Why Freeze Isn't Failure: Understanding the Wisdom of Stillness in Trauma

When Fight and Flight Aren’t Options, Freeze Steps In.

If you’ve ever felt like your body just shuts down under stress—like you’re frozen inside—it’s not because you’re weak. It’s because your nervous system is incredibly wise. The freeze response is not passive. In fact, it’s one of the most logical and active survival states the body can choose when faced with overwhelming danger.

As a Somatic Experiencing practitioner (SEP), I see this often: clients come in not running from threat or trying to fight it, but instead holding themselves in an incredibly still, watchful state. Hyper-aware of everything and everyone, they remain frozen - not because they don’t care, but because calling attention to themselves feels dangerous. It’s the classic "don’t poke the bear" strategy. They wait for the trouble to pass. But it never seems to pass. As logical and objective you are about how there is no danger in the environment - you may notice that your body can often care less about how smart or logical you are. To change this body state, you need to give the body an experience of safety to update all its predictions and action plans. 

I regularly work with people that have been do talk oriented therapy for many years with some positive results , but many of their body oriented symptoms like freeze will still remain. Often talk therapy alone cant update and communicate in a language that makes sense to our bodies.

Freeze patterns often begins in childhood, especially in environments where a child repeatedly felt unsafe or overwhelmed. Over time, the nervous system learns to stay in a version of this freeze state - not just in moments of crisis, but as a baseline way of moving through the world.

When Freeze Becomes a Chronic State

Freeze can become hardwired. When the body believes that danger is always lurking—even when life looks calm on the outside, it can lead to:

• Hypervigilance paired with exhaustion (aka “wired and tired”)

• Shallow breathing or collapsed posture

• Chronic muscle tension from bracing and waiting

• Sleep issues (because how can you rest when your body thinks something bad could happen at any moment?)

In more extreme cases, when freeze alone doesn’t feel sufficient, the nervous system may shift into forms of dissociation:

• Depression

• Chronic fatigue

• ADHD-like symptoms

• Depersonalization or derealization

• Dissociative Identity Disorder (often associated with early, repeated trauma like childhood sexual abuse)

The Utility of Freeze—and Its Cost

The freeze response evolved to save us. Think of a deer caught in a predator’s gaze—it stays completely still. Every system in the body is simultaneously on high alert and shut down. Muscles braced, breathing slowed, heart quieted. Waiting.

The problem comes when your body never gets the message that the danger is over.

Over time, chronic freeze wears down your body and mind. Cortisol and adrenaline remain elevated. The adrenal glands, thyroid, and cardiovascular system become taxed. Your body becomes a battlefield of protection—always anticipating the next ambush.

What Creates the Freeze Pattern?

In my practice, I see freeze patterns often form from events that had some or all of these qualities:

• Too much, too fast, too soon

• Unpredictable or inescapable situations

• A sense of having no control over an event

These experiences send the message to the body: "Stay still. Stay quiet. Maybe this will pass."

So, How Do You Unlock Freeze?

Through Somatic Experiencing, we learn to bring slow, compassionate attention to the body’s freeze state which begins to unlock freeze. We don’t force it open. We don’t override it. We learn to listen.

I guide clients in:

• Somatic tracking – becoming aware of body sensations, muscle tone, breath, posture will keeping the upper ranges of your brain/ prefrontal cortex in tact so it can regulate and update the body.

• Recognizing that freeze is not helplessness – it’s actually full of agency and intelligence. When you recognize this at an embodied level your body begins to regulate and relax as it recognizes it has agency and power.

• Gently completing protective responses that were never allowed to happen so there not locked in a perpetual state of preparation for an event that never happens.

• Noticing predictions and survival narratives created by the nervous system that were often unconscious. Once conscious they often change rapidly.

You might start to notice that on a deep subconscious level, your body had been perpetually predicting trouble and chronically waiting for something to go wrong.” That’s the beginning of change.

As you gain more access to your sensations and internal signals that are often veiled, your nervous system starts to learn: "I’m not stuck in the past anymore. I’m here now. And I’m safe.” , and gradually  sees it can let go of holding patterns that may have served a purpose in the past but are no longer relevant today

Over time, the soldier in the bunker—who’s been crouched for decades after the war ended—gets the update. The war is over. You can come out now.

It’s Not Just SE

While Somatic Experiencing is the foundation of my work, I also weave in other modalities that bring additional depth and nuance:

• Internal Family Systems (IFS) – to explore inner parts that carry shame or fear

• Hakomi and NeuroAffective Touch – for mindfulness-based and relational healing and attached repair

• Feldenkrais Method – to repattern movement and neuroplasticity

• NARM and ISP – to work with identity, attachment, and emotion regulation and early developmental trauma patterns

These approaches work together to help unlock the freeze response and support integration at every level—body, brain, and being.

Ready to Reclaim Your Nervous System?

If this resonates with your experience, if you’ve felt frozen, disconnected, or chronically on alert, I invite you to take the next step. I offer a free 20-minute consultation where we can talk about how somatic work might support your healing.

You can ask questions, get a feel for how I work, and explore whether Somatic Experiencing is right for you.

Brad Beldner, SEP, GCFT,NCMBT
Somatic Experiencing | Trauma Recovery | Nervous System Regulation
Serving clients in Palo Alto, CA and online throughout the U.S. and worldwide