The Freeze Response - Why Your Body's "Failure" Was Actually Wisdom
Part 4 of The Fragmented Self: How immobilizing terror actually saved your life
She hears a voice that reminds her of a time long past. Her breathing quiets as her pulse races. Her voice has disappeared to somewhere unreachable as her nervous system screams but her body won't move.
This is the freeze response → the deer caught in headlights, the rabbit motionless beneath the hawk's shadow, the human trapped between the desperate need to move and the complete inability to do it.
I've lived in the space between the screaming mind and the silent body. For years, I carried shame about my body's “failure” to protect me. When I was healing from trauma, learning that my freeze response was actually body wisdom changed everything.
If you survived trauma and couldn't fight back, if you lay perfectly still while your mind screamed for escape, if you've carried shame about your body's "failure" to protect you, you need to understand something essential:
Your freeze response wasn't weakness. It was your nervous system's most intelligent choice for survival.
The Misunderstood Biology of Terror
Most people confuse Freeze with submission, but they're neurobiologically distinct.
Freeze is hyperarousal trapped in stillness, every system is firing but nothing is moving. It's terror crystallized into immobility.
(In contrast, Submit, which we'll explore next week, is a state of hypoarousal, a collapse into shutdown.)
While Freeze is not unique to sexual trauma survivors, I find it to be especially common with that particular kind of trauma.
speaks of this in her beautiful and powerful essay When the Body Doesn’t Fight.When sexual violence occurs, your brain makes split-second calculations about survival.
Fight isn't possible: the perpetrator is stronger, has authority, or threatens greater harm. Flight isn't an option: you're trapped, overwhelmed, or escape would bring worse consequences. So your body makes a different choice. Complete stillness might mean survival.
And your brain has no say in the matter.
Inside that perfectly still body, everything is on fire. Heart racing, adrenaline pumping, every sense heightened to impossible acuity. You're not passive or compliant. You're simultaneously hyperactivated and immobilized.
This is the cruel paradox sexual trauma survivors face: the very response that may have saved your life becomes a source of shame and blame.
Self Inquiry: If you've ever asked yourself “Why didn't I fight back?” or “Why didn't I scream?”… Pause here. Take a breath.
Your nervous system made the most intelligent choice available. Notice if your shoulders just softened reading that. That's your body recognizing its own wisdom
The Territory of Frozen Terror
Freeze lives in the landscape of bone-deep terror that comes from feeling completely helpless in the face of overwhelming threat.
When fighting back might provoke more violence, when screaming might bring additional perpetrators, when resistance could escalate danger — Freeze offers the possibility of survival. Your nervous system essentially says: "If I can't fight and I can't run, I'll make this body as still as possible and protect the essential self inside."
But survivors rarely understand this wisdom. Instead, they torment themselves with questions:"Why did my body just... stop?"
Or worse, they are asked these questions by others who don’t understand the devastating harm that such questions cause.
The answer isn't weakness. It's neurobiology.
The Shame That Follows Loss of Agency
Sexual trauma creates a particularly complex relationship with Freeze because it involves the body in ways that can feel like betrayal. During assault, the body may respond in ways that feel disconnected from your conscious will.
These responses aren't evidence of consent. They're neurobiological reactions designed to minimize trauma and maximize survival. Your nervous system prioritizes staying alive over maintaining a sense of agency.
Freeze carries shame because our culture demands that "real victims" fight back. Survivors are questioned about why they didn't resist, why they didn't report, why they seemed "compliant" during or after the assault.
This cultural narrative ignores the neurobiology of trauma, expecting survivors to speak out immediately.
People who questioned why Dr. Christine Blasey Ford did not speak up sooner miss this essential piece of information. And her icy reception is evidence to survivors that they should keep their mouths shut.
How incredibly tragic.
If you're a survivor reading this, I want you to know: Your timeline for speaking is your timeline. Your response was your response. Your survival was your victory. Period.
Questioning why trauma survivors didn't fight back is like asking why someone didn't outrun a speeding car. It ignores the basic biology of how nervous systems work under threat.
Flavors of Freeze
Like the deer frozen in the glare of oncoming headlights, Freeze can be literal. But it can also show up in metaphorical ways that are equally as threatening to living a fulfilling life.
