The Silence That No One Tells You About
You are sitting across from a well-meaning professional in a room that smells faintly of lavender and old books. They ask you a simple, open-ended question about your childhood, and suddenly, the air leaves the room. Your throat tightens. Your mind, usually a buzzing hive of thoughts, goes completely, terrifyingly blank. You aren't being difficult, and you aren't 'resisting' the process. You are experiencing a physiological shutdown—a literal crash of the nervous system where the body decides that the safest thing to be is a statue.
This is the visceral reality of the freeze response. It is the 3 AM paralysis where the weight of the blankets feels like lead, and the simple act of checking an email feels like preparing for battle. When we carry deep-seated trauma, our bodies often bypass the 'fight or flight' options and opt for the 'play dead' circuit. If your current healing journey feels like you are screaming underwater, it’s likely because you are trying to use words to fix a problem that exists in your fascia, your breath, and your autonomic nervous system.
Why Talk Therapy Sometimes Hits a Wall
Let’s perform some reality surgery: Talk therapy is a wonderful tool for people who can actually access their prefrontal cortex. But if you’re stuck in a chronic freeze state, your 'thinking brain' has been held hostage by your 'survival brain.' You can spend ten years and fifty thousand dollars analyzing your relationship with your mother, but if your nervous system still views a raised eyebrow as a life-threatening event, all that insight is just intellectual wallpaper.
As I often say, insight is the booby prize of healing. You can know exactly why you are broken and still be unable to get off the floor. The hard truth is that traditional psychotherapy is a 'top-down' approach—it assumes that if you change the thought, the body will follow. But somatic therapy for freeze response recognizes that the body is the one leading the dance. If your body is screaming 'danger,' no amount of 'I-statements' or cognitive reframing will convince it otherwise. You aren't failing at therapy; you're just using a software update to try and fix a hardware malfunction.
To move beyond the 'why' and into the 'how,' we have to look at the mechanics of the machine...
Transitioning from the frustration of stalled progress requires a shift in perspective. To move beyond feeling into understanding, we must bridge the gap between our lived frustration and the neurological architecture that governs it. This isn't about discarding your story, but about providing the body with the safety it needs to finally tell it.
The Architecture of Healing: Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down
Let’s look at the underlying pattern here. When we talk about somatic experiencing, we are discussing a 'bottom-up' model. This means we start with the sensations in the toes, the gut, and the heart rate before we ever worry about the narrative of what happened in 1998. In a freeze state, your body has high levels of 'thwarted energy'—it's like having the accelerator and the brake pressed all the way down at the same time.
In this work, we use techniques like pendulation and titration. Titration is the process of experiencing small, manageable 'drops' of the trauma rather than the whole ocean at once, staying within your therapeutic window of tolerance. Pendulation is the rhythmic movement between a place of safety in the body and a place of tension. This allows for an implicit memory release, where the body finally 'discharges' the energy it's been holding since the original event. This isn't just theory; it's a way of re-negotiating your relationship with your own skin.
The Permission Slip: You have permission to stop trying to explain your pain. You have permission to exist in a space where 'I don't know' is a valid and complete answer, and where your body's silence is respected as a boundary, not a failure.Once we understand the map of the nervous system, we need the tactical moves to navigate it...
Understanding the mechanics of titration and pendulation is the first step toward clarity. However, the move from theory to practice requires a strategic approach. To ensure your healing is as effective as it is profound, you must know how to select the right guide for this delicate neurological terrain.
Your Action Plan: Finding a Trauma-Informed Guide
If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels, you need a strategist, not just a listener. When looking for a practitioner, you aren't just looking for 'nice.' You are looking for someone trained in sensory motor psychotherapy or trauma informed therapy who understands the nuances of the dorsal vagal shutdown. This is a high-stakes negotiation with your own survival instincts.
Here is the move: When interviewing a potential therapist, don't be passive. Use this script to vet them:
1. 'How do you handle it when a client goes non-verbal or enters a freeze state during a session?' 2. 'Do you incorporate bottom up healing techniques, or is your practice strictly talk-based?' 3. 'How do you help a client identify their therapeutic window of tolerance?'
If they look confused or dismiss these questions, they aren't the right guide for you. You need a professional who views EMDR vs somatic experiencing not as a competition, but as tools in a specialized kit. Your goal is to regain the upper hand in your own life. Start small, track your physical 'glimmers' of safety, and remember: strategy always beats raw effort when you're fighting a biological response.
FAQ
1. What is the main difference between EMDR and somatic therapy for freeze response?
While EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) focuses on bilateral stimulation to process traumatic memories, somatic therapy focuses on the physical sensations and 'discharging' the energy trapped in the nervous system. Somatic work is often slower and more focused on the present-moment body state.
2. Can I do somatic healing on my own?
Small grounding exercises can be done solo, but for deep-seated freeze response trauma, it is highly recommended to work with a certified somatic practitioner. They provide the 'external' nervous system safety (co-regulation) that allows your system to finally let go of its defenses.
3. How long does it take to see results with somatic therapy?
Because somatic therapy works with the nervous system rather than the intellect, progress can feel subtle at first. You might notice you're sleeping better, feeling less 'braced,' or reacting less intensely to triggers. For chronic freeze states, many people report significant shifts within 3 to 6 months of consistent work.
References
en.wikipedia.org — Wikipedia: Somatic Experiencing
psychologytoday.com — What is Somatic Therapy?