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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Great 1st class. I am currently using several of the methods, so I’m feeling pretty good about my little practice. I will be suggesting weighted blankets as an option for comfort. I use one and hadn’t thought to suggest using one for clients. Thank you.
the client is myself. but it is also useful in any situation where a friend or relatives wants me to sit with them because they’re upset, and have me listen with compassion.
Excellent, Excellent!! Years ago a Physical Therapist from the Barrows Neurological Brain Institute in Phoenix Arizona showed me a way to relieve anxiety with eye-movement, tapping my wrist and forehead and singing. She had previously shifted from working in the Brain Institute to full time work in Physical Therapy. What an incredible huge shift for me in dealing with freezing in traffic. Therefore it was hard for me to get out and drive without intense panic attacks. The exercise helped the neural paths in my brain! It worked! I used these techniques in preschool to assist children in movement to relieve their anxiety. I always used a soft voice in the classroom too. Everything I learned today was beyond my expectations and so many new things as well. It is so needed in our new world of today. I think your teachings will be a game changer for helping our children in schools, families and communities. I have been concerned state regulated programs are pushing clients through with best practices models such as linear Cognitive Therapy. What I learned today affirms the body connection and I am excited about this getting out across continents! Thank you for your work in presentation in such an excellent way!!!
Others in NICABM pay so that we who cannot but who want to benefit have the opportunity to do so. Did you notice that Ruth spoke directly about “the helpers” in other professions?
Together, we can do so much to, as Ruth said this time: Change the course of civilization.
Wow!
I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and I’ve been in talk therapy for years. The concepts presented here were revelatory and valuable for me in my process.
Professionally, I’m a former police officer and I now teach police officers and others. These concepts are extremely relevant for my work. Yes, I’ve interacted with people in a frozen state in emergency rooms and on the streets.
Thank you for offering this program at no cost; it’s a great gift.
P.S. I realize that you underwrite this effort by selling the program. I think that’s a wise model and I wish you continued success.
As a prenatal massage therapist and doula I see clients freeze often. Actually I see what I think of at a half or functioning or working freeze. The breathing gets shallow and they seem to energetically colapse near the sternum, but they can still speak, walk, and probably drive, if in a slightly robotic way. It commonly happens at the end of a massage session when they are getting ready to leave, and they have ask a quesiton about something that’s bothering them to do with pregnancy or birth. Although I have been reading about polyvagal theory for years, and have studied practices that help people recognize their own responses and self regulate, sometimes in this context I am at a loss. Today’s session gave me some concrete and relatively quick things to do in the moment.
(I am surprised to find that massage therapist and doula are not on the list of professions.)
Changing the course of civilization! What a wonderful objective.
I have continued to attend these seminars and appreciate that they are offered freely to those of us who care, but are not financially able to purchase any of the courses. Like me.
Having watched for several years, and having been “online” on various platforms for the “COVID era, I would like to add these observations that are not based on content, but on the communication skills of the speakers.
1. All the speakers appear within their office environments. On the screen, we are able to see gestures, and other body language that helps in understanding. (In my online teaching, I am asking my students to sit back from their screens enough so that I can see them, and I do the same to demonstrate how important it is.) It took me longer than it should have to realize how much friendlier and relaxing this visual posture is!
2. Even though the speakers are passionate and knowledgeable, their speaking voices are gentle, in a pleasant register, and paced with “air” after each “sentence.”
3. As moderator/host, Ruth makes (seemingly effortless) summaries and transitions throughout. Remarkable work.
Yes, I am a “fan.”
Others who have commented over the years have shared their perspective, to my benefit. I feel privileged to be a part of this online community of people who care.
And to answer the “question,” I will continue to take what I learn here into my daily life, with students, friends, family, and “strangers” along the way. Thank you for the “tools.”
So informative and helpful, even when not a practitioner or in a work place. Many of these strategies could be used with people in everyday situations. Thanks NICABM
A tongue tip ….. people who are stressed have their tongues “glued” to the roof of the mouth so I would only ask someone to be aware of that pressure, gently blow (as with a feather) and then ask where the tongue has settled. Invariably it goes down, thus releasing tension in the throat, chest, abdomen and freeing up the breath (lots of additional parasympathetic responses too). Throughout a session (and all through the day) the tongue will return to its habitual place on the roof of the mouth, so lots of repetition and practice. It’s something I recommended and shared regularly when working in a prison. One officer said that it saved her life! Perhaps not quite but it certainly helped in her everyday life. I hope it helps some of you!
