Freeze Response Advice?

[rosemarie]

Anyone have any tips, advice, or resources they found helpful for understanding/overcoming the freeze response. I'm particularly interested in how do I stop it. It's so debilitating and I've undergone a lot more trauma over the last six months and I found myself freezing up during almost all of it, unable to get away until that whole thing calmed down and I felt like I could sneak out or move even. It's so disempowering. I remember the first time I think I said no or ran out of someone who triggered me and touched me inappropriately and I thought I was going to die of a panic attack it was so intense.

[Wife#2]

Oh, wow, I wish I could help! I don't always physically freeze, usually it's just emotionally. I can still get away physically. So, when I freeze, I have found that I can tap or 'pet' myself back into calmness and thinking in the moment. When I do freeze physically, I am beginning to get angry about what has me frozen. Especially since hubby is most often the source of the trigger. Even when I'm that self-aware, I'm too much a fawn to actually TELL him about being angry with him for triggering me.

So, I'm guessing the trigger(s) can't be avoided? Oh, Rosemarie, what a challenge!  I really hope someone smarter than me offers a real solution for you!

[rosemarie]

trigger warning

Wife#2
Thanks lady that's still really helpful, I did get away from the most recent abusive situation but it happened like 20 times of me freezing physically and then escaping the next morning after like a week of dissociation and freeze responses a physical attack would occur probably at this frequency. God that sounds horrible out loud. And then I automatically want to reduce it to, oh he was only sexually assaulting me...um...not violently...and im um...used to it? Wow, I'm glad this came out of my mind cause that's so dreadful. I guess it's how my mind survives it so I don't go completely insane. I've been no contact for three weeks thank goddess. But I'm back with my "codependent" mother (I just figured out what that means and holy moly...my dad is NPD probably true BPD actually and I always have focused on his PD but this relationship with my  mother I freeze emotionally with her too but was so confused like she's not a narcopath what's going on?).

[Wife#2]

Rosemarie - you sound as if you've had a lifetime of conditioning to completely invalidate yourself!  You CAN survive living with parents who are messed up, but it takes building yourself up. I have some suggestions, but I'm no therapist and I do NOT know your living situation, so please remember, these are just suggestions to try to help you cope until you can get into a better living situation.

Journal - journal a lot! Writing your feelings down helps in two ways. First, it gets them out in a 'safe' way. It sounds as if expressing yourself at home has NOT been possible, or was diminished in some way. Speaking with them will not make things better. So, journal those thoughts and feelings. The second way it helps is that you have a record you can go back to - and validate your responses and your feelings.

Therapy if possible. If not, I'm even more glad that you found this website. Come here often as you can. Speak (type) your truth. It's only when you realize you CAN speak your truth that you even begin to uncover what truth is there! Then, you can begin to deal with the truth. Then, you can begin to heal. If you can keep going to those CODA meetings, that will be really helpful.

I'm so sorry that you've had to survive using such extreme measures! It makes my heart hurt to hear you minimize abuse to your body. It tells me how much your spirit has already been abused. The good news is that it's still possible to come back from that. To rediscover who you are and what you are about and YOUR TRUE, IMMENSE VALUE! It'll take time, but you've already made the first step - you left him and got out of there. Even if the parents are part of the problem, they will (PLEASE GOD SAY YES, THEY WILL) leave your body alone. So, that counts as a step forward.

As you uncover your truth, be prepared for some anger. Ok, a LOT of anger. Since you are currently living with your parents, find as many healthy outlets for that anger as you can. Join a gym or find a good running path or begin Karate. These are silly suggestions, but they're all places you can be alone with others AND use physical activity to get the anger out. I haven't done that and the anger is causing me headaches and ringing in my ears. I can't take it out at home - they're not the ones I'm angry at! You will have to be even more careful. If you think your Dad is a Narc or BPD - confrontation will only hurt you. So, find NOW a place you can deposit that anger away from home.

Others will have far better advice than I can give. I am reacting a bit emotionally because I really just want to give you a huge hug and tell you that you matter so much and that people who made you feel that you don't are WRONG. How you feel is good enough of a reason. Yes, as mature adults, we do still have to control HOW we express those feelings, but you have every right to FEEL them, fully. Because they're YOUR feelings. Period.

