Strategies to Treat Patients Trapped in the Freeze Response
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD;
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Stephen Porges, PhD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD; Bethany Brand, PhD; Deb Dana, LCSW; Janina Fisher, PhD; Kathy Steele, MN, CS; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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Particularly intrigued with Dr. Lanius’ suggestion of usin oxygen levels to work with the freeze response. I work with a person with extreme preverbal sexual trauma and this could make. make a difference. I’m hoping this course will give more information on working with preverbal trauma as u have several folks who experienced this.
Deep gratitude to the rich insightful , practical learning that I could apply to myself and others that I work with. 😇
The teaching is easy to understand with the worksheet provided for focus-thoughtful and supportive. 👍
I’m a teacher, working with children of all ages with exceptionalities. Many of them have trauma brought on from a range of sources: Home life, medical procedures, and even school. I want to use these ideas in my classroom to help them regulate their bodies so that they can learn. I must address their needs and build trust with them before I can teach them. This course is helping me map out where I can do that appropriately and set boundaries for their care.
I’m an anthropology lecturer at a South African university. I found the module on the Freeze response so interesting and helpful. The way information was presented and the summarizing of key points made it easy to feel engaged as I listened. I definitely learned so much which I will apply personally and in my everyday interaction with students. There is a tremendous amount of societal and individual trauma in South Africa. Thank you!
There were great tips on how to support a person who was in distress. I will definitely use these tips.
Bravo and thank you!
Tonight’s program was truly excellent. Your content was spot on and highly pragmatic, and the scripting and execution was flawless. I am impressed and grateful.
Thank y all for these great information you shared us. It is very important, understanding more about freeze response.
For me I will talk to the client softly and encourage him to chick his body sensation by touching himself ex: shoulders legs to feel himself and feel here and now. In the other hand I think working in the breathing is a good idea but without majoring it with some tools.
I found the first session to be very helpful in dealing with freeze ptsd type sypmptoms. I have been trying to integrate the emotion with a more verbal processing approach, thinking that translating emotion into a narrative would help. I have found that dealing with the emotions in the body and working back from that might be more helpful. As well as giving the client tools to manage the experience when it happens could be far more powerful. So a bottom up approach rather than a top down approach. Also the 4 step response to freeze I found very helpful. Thankyou so much for this information.
Today was insightful and clarifying, as well as reassuring and giving me skills to work with someone dealing with Freeze. Great range of therapists teaching… a real gift Thankyou. I have witnessed Freezing once and someone was there who knew how to work in the ways mentioned. I instinctively did know some of it but it was scarey too. Clarity around weighted blankets was important as I cringe at the mention ha ha but see their value with someone who freezes. Really so pleased to be doing this.
As discussed in the clip, when journeying with a client who is experiencing emotional or physical collapse because they are stuck (freeze mode) within the sympathetic and dorsal vagal system, it is paramount to receive permission prior to offering/implementing any type of tactile intervention. Actually, even when working with children (whether he/she has experienced a traumatic event) simply asking permission to enter their peri-personal space to offer any type of physical contact is honoring, respectful and models the freedom of self-determination.
Ruth, thank you so much for facilitating today’s training!
Velma
Ruth, Thanks for sharing the wisdom & knowledge of these professionals, guided by your wisdom & knowledge, woven together to feel & understand the dynamics of trauma, which I can use for resolving my own childhood trauma. I focused on one incident of trauma, at age of 5-6, felt the scene, & felt relief, which hopefully will make me a better husband & friend. God bless.
Is anyone familiar with residential facilities for young adults that utilize what was taught in practice.
I am most grateful for this webinar. This is something I have been looking for. My heart opened and my mind got more enlightened. Now I feel more equipped now to help people in my daily life. I am not a practitioner but I deal with a lot of traumatized people in my personal and work life. Including myself and people I deeply care for. Thank you Dr. Ruth for creating this program!!!!
This is so helpful in understanding how to help myself and apply this knowledge to my own healing. There ARE new ways being used in the treatment of pain management and Physical Therapy in my medical treatment that is having much more successful healing and responses than in the 20+ years since my recall began. I am so grateful and willing to work with what I’m learning and appreciate the sincerity of all who are helping “change the course of civilization”. The world Will be a better place!
