Have you ever seen a bird fly into a window and drop to the ground?

While sadly sometimes the impact of flying into the window cost the bird its life, more times than not the bird was just in shock and needed time to recover and regain its senses.

The bird would go into a freeze response as the impact of flying into the window was too overwhelming for it to absorb.

So it would shut down because the pain of the impact was just too much for it to handle.

Yet after seconds or minutes the bird would start to twitch helping it shake off the impact.

And little by little it would begin to find the wind beneath its wings and take off in flight.

The bird registers that it is no longer under threat and is able to get back to "life as normal".
Many people living with chronic pain and chronic illness are stuck in a perpetual freeze response.
They are going about "life as normal" yet parts of them are shut down and disassociated.

What happens is long after an injury heals the body never fully shook off the impact of that injury. This sets off alarm signals in the brain that keep pain alive.

So while the body is no longer under threat or in danger it still perceives danger and threat.

So pain can become chronic even when nothing is physically wrong with the body because the body is still bracing because it thinks it is still under threat from the injury that has long since healed. Or it is anticipating a future threat.

On the flip side pain can become chronic even when there has never been a physical injury.

The thing is the body doesn’t know the difference between psychological and physical pain.

So alarm signals that produce physical pain and chronic illness can get triggered from mental and emotional pain as well as trauma that gets held and stored in the body.

If the body has not learned how to shake off trauma like the bird it can lead to chronic patterns of bracing and holding.

Trauma held in the body leads to chronic inflammation, stagnation of emotion, compromised immune function, hormonal imbalance and create the climate for chronic pain to set in.

In Chinese Medicine health is seen as movement and expression of our life force energy or vital qi. Stagnation (as a result of trauma stored in the body) leads to pain, illness and disease.

The freeze response can present itself as feeling checked out or running on autopilot or feeling robotic. It can present as feeling separate from the body or feeling out of body or like something feels missing or unclear altogether.

Being stuck in freeze can lead to a distorted sense of time. Feeling blacked out or foggy may leave you having gaps in memories.

The freeze response goes hand and hand with depression, low energy, repressed emotion and a general flat affect.

This can lead to no enthusiasm, lethargy, apathy and feeling withdrawn.

The freeze response often lends itself to pain as the body adapts what is meant to be temporary survival response as a long term strategy.

This is why so many people with chronic pain become less and less active.

The freeze response is catching up with the body leading to immobility.

And the longer this survival strategy is in place the more chronic pain becomes.

So instead of treating the symptoms of pain its best to learn how to thaw out the freeze of disassociation.

But this takes time and patience. Just like you defrost meat slowly for safety reasons, we need to allow the freeze of trauma to thaw out gradually.

Sadly this is why so many people remain stuck in pain. We live in a culture that feeds off of quick fixes. And when it comes to healing trauma that is just not how it works.

So many people don’t even bother or those who bother give up before their completely defrosted.

But when you commit to fully defrosting the freeze response, just like a bird that flies into a window, you can find the wind beneath your wings.

So #1 get started and #2 don’t stop. Healing takes courage and commitment. It takes time to thaw out the freeze response.