[rosemarie]

Wow Wife, (some possible triggers, the basics of my childhood story)

What an incredibly intuitive, insightful, compassionate, kind, caring, and helpful response! Seriously you are amazing I'm am blown away by your competence about this as well. I find all of your suggestions super helpful and also very encouraging. I wanted to give you some of my background. First to say my parents are divorced and I live with my mom and step dad right now (step dad is super good guy thank the heavens). I've been no contact with my severely abusive father about seven years now (hooray!) after an incident. Anyways I survived emotional and physical incest from him and he is one seriously ill individual, after researching yesterday I think he has both BPD and NPD and I've always considered him a psychopath, and that mental illness is no excuse for abusing someone. But I felt abandoned to him by my mother after the divorce around age 9, she was abused by him as well and couldn't get full custody but she also kind of gave up and won't admit this. And then I became his full time target and ended up protecting my younger sister a lot. We were all triangulated against each other and we all survived an absolute nightmare.

Despite a lot of growth with my mother during the past five years of my own intensive healing jounrey from CPTSD (when I was finally properly diagnosed after flashbacks started), it is almost impossible for me to trust her. I've been learning about this too lately and posted an article on parental codependency, whatever that really is I don't know. She has good intentions but has not really dealt with her own lifetime of abuse or healed, I think she's really repressed it all to be able to help her children and function but she's done that in a pretty dysfunctional way. I'm kind of waiting for her unrealistic and codependent expectations to drop on me again about when she thinks I'm healed enough to survive and 'get a job' but she hasn't said a word about my recent abuse situation since I've come back home. To the point of, I feel invisible. She'll send me messages like thanks for doing dishes or cooking but only positive stuff and has completely ignored what I told her (limited) about what just happened to me. This is confusing me because in the past she has been a lot more compassionate about my mental and physical pain. I'm trying to see this as she can't deal with my abuse trauma because it probably triggers all her own pan she is still avoiding about hers. It's not a malicious thing where she is trying to hurt me, I feel like there is a distinct difference. But also that I do have to get out of here at that point and she will help me out at least financially and having a place to live in the meantime. I need to lower my expectations of her or I just keep getting so disappointed but this is hard to do when it's a parent you have been starving for acknowledgement or support from since probably in-utero (says a lot of new research). I like Pete Walker's take on the crippling abandonment depression that goes with this. It's not just from the abusive parent but the other one as well sometimes. And honestly, I find myself questioning lately if she is actually a super super covert narcissist and I'm blind to it from conditioning/it just can't compare to the overt and insidious way that my father is one. Regardless, it's super unhealthy and I feel like I've got this ticking time clock over my head about when she is going to start pushing me to be healed. I've been gone maybe seven months and before was debilitated by chronic pain as well and stuck here, and I'm just like, is she hoovering me? It's a mess. It's really really really hard to heal when I'm stuck in the same situations I was in as a child, where for one reason or another there is no safe place for me live. I know when I get out into a safe situation I absolutely thrive in comparison and therapeutic work goes so much more quickly. Wow, a lot came out there it feels both good and hard to acknowledge it all. It's not the first time I've looked at this relationship with her.

I've used journaling a lot, especially the past two years of recovery. Like, filled volumes and volumes. I still am, thank you for the support and encouragement about that I will keep doing it. I have been doing my best to exercise and also practice yoga and guided meditations and breath work as for me, this is fundamental to recovery. I was listening to a talk by Bessel Van Der Kolk yesterday, the trauma researcher and author of 'The Body Keeps Score' and he mentioned that he did the very first study on trauma and yoga and found that yoga was more effective for helping with PTSD than any study on any medication EVER DONE. Isn't that amazing? He theorized that Eastern societies had developed these 'mindfulness' practices to help people recover from and cope with the trauma of life. I couldn't agree more they have been fundamental to my recovery, of my very connected mind-body, especially to reconnect it and get me in touch with myself, and help me to have self awareness. This is super hard when we have been trauma bonded, we were forced to disconnect, and when it was chronic like with CPTSD it really can rewire the nervous system and stress response. Yoga can help retrain all of that and release trauma from the body. And that's what happened to me last night, which I think I'm going to do a separate post about and get out the story of what I've realized this last narc put me through. I am looking for a therapist right now because the last one I had violated my trust and was super unprofessional and I can't feel safe there anymore.

[Wife#2]

I'm not so smart, but your story touched me and I want to help if that's possible.

Maybe you can reach out to your stepfather? If he's a good guy, he may be the one who can provide the acknowledgement, acceptance and support you can't get from your own damaged parents. And, maybe you can talk to him about how your recovery is going (or NOT going), and that may help alleviate this 'shoe about to drop' dread that's actually holding up progress.