Freeze State

The overwhelm we feel is the point, a political strategy to overload people with so much alarming information and sudden changes that our ability to process is compromised.

Being emotionally flooded can cause a stress response that triggers fight or flight - or perhaps one of the lesser known survival responses - to fawn or freeze.

My default is freeze. In an acute moment, I go numb, mind blank, I don’t know, I don’t care. I stare at a spot on the floor.

Living in an ongoing freeze state, which I’m in now, is disorienting. I want to tune out, shut down, remain helpless. But I’m also operating in constant low level panic. Small stressors - someone not texting me back - can build in scale. Resources are low, irritability peaks. Relational disputes flare.

Since the LA fires and the inauguration, it has been one thing after the next, and I have been unable to regulate my nervous system. In states like this, for me, the answer is always the same: sound & body.

I need sustained periods of NO sound. Music & podcasts off, driving or cooking in silence. Without the din of distraction. This helps me get under the layer of noise and calms me down. Being in nature is nice, but can’t always get there.

When I’m sleeping, I listen to binaural beats - meditations that play music to bring your brainwave patterns into specific frequencies, such as the delta waves, known for deep sleep and healing (I love the app Brainwaves).

I need physical movement. Exercise and walking, yes. I get weekly hands-on somatic therapy to physically release the trauma that is stored and stagnant in my body.

And my latest hook - fad warning - is this vibration machine (pretty cheap on Amazon) that shakes my body for 10 minutes. Shaking activates vagal tone, which is the calming part of the nervous system that helps regulate heart rate and promote relaxation.Shaking can help the body reprocess trauma in a way that allows the nervous system to discharge the trapped energy, rather than holding it in.

What each of us needs is unique, so these are just some ideas.What are the ways you guys are supporting yourselves?

Art by Willem den Browser