How functional freeze may result in living an unlived life

Functional freeze can be a useful survival strategy when facing trauma, chronic stress and any form of overwhelm; habitualised however, it can become a sneaky way of living an unlived life

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So I mentioned functional freeze in a previous video and thought I should explain what functional freeze is.

Functional freeze is when we show up in life with a plastic fantastic smile;  where we show up going about our business on the daily, getting up, going out, going to work, coming home, going to sleep -  we’re going through the motions and yet somewhere along the line, we’ve lost that sense of self, we’ve lost our aims, our dreams, our hopes, our desires somehow, because we just got on with life.

And it might happen to us all. We come into this world, and for most of us we are conditioned. We’re conditioned by our parents, we are conditioned by the church if we’re in church groups, by school, by society, by the norm, what is expected of us from our culture. And it’s subliminal mostly.

We don’t notice of course, when we are little especially. From a parent we might be conditioned to be a good girl or boy;  we may be conditioned to be quiet for instance, and we get the props, we get the love when we’re quiet. Or conversely when we’re entertaining a parent perhaps, when we’re acting up and acting out and entertaining that parent.

Again it’s subliminal, it’s nobody’s fault on the whole, and yet we conform, we grow up to conform, to fit in, certainly in the schooling system in the Western world that happens of course.

And we can end up going about our business, setting up in life, studying, getting a job and then we get the house, the car, maybe the children even, we get the job, we get the mortgage, we’re in debt potentially and this is how it happens.

And we might then start to look back and think what happened, to those dreams, those ideas that I had;  those talents I didn’t get to nurture and cultivate and craft.

This can manifest in many which ways.

·      Mentally we can feel confused.

·      Emotionally we might feel overwhelmed.

·      Energetically we might feel exhausted.

·      Physically we may feel in pain or have inexplicable conditions.

·      Spiritually we may just feel lost, that we’ve lost our mojo, we’ve lost our way.

So if that’s you I offer somatic massage and somatic coaching to support you to come back to yourself, to get a sense of self, to do that work, that inner work in companionship with my support.

My hope for you is that you don’t look back and feel you’ve lived an unlived life.