to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions. In my eight years of practice, the freeze response has been one of the most common and most underestimated mechanisms I’ve encountered in body-oriented therapy and relationship coaching.
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The mechanisms of the freeze response
- Procrastination, feeling stuck
- Despair or helplessness
- Disconnection from what you feel, as if cut off from reality
- Indecision, confusion, overanalysis, lots of thoughts, harsh inner dialogue
- Staying in a relationship where you are not happy
- Numbing yourself with addictions: alcohol, food, porn, compulsive shopping…
- Seeking extreme sensations: chaos, conflictual relationships, extreme sex
- Relationships exhaust you, feeling powerless to change the situation in your relationships
If your partner is in this state, you may feel
- That they are distant, not very involved, seem to be “missing out” rather than being with you
- That they have no understanding or empathy for what you are going through — indifference
- That nothing changes despite your discussions, that you go round in circles
- Alone or like you are carrying the weight of the relationship
For you
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Thoughts in this state
- “What’s the point… it’s useless”
- “I can’t do it, I’m stuck”
- “I don’t know what to do, I’ll wait again”
- “What if…?”
- “I feel nothing”
Emotions in this state
- Feeling of exhaustion even for minimal things, apathy, no vital energy
- Irritability, anxiety and mental agitation inside without really feeling it in the body
- Despair or helplessness
- Diffuse sadness, emptiness
- Bubbling inside, blocked on the outside
- Inner protective wall: others don’t have access to you, and neither do you
- Fear of committing or choosing — better to do nothing than to do it wrong
Physiologically, activation of the parasympathetic state in dominance, sympathetic to a lesser degree
- Slowing of all physiology: slower breathing, often in apnoea, slowing of heart rate, muscle relaxation but non-regenerative
- Pale face, empty gaze, as if cut off from the environment
- Feeling of numbness, cold extremities, heaviness in the body
- Lack of energy and internal excitement. From the outside you may seem to be functioning.
- Need for stimulants to function
- Reduction in cognitive functions: confusion, difficulty making choices, thinking, brain fog, blank mind (going blank)
- Your body holds on: difficulty losing weight despite all your efforts, water retention.
Some possible origins from your past
- A period of chronic stress, a burnout beginning
- A trauma where you could not act, where you were helpless, where “staying still was the only option”
- An unstable, insecure childhood where you disconnected to stop feeling the situation
- If you were the perfect child who was the pride of your parents, at the cost of
How to change this mechanism?
If this is your dominant mechanism
- Create a sufficiently safe environment (eliminate dangers, leave a toxic relationship or toxic job) and a less stressful one (Resources > Stress)
- Rebuild trust in your environment and in your capacity to influence or to bounce back
- Build more inner safety:
- Relearn to feel your sensations at the level of your current capacity
- Relearn to feel uncomfortable emotions and respond to them
- Trust your own judgement
- Become your own best friend again
- Add healthy habits to replace your addictions
Physiologically, this means you need to retune your physiology to restore energy to your system, relearn to feel your sensations, process the frozen areas that emerge along the way. Working on your traumas through the body and on your physiology is essential here. This mechanism will stop expressing itself in dominance when your nervous system has had enough evidence that you can face the stresses of your environment. This is precisely what I’ve developed in
my method of Somatic Deprogramming, born from 8 years of practice and working with more than 600 people, to deprogram the relationship pattern that predominantly triggers this mechanism and reprogram a new, more appropriate one. The Day of the Past option, available in my programs Opening Up to Love and Cultivating Love also often helps to reconnect the plug (you feel your sensations again, which can be an unpleasant phase at first). You will then need to work on reconnection and process the stored emotional surplus.
When this is your response mechanism for a given situation
- Identify your bodily signals when you are in freeze mode: procrastinating, disconnecting, blocking, not daring to decide
- Accept your current capacity, rest and then regulate your nervous system with gentle movement — walking, for example
- Support yourself and review the conditions of your environment at the level of your current capacity
- Let your partner know that this is not a lack of interest but an activation of the freeze response
Pour aller plus loin
Si tu as envie d’approfondir le sujet et d’identifier tes propres schémas amoureux, tu as mon livre S’ouvrir à l’amour disponible dans toutes les librairies.
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Going further
💕 OPENING UP TO LOVE — if you are single
A 5-month programme to do deep work on your love life, identify and transform your love patterns, and meet someone with whom to build the relationship of your dreams.
🌿 CULTIVATING LOVE — if you are in a couple
A 5-month programme to transform your relationship, rediscover closeness, communication and the joy of being together every day.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Editions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir a l’amour”, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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