This training helped me to understand symptoms of freeze in myself, my children, my husband, my extended family and in clients. I learned ways to help myself and others begin to unfreeze. I especially enjoyed the celebration of the freedom obtained as a final step in the process!!! Thank you for making this training available for free to start with, and for giving us the choice to purchase the Gold Package if we’d like. This is a very generous and respectful strategy, applying the content of the training to those of us taking it!!! Brilliantly done!!!
excellent session .it taught me the various methods that can help my clients overcome feeeze response .. The various speakers sharing a life time of clinical wisdom . it is a great learning showing a aware therapist can use be effective as part of the healing in the service of the client .
much gratitude to you all !
As a bodyworker and brainspotting practitioner I will use multiple methods that were described in this session. I appreciated helping clients know how to understand how their nervous system has helped them through and how we can open up to new ways to allow the nervous system to respond. The activity of practicing what one could do after they freeze, working with oxygen levels and movements the body wants to do just before the freeze response are all things I will use with my clients. Thank you for offering this program.
This is the second time that I am taking this series. I have been in therapy for a number of years and this helps me to better understand some of the strategies and actions that my therapist and I have worked with. I feel that if he had tried to explain exactly why he wanted me to describe what I was feeling at that moment, I might have attempted to ‘game’ my answers.
Coming back to this now gives me a better understanding of myself and what has worked for me.
Thank you so much! I am a retired teacher and I also have a Masters’s Degree in Counseling & Psychology. I work with a diverse student body as a non-profit at a local school. With working with children, I am seeing the results of intense trauma. I see the frozen response so much with children. This will help me become more effective as a caregiver and in relationships with those students. I so appreciate that you are offering it for free. I love how you ended because everyone responding differently to trauma responses will make this world better. Hence, my own understanding and application of your techniques will help me change those lives.
Thank you for this training! I have used the oximeter with my couples, but have never used it with my trauma clients. I think I will try that along with the weights to see how that works.
I have always found grounding skills, movement, and breathing, if introduced properly/timely, are quite effective.
Thank you once again! I look forward to what will be shared in the next modules.
Dr. C. Walters, Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Excellent presentation. However remember that in working characterologically with that aspect of the client , ie the free,e response the therapist is always in the primordial process of uncovering the fact and fantasy of the client’s internalized David and internalized Goliath experience of the abuser. This response will need to be titrated out to reality over time with the therapist.
As a coach and OD consultant. Recognizing freeze is so important – and knowing not to push people to speak or contribute. So important to know how to create safety for them. Thank you!!
Amazing opportunity – learned SO much – thank you with all your suggestions and tips – you folks rock!
Be more gentle with mobilizing interventions when clients enter freeze in session. Start with more micromovements vs. large muscle movements.
What a great reminder for us to practice being present to it all. Thank you for this program.
Thank you for the insight of trauma works, so I can keep helping my cliënts in a clear and safe way.
now I know exactly ( although i already knew but was’nt sure) what to look for in my cliënts reactions, when doing exercises while soothing and training the nervous system pathways.
the body indeed holds the score.
Thanks so much to share your great experience on treating trauma. It has enriched my interventions as practicioner. I’ll surely use it to help my patients. Now I have much better tools to work with freeze response, that I’d identify on some of them. One of the most valuable things is to appreciate the importance to turn to the body, to make it as the most important anchor or ground resource to regain consciousness . Including the body in therapeutic processes is one of the most valuable things I have learned from you…Thanks so much for being so accesible for those who can´t pay the whole cost of the program!! Blessings to all of you, great references, great experts, great teachers…
Your generosity in sharing your knowledge for free touches me deeply.
I am sure it will make this world a little bit a better place!
I am very grateful!
THANK YOU ALL!
I will use the questions Janina and Kathy suggested, to help clients feel safe with me
And orienting around my office to help starting demobilize their neck when freezed
I’lle try the pulsimeter and the continuing breathing with myself and some clients who are very scared of their bodies and reactions
Deep pressure is also very interesting
And of course, I’ll go through Pat’s steps, as I learned in my Sensorimotor Level 1 training
Thanks to you all for your precious sharing!
Thank you very much for all this valuable info and helpful strategies to deal with the freeze response. I have found particularly helpful to state to my clients/patients that there is nothing inherently wrong with them for having that response and that they should not feel ashamed of their fear either: it is just the natural and instinctive survival instinct of their body trying its best at the time to protect them from further harm. It was indeed a very necessary response for their own survival.
I also think that it bears repeating that in the face of a freeze response, cognitive work won’t work and nothing new will set in.
Finally, something as simple as asking their permission before moving on to the next step and checking in with how they are doing/feeling throughout the process is extremely helpful to them and to us, if we wish to help them move out slowly of their freeze response whilst feeling safe at the same time. Not forcing change upon them.