The information on the minutiae of ‘freeze’, how to identify it, how to differentiate it from dissociation or disengagement and gentle ways to help people out of freeze, the micro-movements – very helpful.
My personal experience has been with hypo-arousal (over hyper-arousal). So having ways of identifying that in others articulated for me is extremely useful. I have had the sense of perceiving what is happening in others. Having it articulated helps me ‘formalise’ my experience and gives me ways to ‘audit’ my perceptions, so to speak. And, of course, it allows me to share my experience with the person as well as colleagues.
Thank you.
Thanks so much! This was incredibly helpful – very compact, done in simple accessible language and with repetition – but deep all the same.
I am a pilot project social worker in an eviction court. On paper that’s focused on connecting to resources…but often half of what that requires is helping people get out of crisis mode enough to re-engage with the lawyers, financial assistance, and other pieces of the process and then start making plans for their next steps. This session gave lots of concrete tools to use. You’d be amazed how much people get viscerally stuck, trapped, defeated, etc. especially at this moment in time: they applied for assistance months ago and are still getting put out; unfair actions or even illegal actions by the other party don’t change the outcome; “eviction moratorium” and “tenant protections” are on the news but here they still are, etc.
Thanks again for making this available! I’m excited for next week.
Thank you for offering this wonderful training so that therapists can help reduce suffering in the world. I’m building my private practice and have a client who has social anxiety and has a great fear of being judged by friends, strangers and everyone in between. He drinks excessively to cope with these social situations so he can relax and quiet his fear of being judged. I’m hoping you’ll talk about techniques a client can use when they’re not in our office and need to calm themselves. Meditation has taken him a short distance so far.
This is extraordinary learning experience. I had Never heard or been taught to connect in this specific sensorimotor way. The depth and clarity and breadth of possibilities inherent in the various presentations and the presenters is far beyond my expectations and quite unlike anything I thought my I might learn. I have never heard of the use of the pulse Oximeter for teaching self regulatory ameliorative interventions. I have used EMG, HR, BP, RR feedback. I think this is great idea.
Thank you very much. Velandy Manohar, MD., Distinguished Life Fellow, Am Psychiatric Assoc. Med. Dir. CT- Aware Recovery Care,{ARC], President, ARC- In Home Addiction treatment, PC.
Although I’m not working with clients with intense trauma issues at this time I find that the approaches are very relevant to adaptation for problem solving with a client.. Thank you.
I liked the break down of need to go slow and the affirmation of the importance of pacing with the client. The micromovements were interventions I will try with some of my clients.
thank you some much for this training I feel more confident in my ability to help my clients work through the freeze response
thank you some much for this training I feel more confident in my ability to help my clients work through the freeze response
Better use of my voice, “prosody,” pauses and silence in phone counselling.
Better observation of body language in my video counselling and calling clients into immediate observation of their surroundings, eye movement, and body awareness.
I work with refugees and this is very helpful. Many of them don’t have the language to share what they experienced, and an interpreter can only do so much
What a great informational session. I’m not a therapist but I use the information I learn here to identify my own traumatic responses and are to help me identify when my partner is experiencing these symptoms as well so we can stay better connected. I’m so grateful you share these wonderful videos free for us all.
I enjoyed the step by step to practice approach offered.
I really enjoyed listening. I was late, but fantastic information.
Thank you
I.McCray
I am not a pro but am learning from this programme how to understand myself.
I agree and I never even know about the freeze response until about a decade ago. Typically ones taught you fight or flee and now to learn there are more and information on how to identify them in ourselves will provide so much healing
This was so helpful, and will really help me when working with a client who has a freeze reaction. I did not understand in detail before the reason for this response and how to work with this
I used my learning from this module immediately after viewing it. The tips for how to help a client reframe freeze and emerge from freeze were useful. The information allowed me to help the client pendulate her time in freeze – spending less time in freeze, and emerging into mobility and verbal engagement several times. We were able to end the session on a positive note, and feeling that there is a basis for progress now.
