Permission to Feel: Breaking the Freeze and Embracing Emotions
What blocks us from feeling?
So I write this ‘permission to feel’ series because I wholeheartedly believe that feelings have the power to change our lives when we learn their language, tune into them and have the courage to take action based on what they are telling us. But it’s time to name the elephant in the room.
Feelings can be hard to… feel. When clients come to see me, I’ll often use mood cards to help educate them about what they may be feeling, because quite often they are not in touch with how they feel.
These cards are such a useful what to start a conversation around what people are feeling. I often joke with clients that when they are feeling ‘fine’ they may actually be feeling:
People are often in ‘functional freeze’, a term coined by Peter Levine. We often hear about ‘fight’ and ‘flight’ response, but freeze is one that often gets overlooked. Ooh, look, here’s my poem about this.
FREEZE!
Do not breathe
Do not blink
Do not run
Do not think.
This terror shall soon subside.
Play dead!
Stay mute!
Go numb!
Take root!
This terror shall soon subside.
And the strain it slithers
And the sting it seeps
And the harm it hurts
And the pain it creeps
For it’s terror that’s trapped inside.
When we have an threatening experience that is, or seems to be, inescapable we experience trauma. Trauma is often seen in two ways: big ‘T’ trauma, such as life threatening experiences, serious injury or sexual violence and small ‘t’ trauma; events that are beyond our capacity to cope. Small t traumas can be cumulative so that, whilst one incident in and of itself may not be perceived as ‘that bad’, the cumulative effect can be devastating.
Personally, I'm not that fond of the label big T and small T and wonder whether 'acute' and 'chronic' may be a more suitable differentiation.
By the time I was 23 my psoas muscle would pull my hip out of joint on a regular basis. The psoas muscle is in the lower lumbar region of the spine and extends through the femur to the pelvis.
I remember being in a physiotherapy session in which the physio had adjusted my hips back to where they were meant to be. Within the session they pulled out of line again; all because of what I was thinking and feeling. As time went on the pain became more and more debilitating and no amount of pilates, yoga or physio seemed to have a lasting effect.
What did have a lasting effect was getting out the frozen emotions which I was holding as a result of previous acute and chronic trauma.
Since then I’ve learnt more about the psoas muscle. It’s referred to as the ‘muscle of the soul’ and holds on to traumatic experiences on a cellular level. It is linked to our reptilian brain, it’s where our survival instincts - our fight and flight responses - are embodied. During traumatic experiences our nervous system reacts to the threat and the psoas muscle responds by tightening and contracting as a means of defence and protection.
When the psoas muscle is that activated, it’s terror that’s trapped inside.
Chronic pain is a typical symptom of functional freeze. Here are some typical symptoms:
Muscle tension
Heart rate fluctuations
Tunnel vision
Dissociation
Feeling on edge or on guard
Difficulty communicating
Numbness
Disconnection
Trauma occurs when the body’s autonomic nervous system of fight, flight or freeze doesn’t get completed so that the system can go back to a state of homeostasis. Instead, it gets held in a loop and the trauma needs to be released in some way.
People often think about traumas such as war and floods and understand how traumatic that can be. When we experience developmental or relational trauma this is not understood as well in the world. This can lead to an additional layer of trauma because our truth is invalidated, there is no consensual cultural structure around dealing with this kind of trauma. Instead, our truth is trivialised, minimised, questioned and scrutinised.
The key is that when we have ‘frozen’ our emotions, we need to do somatic exercises in order to help process them out. It’s not possible to work with someone therapeutically through talking therapy when they are in freeze. This is not to be rushed, as this freeze state is a protective state, so a glacial approach is needed. Breathwork, somatic experiencing, co-regulation through a calm voice and manner, some small physical movement and grounding exercises are all ways in which someone can begin to come out of freeze.
So whilst I talk about the beauty of the landscape of emotions we all have, it is so important to acknowledge why this landscape may feel like total foreign territory for some.
That’s it for now!
‘Til next time
Jacky x