Retrain Your Brain To Get Out Of Freeze Mode

okay so it happened the overwhelm builds up to a certain point and then all of a sudden you find that you're stuck and you're just feeling totally frozen how do you move forward how do you break free and most importantly how can you start to condition your brain body and mind to not jump into freeze mode automatically hey I'm Ben aens co-founder of reorigin where we teach you how to reclaim your health by retraining your brain and in today's video I'm going to talk a little bit about about fight flight and particularly freeze mode and most importantly we'll go over a few exercises that you can do to not only get yourself out of freeze mode if or when it comes about but actually create a different response so you no longer really default to that place in the first place so let's get into it first of all what is freeze mode well we've all heard of the fight or flight response that happens whenever the brain perceives that we may be in danger well there's another part to this response which is known as the freeze response and this is typically characterized by well a feeling of just being frozen being stuck in place maybe our thoughts get sluggish our body feels heavy and we just can't really seem to get the gears to mesh so what's really happening here well first of all note that this usually happens when a total load of stress or overwhelm has built up to a certain point then with all of that stress already in the system system sometimes we encounter a challenge or something that our brain perceives is greater than we have resources for currently and when the brain perceives this massive discrepancy between the perceived Challenge and how much resources we think we have then all of a sudden that can sort of cascade us into this freeze type of response so the first thing to know is that if you've ever experienced this if this is even a default pattern for you it's completely okay you're not alone this is a normal protective response and furthermore there are some very clever and simple ways that we can get out of this mode and train a different response so the first thing that we want to understand is that the antithesis of freeze is motion so the first question we're going to ask ourselves is how can we start to create a little bit of movement whenever we feel this freeze response start to come on and there are some really simple ways we can do that one of them is just by moving air through our lungs right by Contin contining to breathe at a normal Cadence one of the things that happens when we go into freeze mode is we tend to either hold our breath or take really shallow breaths so one of the things we can do is start to take really slow fluid breaths and this is actually a technique that's used in combat by Navy Seals referred to as tactical breathing they switch gears into this fluid breath that has no breakes that has no retention or breath holds at the top or the bottom and it's basically an inhalation for 5 seconds followed by an exhalation for 5 seconds back and forth no breaks at the top or bottom and what this does is it allows their brain to latch on to a simple count and helps oxygen to keep circulating through the system so they don't get stuck so whenever they go into combat they go into an uncertain situation they don't know what's going to happen they'll shift into tactical breathing and they'll just keep going with these Cycles as they move forward the second thing that they'll commonly do is they'll keep moving in a slow steady and fluid pattern you can watch my other video on how to reset a disregulated nervous system to find out the advantages of just getting into a simple pattern or Rhythm but these are things that we can create by simply going for a walk or even doing a slow deliberate walk across your living room so if you feel that you are going into freeze mode or you're a bit overwhelmed or you might find yourself in that freeze place you can start start to take those tactical breath 5-second inhalation 5-second exhalation and then you can even get up and start taking some really slow steady steps now maybe you're sitting at your desk maybe you're laying in bed maybe you don't have access to go for a walk right now that's fine too another way we can create motion is by creating circular movements with our joints so just even subtle rotations of the wrists followed by the shoulders when we get into these circular movements what happens is our brain registers this continuous movement as opposed to normally we move in more linear Fashions but that often results in pushing against something and if we don't have the resources to meet that demand that's when we feel stuck we feel Frozen we feel like we've met a dead end so by moving our body in circular patterns the brain starts to register this message that actually we're not stuck we're not frozen there's always places to go and we can actually start to imbue this sense of motion which translates into a psychological neurological and even emotional sense of flow and release and the final one is to actually get into a flow State and this is something that we can do by focusing our attention to where our hands go and especially doing things that work with our hands whether it's writing by hand or some art project painting knitting creating something all of these things help us to get us out of our mind and into our senses right as the saying goes lose your mind come to your senses so the three techniques that we can use to get out of freeze mode once we understand what it is is number one we can switch to Tactical breathing 5-second inhalations and exhalations number two we can create slow fluid movement either by going for a walk making a slow deliberate walk across our living room or creating some rotational movements in the joints and number three we can actually then get ourselves into a flow state by doing something that we enjoy by doing something that often involves the body even if it's just using the hand to write or Draw all of these things can be incredibly helpful now here's the key it is amazing and great that you can actually use a technique like this like the breathing or the walking in the moment to get yourself out of the freeze mode but I think what we would all agree is even more interesting and even more impactful would be the ability to retrain our brains to the point where we no longer default to that freeze mode in the first place so to do this once you've practiced these techniques a few times on your own one of the things that you can do is you can start to actually subject yourself or submit yourself to a little bit of those stressors or things that would ordinarily send you into freeze mode so maybe for example it's tackling a really big to-do list right so at first I would encourage you to just practice some of these techniques maybe pick the one that works best for you and just practice it in a time when you're not quite in that freeze place so you can get the mechanics down then I want you to actually practice it in game time right you can actually maybe look at or even just think about that big to-do list that thing that would ordinarily send you into that state of freeze and overwhelm and now instead of going there intentionally practice some of these breathing techniques moving techniques you can even combine them together and this can really help your brain learn how to keep moving forward even when faced with what we perceive to be bigger challenges than we're capable of handling and what we normally discover is that in fact you are capable of handling these challenges it just requires that you keep moving keep calm and just keep going if you enjoyed this video and want to learn more about brain retraining neuroplasticity and how you can not only apply techniques like this but also condition them to change your default state check out re- origin.com where we have an entire 28-day brain retraining program for anyone who's been experiencing excess anxiety depression freeze mode or chronic health conditions and I'll look forward to seeing you on the other side

Channel: Brain Retraining Program | re-origin®

Views: 26,386

Keywords: re-origin, neuroplasticity, ben ahrens, brain rewiring, brain rewiring for happiness, neuroplasticity exercises, neuroplasticity training program, rewire brain from depression, mental health, selfcare, #rewire

Id: CKZntJlfI2Q

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023