This is a copy of a post I wrote for my friend's mental health blog. The original can be viewed at http://xxhatred.com/blog/the-freeze-response-by-joy/
Have you ever been so afraid that you
have felt paralyzed? When a frightening
event occurs, many of us become stuck like deer in the headlights. This can happen to us even if we are in the
position to help some one else who is hurt or being hurt or help
ourselves. Victims in hostage situations
sometimes choose not to take a chance on escaping because of the physical and
psychological phenomena that occurs when life is threatened.
At the moment of contact (or just
before), the hunted impala falls to the ground, surrendering to its impending
death. Though it may be still uninjured
it seems that the prey has given up. This
is different from playing possum. The stone-still animal is not pretending to be dead, it has
instinctively entered an altered state of awareness shared by all mammals when
death appears imminent.
I used to own rabbits that lived in a
large cage outside my home in Australia.
When I would try to catch one of my rabbits, at first it would dart away
as fast as it could. When I finally
cornered it and there seemed to be no escape for the rabbit, it froze,
surrendering with its head low in a submissive gesture.
Many indigenous peoples view this
phenomenon as a surrender of the spirit of the prey to the predator, which, in
a manner of speaking, it is. Physiologists
call this state the ‘immobility’ or ‘freezing’ response. As in the Greek myth of Medusa, the human
confusion that may ensue when we stare death or danger in the face can turn us
to stone. We may literally freeze in
fear.
I have been in situations where I was
being harmed and there were people around me that would not come to my
aid. For decades I harbored a bitter
resentment toward these people. I simply
could not understand why they would not help me. I had thought that they were terrible people,
or that they had decided I wasn’t worth the effort of saving. Surprisingly, my anger toward them was even
more intense than my anger at the people who directly hurt me. I knew about the fight response, I knew about
the flight response, but until I learned about the third response, the freeze
response, I could not forgive them.
Some of us are more susceptible to the
freezing response than others. Children
are especially vulnerable. Their young
minds go into shock mode when they sense danger. I have had friends who wonder why as a child they
didn’t try to fight their abusers or even flee.
“How could I have been so stupid?” They say.
“Was there some part of me that liked the abuse? Was it really abuse if I did not try to stop
it?” But this is not about intelligence or
the severity of abuse. The adrenaline
coursing through our body like lightning produces different states of mind for
different people. When a parent realizes
they have accidentally driven over their child, there is an explosion of
neurological activity after the initial shock.
One parent might be able to literally lift the car off of their child
while the other parent might simply stare at the scene with their mouth hanging
open, unable to do anything but scream or faint. This does not make one parent more loving or
brave than the other, it is simply their body’s response to traumatic stress.
If you have experienced this response
because of trauma, do not blame yourself for not rising above the fear. In that moment, your mind simply could not
allow your body to fight or flee. I also
encourage you to not blame others who experienced this response in the face of
danger. They may have wanted very badly
to help you, but the freeze response overcame them. Realizing this can give you peace and you
will come to the realization that the human mind is complex, sensitive, and
strong, but it does have its limits.
For Julie
Woodley
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