Social Freeze is that moment at a gathering when you're desperately avoiding eye contact, pretending to be busy while your mind races with things to say but that you never will. Performance Freeze shows up when you know your material perfectly but find yourself paralyzed in front of an audience, impostor syndrome turning your voice to stone. Relational Freeze is wanting connection desperately but being unable to pick up the phone.
The cost of this protection is enormous.
Freeze doesn't just immobilize your body. It can immobilize your voice, your creativity, your capacity for authentic self-expression. It can keep you trapped in situations that no longer serve you because leaving would require movement, and movement feels impossible.
If you've ever stood in a room full of people feeling completely invisible while your heart pounds with things you want to say but can't, I see you. If you've ever known exactly what you wanted to express but found your words locked away, I see you.
Hypervigilant Stillness
What makes Freeze so completely exhausting is that it combines maximum alertness with complete immobility. During trauma, you're scanning constantly for changes in danger while your body remains locked in place. It's like being a security guard who can see every threat but is chained to their post.
This hypervigilant stillness often continues long after the trauma ends.
Sexual trauma survivors often develop a freeze response to intimacy itself. The body learned that being seen, being touched, being vulnerable could lead to violation. So Freeze becomes a protective barrier against connection, even when connection is what you desperately want.
Self inquiry: Notice what's happening in your body. Are you holding your breath? Are your shoulders tense? Are you feeling the urge to move or to be very still? Your body is giving you information about your own relationship with Freeze.
Intelligence in Immobility
But what if we could recognize the profound intelligence in the freeze response? What if we could see that this part of you made a brilliant calculation under impossible circumstances?
Freeze holds the memory of a moment when movement meant danger, when resistance could have meant death, when stillness was the only path to psychological survival.
There's nothing weak about a nervous system that can make these split-second survival calculations. There's nothing shameful about a body that chose preservation over resistance when resistance wasn't truly possible.
Freeze didn't fail you. It saved you.
The Territory Where Healing Lives
Freeze is not a life sentence. The thaw is possible. I've witnessed it in myself and in countless clients. Your body's wisdom deserves honor, not shame.
Healing Freeze isn't about forcing movement or pushing through paralysis. It's about creating enough safety for your nervous system to remember that immobility was once protective but isn't always necessary now.
The thaw begins with understanding that Freeze was adaptive. It was your body's intelligent response to an impossible situation, not evidence of weakness or complicity.
Healing can begin with the smallest possible movements. If your whole body feels frozen during triggers, start with your eyes. Can you look left and right? Can you notice what's in your peripheral vision? These simple movements begin to activate the parts of your nervous system that have been locked in protective stillness.
The key is starting smaller than you think you need to. If turning your head feels like too much, try just noticing your breath. If breathing feels controlled, try wiggling your toes. The goal is to find the tiniest movement that feels possible and build from there.
Reclaiming Your Voice, Your Choice
One of the most important aspects of healing Freeze is reclaiming your voice, both literally and metaphorically.
Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do.
~ Brené Brown
This might begin with humming when you're alone. It can progress to speaking your experience aloud, first to yourself and then to trusted others. Each small act of vocalization helps your nervous system remember that your voice is allowed to exist.
Eventually, this can expand into setting boundaries, expressing your needs, and contributing your perspective to the world.
Your voice — the one that was silenced — has wisdom the world needs to hear.
Integration, Not Elimination
The goal isn't to eliminate Freeze but to help it become more discerning. There are times when stillness serves you — when careful observation is needed before action, when quiet listening serves better than immediate response, when the wisdom of pause can prevent mistakes.
The healing comes in learning to distinguish between Freeze that serves and Freeze that imprisons, between stillness that comes from wisdom and paralysis that comes from terror.
Now, in safety, you can begin to thaw. You can reclaim movement, voice, and choice because you survived, and survivors deserve to live fully in their own bodies again.
The thaw is possible. Movement is your birthright. Your body's wisdom deserves honor, not shame.
From my heart to yours,
P.S. If you've ever frozen in the face of threat, trauma, or overwhelming situations — know that your body's response was intelligent, not weak. Your freeze response deserves honor, not shame. Share your story in the comments if you feel moved to. Your experience might be exactly what another reader needs to hear to begin their own healing.
And if this resonates, please restack it. 🔄 There are survivors in your network who need to understand that their freeze response wasn't failure, but their body's wisdom.