Thank you to everyone for making this program, it gives me a good opportunity to change the community of my clients.
I have great respect for your professional community which gives me a plenty of insight, with a tremendous engagement and respectful amount of work to help us do our professional work with much greater awareness.
Best regards
Soma Somoskoey
Thank you, thank you! Looking forward to the rest of the series! Just to name a few, I plan to begin using the following with patients:
* Deb Dana’s pre-plan chart
* buying an oximeter tomorrow to supplement biofeedback cards that I currently use
* micro-movements
* psychoed to destigmatize the freeze response.
Greetings from Maine,
I am a teacher, mother and grandmother. I am a person who has suffered great trauma through a head on car accident, job loss, near death experiences, homelessness and abandonment and betrayal. I have sincerely researched many resources to heal from these experiences especially in the last decade. Your session has been a soothing gift to my soul.
I appreciate the shared wisdom and information you have professional covered in this session.
I believe these experiences have made me a blessing to many others through my teaching and family.
However, in the past few years, the triggers have been numerous including unresolved conflict and surprises that are accompanied with negative news. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I am hopeful that your sessions will help me to apply these principles you have shared and great truths you have discovered to myself for the healing of fear and anxiety and the sense of loss and lack of safety. My freeze state which I have been attempting to describe to a handful of people who do not understand my reactions to trauma is actually in my brain. My greatest gift has always been to brainstorm creatively and troubleshoot life’s situations. Yet, my brain freeze reaction to life’s circumstances has robbed me of that gift. Instead I feel that I fall into a black hole and can not get out.
You are a comforting and hopeful group of professionals whom I wish I had access to in my home state of Maine.
I look forward to and will take very seriously the next 4 sessions. My topic of research for the past decade has been trauma and the healing of it.
Heartfelt gratitude.
Warmest regards,
Ann from Maine
Dear Ann, If you have not had response from someone in your community please feel free to contact me.
Slfood@nbnet.nb.ca
Thank you very much. This was extremely helpful to my work w/clients. I have one client, in particular, who I notice goes into what looks like a hypnotic trance when I talk. This person also has one of the most serious histories of trauma. I have seen as was discussed in this training, how the tone and cadence of my voice was soothing and helps my client to feel a sense of safety. I have used some of the grounding experiences discussed such as helping the person orient to the room; moving a part of their body, etc. This individual did not have a single safe person to go to growing up. I have seen how this has also impacted this individual’s sense of shame/attachment/trust issues as an adult.
This training was excellent. It increased my understanding of trauma, the body, and the freeze response. It is crucial to be in tune with our clients/congregants or we could eadily miss what the body is saying as well as placing a very unhealthy label on what is actually happening and did happen. Thank you for the various strategies on what to do and not to do when a client is exhibiting this type of response. Will be extremely helpful in both the counseling area and in the faith based community that I work in…..
This helped me understand what happened to me in a therapist’s office. What he said overwhelmed me and I went into the freeze. I was unable to talk. He freaked out and called my then husband. Together they took me to a psych facility where I was admitted on a voluntary status. Unfortunately I was given medication before the psychiatrist saw me. An injection of Haldol. My eyes rolled back. I didn’t know what was going on. When the psychiatrist saw me she ordered a stat injection of Cogentin which helped. It’s a long story because we didn’t understand trauma at that time….35 years ago. I am so grateful for this new science and look forward to more! The medical model caused much harm. Thank you Ruth and NICABM~
Age 66 in California
You are so brave to share this. Thank you for helping me better understand the sometimes awful history of mental health treatment. My work is Healing Touch and my work was Pediatric Occupational Therapy for 20 years. This broadens my understanding of sensory processing problems we were taught was a nervous system response without this potential broader understanding. This info is key.
Personally I identify a freeze response after loosing 3 dear family members this year. The topic of parts of the brain shutting off and not being receptive or being able to respond to job or home tasks properly now really makes sense. Even feeling blank or a brain fog. So this wil really help me to resonate with patients when they present similar symptoms
Thank you for the clarity and shedding more light into the Freeze response.
