Coaching practices for Recognize Freeze State

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Recognize Freeze State, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I lock up before I even realize it’s happening
• When I think back to that moment I can feel my body wanting to push away or run, like the move it never got to make is still sitting there half-finished and waiting in my arms and legs.
• The second I feel something in my body I leap straight to what it means and the whole story behind it, and I never just stay with the raw physical thing long enough to feel whether it actually shifts on its own.
• The instant I turn toward the hard feeling it’s too much and I just shut down
• When I finally calm down after something scary my hands start shaking and I always clamp down on it because it’s embarrassing

Practices that may help

1. Recognize your freeze signature
   Learn to identify your personal freeze signals before they escalate.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
2. The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
   The freeze response — tonic immobility — is a hard-wired survival state the nervous system activates when fight-or-flight seems impossible. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing framework proposes that gently completing the interrupted survival response allows the body to discharge the held activation and return to baseline. The biological reality of freeze is well supported; the SE approach to working with it has a promising but still-emerging clinical evidence base.
3. Complete the interrupted survival movement
   Gently allow the defensive or escape movement the body prepared but never finished.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
4. Track sensation moment to moment
   Slowly follow the physical sensations of a freeze response as they change, without rushing to meaning.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
5. Pendulate between activation and resource
   Move the attention back and forth between a place of activation and a place of calm.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
6. Allow micromovements to discharge activation
   Let small, involuntary trembling or movement complete the interrupted survival response.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
7. Use the orienting response to signal safety
   Slowly look around the room to let the nervous system update its threat assessment.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
8. Build a containment or resource before approaching freeze
   Establish a felt sense of inner support before approaching any activating material.
   The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
9. Use cold water or light movement to shift metabolic state
   Splashing cold water on the face or engaging in brief physical action can break the collapse metabolically.
   Dorsal Vagal Shutdown: The Collapse State and How to Emerge
10. Recognize the shutdown signature
    Learn to identify dorsal-state signals before they deepen.
    Dorsal Vagal Shutdown: The Collapse State and How to Emerge

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