Curious about your inner Freeze part? Check out the Interactive guide:
Next week we’ll explore The Submit Response - Survival Through Invisibility and Dissociation, stillness that comes from collapse instead of trapped energy
If you're ready to move beyond just surviving your trauma, get access to trauma-informed tools and a therapist who understands the journey
Free, paid, liking, or lurking — I welcome and appreciate you. 🙏
Thank you for being here.
© Linnea Butler 2025
Another Substackinicity, Linnea- this morning I wrote the scene in my novel of my original dissociative trauma. event. My soul is commenting as the Freeze happens, and I got curious what you would say about that? now you’ve written this piece, as if for me, today. thank you.
The following are observations (about dissociative responses/behaviour) made by Dr. Bruce D. Perry, which are included in the book he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, titled What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. ...
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“Most people are familiar with the term ‘fight or flight’. This refers to a set of responses that can kick in when we are afraid. Your brain will focus your attention on the potential threat, shutting down unnecessary mental processes (like reflecting on the meaning of life or daydreaming about an upcoming vacation). Your sense of time collapses to the moment. Your heart rate goes up, sending blood to your muscles in preparation, potentially, for fleeing or fighting. Adrenaline pumps through your body. This response is activating your body.
As we’ll talk more about later, this ‘arousal’ response is not the only way we can respond to a threat.
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“The dissociative response is used when there is inescapable, unavoidable distress or pain. Your mind and body protect you. Because you cannot physically flee, and fighting is futile, you psychologically flee to your inner world. So going back to the infant with the disengaged parent, the infant’s fight or flight response is to cry. But if no one comes-or they come and are angry-the helpless infant will dissociative to survive this inescapable distressing situation. The same if true for children, youth, and adults faced with any inescapable, unavoidable pain and distress-they dissociate. And a whole set of neurophysiological changes helps you do that, including the release of your body’s own opiates.”
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“Imagine a situation where you are too small to win a fight and unable to run away. In this case, the brain and the rest of the body prepare for injury. Your heart rate goes down. You release your body’s own painkiller—opioids. You disengage from the external world and psychologically flee into your inner world. Time seems to slow. You may feel like you are in a movie, or floating and watching things happen to you. This is all part of another adaptive capability, called dissociation. For babies and very young children, dissociation is a very common adaptive strategy; fighting or fleeing won’t protect you, but “disappearing” might. You learn to escape into your inner world. You dissociate. And over time, your capacity to retreat to that inner world—safe, free, in control—increases. A key part of that sensitized ability to dissociate is to be a people pleaser. You comply with what others want. You find yourself doing things to avoid conflict, to ensure that the other person in the interaction is pleased, as well as gravitating toward various regulating, but dissociative, activities. Finding balance can be an exhausting challenge for anyone with trauma-altered stress-response systems. The search to avoid the pain of distress can lead to extreme, ultimately destructive, methods of regulation.”
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“One of the common behaviors seen with a desensitized dissociative response is cutting. ... Cutting can be very confusing from the outside. We’ve talked about how your stress response systems can become overly reactive, how anyone experiencing inescapable and unavoidable trauma will dissociate-and how, if the pattern of this trauma is prolonged or extreme, the dissociative response becomes sensitized, overactive, and overly reactive. Remember that dissociation releases opioids (enkephalins and endorphins), your own painkillers. If a person with a sensitized dissociative response cuts themselves, their body releases a little bit of these opioids so that they can tolerate the cut; the amount released would be pretty small and proportional to the little cut. But when someone with a desensitized-overly reactive-dissociative response cuts themselves, they release a lot of opioid. It’s almost like taking a little bit of heroin or morphine.”
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“Remember that dissociation releases opioids (enkephalins and endorphins), your own painkillers. If a person without a sensitized dissociative response cuts themselves, their body releases a little bit of these opioids so that they can tolerate the cut; the amount released would be pretty small and proportional to the little cut. But when someone with a sensitized—overly reactive—dissociative response cuts themselves, they release a lot of opioid. It’s almost like taking a little hit of heroin or morphine.”
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“What you are pointing out is how adaptive it is to dissociate in many situations. If a soldier in combat simply went down the arousal continuum-and got to the flee and then fight stages-he would jump up and get shot. In order to maintain access to parts of his cortex-to think and behave in the ways he was trained to keep him alive in combat-he needs to dissociate to a certain degree.”