Brad Schipke explains how the freeze response works: when fight or flight aren't possible, your brain shuts down emotional and sensory processing to survive. This reflex can stay stuck on even when danger is gone, trapping you in paralysis. Healing means processing the trauma to retrain your body's choices.
Why does PTSD make you freeze? So freezing is your body's last line of defense. When you're unable to fight or you're unable to escape, your brain shuts everything down and freezes in an attempt to protect you. So your brain disconnects you from emotion and sensation so that you can actually survive what's going on in the moment. And later on, that same reflex, that same freeze reflex can get stuck. You might freeze even when you want to react, but you can retrain your body, process the underlying trauma, and that's what healing really does. It restores the choice. If you want to learn how to unfreeze your body safely, just hit that subscribe button.