Thank you for another well-presented & helpful session. You seem to have honed communication about this work down to a fine art – with each presenter speaking in highly specific, useful ‘nuggets’ with lots of variety I think many parents, teachers & others will find comfortably digestible. I already integrate many of these somatic & sensory motor methods into my holistic art therapy practice, but I always find your explanations so clear, helpfully ordered & the sessions so well constructed that they really help me to see more & learn something new about these body-mind approaches & how to speak about them without jargon. Thank you again for making this very important life-changing programme accessible & thank you to all the contributors for being so generous with their discoveries & wisdom. The world really needs this work.
As a yoga teacher some of the techniques most easily accessible in my environment will be: my nervous system helping to regulate the students’nervous system/ co regulation, tone of voice/ matter of fact, not using empathetic language,no eye contact, bringing awareness to the intercostal muscles/breath,
Thank you for providing this series for free. I have shared it with patients who are most appreciative. In addition to counted breathing for freeze or sympathetic/activated states, I invite the metaphor of breathing bubbles through a magic wand to slow the breath. If it’s helpful, patients can imagine themselves stepping into a large bubble and feeling the protection of that space (like the good witch as she travels about in a floating bubble-original Wizard of Oz). For patients who like the imagery, I invite them to buy bubble solution for home use. I learned this from our local Children’s hospital where bubble-breathing pre and post op is used to calm and regulate the child. It not only helps the child, but also the parents and the staff as it brings delight and laughter to the room.
loved the clear manner in which points were made, the flow of the session and especially the summary points along the way. . .
being aware of the physical rather than dealing with things cognitively is such an enabling perspective
awesome hour well spent
thank you
Luiza
When all is said and done, I hope you promote this program to all police departments in this country. If the police in Rochester, NY had responded with more understanding, Daniel Prude would still be alive and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage caused by civil unrest in response to his death would have been avoided–not to overlook that this community as a whole would be better for it in the future. Thank you for updating this series, and best of luck in getting it spread beyond the walls of mental health professionals.
I agree that this information is/will be important to incorporate into law enforcement (LE) training. However, that application simply is/was not well developed or presented in this module.
I think it has to be incorporated into methodology for use “on the street,” an environment that is totally unlike a small, controlled office area with a single client. I say this based upon 30+ years employment in police and corrections.
I would strongly encourage NICABM to consider collaborating with LE to develope such a traing module(s) specifically for LE (Federal LE Training Center, Force Science Institute for examples) where some of these recent develoments can benefit both the citizen and officer.
This was incredible and really important ! I stumled across it by chamce and therrfore didn”t budget for it. Can I buy it at the end of the month? Vera
Excellent practical tips about dos especially – as well as don’ts. I think it is helpful in making me break my interventions down into even smaller steps. I feel I can be less nervous about how to attend to the bodily reactions – real examples give me better know how. Thank you very much for this presentation, very valuable.
I learned some excellent gems, but as a physician, please don’t suggest we’ll come running with oxygen if someone’s sats are 94-95%. It is completely normal in certain circumstances to have sats down to 93% and many people have sats at 94-95% all the time.
It’s a good biofeedback technique but please don’t make our life difficult by suggesting to patients that we should be panicking if their sats are a little lower than 98% 🙂
Thank you
Pace myself, allow a shorter time for narrative. Avoid being intrusive. Rely more and hone my somatic skills. Give even more time to savouring after execution.
Thank you so much
Ana Avalos
Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator
Somatic Experiencing
Mexico City
Yes, useful in viewing myself, associates, relatives, co-workers and friends. Looking forward to joining the series. May I apply for a partial Scholarship?
Antoinette (Talia) Marcus
I will use the idea in my work as a therapist to understand the freeze response.
the session was so helpful on how to respond to a client who is in a triggered freeze response
Thank you Team
I am a social worker and EMT. I have PTSD and have frozen in my own therapy sessions . I found this very informative. Thank you.
Thank you for these wonderful insights. I work mainly with people who have had significant physical traumas leading to injury, including brain injury, so focusing on the somatic approaches is by far the most effective. Remembering the impact of my ability to help them co-regulate, my voice prosidy and practicing movement with them will really help me. I have a pulse oximeter but have never used it with my clients. I will now.