This will allow me to better identify a client that has frozen and useful tools to help them move out of that state. I also especially like the reminder that clients are not a “problem to be solved” but “an experience waiting to happen.”
In a world where we are bombarded with countless acts against humanity, I am hopeful for a world that is healed through the commitment of so many through this research and practice, one moment at a time. Thank you.
Freeze Response:
This is extremely helpful material and is exactly the new information needed in this day and time.The interviews highlight so many of the mistakes I’ve made with myself and others and explain why talk therapy and trauma often have not worked at all.The ability to suss out how to establish safety seems critical. But also, to understand deeply that when a client freezes, his or her brian is off line and no new information can come in. Sounds a lot like what is happening in our country right now.
I’m a life coach. While I don’t work with trauma, because I am not trained to, it’s very important to me that I mitigate as much harm as possible when working with my clients. Becoming trauma aware – how to recognize when it happens and then how to help my clients move out of that state – is fundamental to that goal. I am not likely to use other information with clients such as how to find the trigger, as that moves into therapy territory that I am not licensed to do. However! As as trauma survivor myself and someone who has been doing deep work in that area for some years, having the additional tools for my own use will be very helpful.
Thank you. Very helpful. I will use it to first self-heal and use it as helpful strategies to use & to be mindful when I have a patient with a history of trauma.
I am a 55 year old individual that experienced sexual and psychological trauma from the age of 4 to 11. I have made numerous efforts through the years to work with the issues the trauma has created within me, but I am still living a life filled with the mess that level of terror created. My hope is that learning more about these methods will give me better tools with which to heal and thrive in the years to come. Thank you for providing free access to this so that I may learn who and what I truly am.
So important to learn how to deal with trauma for any intervener as you mentioned in this session, doctors, priest, police , etc . We retraumatize so many of our patients by not knowing these key elements you are mentioning here: what to do and what not to do!
Many thanks for this free and more available information.
SL, MD, psychiatrist
Thank you so much!
A lot of information but very helpful and excellent clarity in delivery. Thanks a million. Please do note that those of us on this side of the Atlantic😊 find the package steep. Any additional help will be appreciated.
Thank you very informative and helpful
Study the strategies and practice and teach them to the teens in my life who are struggling with freeze responses. It’s important to learn what is happening in ones own body – the information is not just for the therapists. Everyone should know how to identify what is happening in the body, create a plan of action, and seek re-regulation.
Thank you very much for the valuable information that you share with us. Everyone has their own experience and it is important that you share this experience, especially now, when there is a war going on. I am from Ukraine, I live in Canada and this is already a different stage of experience before the war and now. Thank you for your work! 🇺🇦🇨🇦
Spreading this message is already changing humanity. Thank you for ending the video with that clear intention. This video was saturated with very useful information. I hope I can watch it again and I am looking forward to watching the rest of the videos.
Thanks, very helpful.
As a Life/Executive coach, this is very helpful and aligns with much of my coaches training from CTI (The Coaches Training Institute). Specifically, for example, movement of the body to open the client to new possibilities; asking permission; asking about body sensations; to name a few. I find these sessions extraordinarily helpful and am grateful to learn this leading edge content. Thank you!
Extremely rich and resourceful, thank you so much, 🙂
Greeting from Thailand!
I couldn’t catch up on the first and second part which is identifying the freeze response and working with freeze at the level of the nervous system. Could anybody share the note please? Thanks in advance!
Hi,
I can’t help with the notes, but they’re rebroadcasting the session at 2 PM and 5 PM today, US Pacific Time, and 8 AM and 11 AM on Sep 29.
I hope that helps.
A client/student with aggressive and dangerous behaviors- I had not thought of it as a trauma response. I may reframe my thinking.
FBA- what is the function of the behavior is a response to a trauma trigger?
We currently only use “attention” “escape” and “sensory need” as names of functions driving behaviors. What would we call an aggressive (fight) behavior’s function?
Thanks for providing great information for those of us who are retired but still find great interest in keeping current in our field of service. I can finally afford a course!/FREE
Are each of the webcasts an hour long? I haven’t been able to find this information, Thanks!
Thank you so much for this offering. My video froze about halfway through. I think you may have recorded it and I can view the recording soon. Thanks again!!
Thank you for this very good and helpfull session on freeze states.
And thank for doing this work.
Best wishes
Anja
thank you for such enlightening info and resources, can we purchase the premium at the end of the program?
thank you
Zinha
Was fantastic and insightful. Thank you so much.
This was very helpful and informative. Thank you! I am looking forward to the next modules.