How freeze physiology in our nervous system can impact our self-confidence

Freeze physiology in our nervous system can manifest in many different ways. Many of us walk around every day in a state of functional freeze. I did for a very long time. We often think of freeze as flat but that is often not the case. What we can see in freeze is a permanent state of contraction. Just like we see a snail or turtle moved into its protective shell when it feels threatened, the human body can move into a contracted posture when placed in a situation that evokes fear.

Freeze can be a stuck startle response or stuck fight and flight energy. Imagine all the times when you have been startled by something that you have seen and never got to discharge that energy. That response gets frozen in your system. It doesn't matter what the story of the situation is, it is something that overwhelmed us that was too much, too fast, too soon for our nervous system, or maybe too little for too long.

As the years go by, we absorb and adjust to this physiology so we can function well in life. However it can come at the expense of certain characteristics that we might like to develop. Like Self-Confidence. Why is this so hard? Well it has a little to do with the qualities of expansion and contraction.

Confidence is an expansive quality. It allows us to stand up for ourselves, speak more freely and take actions we might not take in other circumstances. However it is hard to expand when we have a contracted position stuck within. It needs the qualities of openness to emerge and stay available to us.

Sometimes we do a lot of mindset work to feel more confident. Sometimes a lot of exercise helps us to feel better in our body, more connected to it and more confident. However when we don't do the work on our nervous system, these benefits don't stick around. We wonder why, what is happening why is my confidence really up and down. Well it is normal to have up and down moments in life, but if we don't work on the functional freeze, the patterns of contraction in our nervous system keep pulling us back. Just like the turtle or the snail we contract back hard into our shell under a situation that stimulates the fear response. Sometimes this is why some of us cannot speak up in meetings or for something we care about when the stakes are high.

It can also impact us in our relationships, being able to speak up for what we desire most in life. In our dating life, it helps us so much to be able to ask for what we want in relationships. In our work life it helps us in so many ways move towards work that supports us and nourishes us, that allows us to feel confident to be our authentic selves.

Ten things I wish I had known before I started my midlife transition

I ran into an old friend a few weeks back and we were talking about our work. We cross over on the trauma resolution and nervous system work. This friend is in her thirties and we were talking about midlife and menopause and supporting women in this transition and how important it is because it is such a time of overall transition AND it is a gateway to ageing. It is an important transition and we really need to review our life and all aspects of it so that she can set herself up to live well in her second half of life.

I went home and thought what would be the top 10 things I wish I had known before I started midlife? If we had a crystal ball we could stare into that would helps us, what would be the most helpful tips. So here you go.

1.We go through two transitions midlife and menopause at this time in our lives if we live in female bodies. Menopause is the end of our fertility with that comes not just physical change but psychological growth and healing. The developmental challenge at midlife is being radically honest and truthful with yourself about where you are at right now and who you are.

2. Learning about hormone health is absolutely key at this time in life, if you can learn earlier go do it. It is not just your sex hormones that change, they affect all our other hormones, like thyroid, insulin, our stomach hormones and stress hormones because of the change.

3. You cannot push your way through these transitions. The way through is going inward, slowing down and learning to rest.

4. You will get restless, question everything and intuitively feel like you need change in your life. Don't project this all out, explore your inner world.

5. Your body is the home that you live in. Take very good care of it. The overarching question that covers these transitions is "How can I set myself up to live well in the second half of life?". Use that as your guide and refer back to it constantly.

6. Old trauma will come up for resolution at this time and the hormone changes often impact the nervous system to cause that to happen. Remember our body is wise, intelligent and has an innate capacity and orientation to healing.

7. Get the support and help you need. You are the CEO of your body, it is OK to work with different professionals to get the support you need. (I count my chiropractor, shiatsu practitioner, GP, oncologist, massage therapist and somatic experiencing teachers just to name a few in that group)

8. Estrogen is a hormone that fosters connection with others and bonding AND it gives us rose coloured glasses. All of a sudden you will start to see the world differently when it declines. This is normal, you will get mad and annoyed. All of this is OK, you cannot 'unsee' things now, this will help promote your passion and purpose as you move through menopause.

9. You will come face to face with your cultural conditioning around ageing, sexuality and sensuality. Face into it, don't let it hold you back from growing and be radically honest with yourself.

10. Pelvic health is critical at this time in our life. The Pelvis is a incredibly important part of our body that connects the top and bottom of our body. Within it are our reproductive organs and and our organs that get rid of waste. We hold so much old emotional stress and tension in our pelvic floor and this impacts us physically, emotionally and sexually. It is ok to get obsessed about pelvic floor health in my opinion. Do pelvic floor exercises, pilates, jade egg exercises, whatever you need, find people who really know what they are doing.

And one more just because...... you are letting go of parts of yourself you don't need anymore and birthing a new part of yourself, your inner wise women is on the way!

Pleasure: how it nourishes us, resources us and helps us to grow

Pleasure is your birthright. When I say that, when you read it, what do you notice in your body?

Pleasure is certainly a word that sets a lot of us off and that is because of the stigma of cultural shame that we hold in our body around it first and foremost. Our body has orientations toward pleasure and pain. Pleasure is opening and expansion and pain is constriction and a move away from energy. Pain tells us when something is not safe and our nervous system moves us into action to take us away from it. Maybe we’ve also had personal experiences of when we overdosed on something we felt was pleasurable and things haven’t turned out well. That is one way to stop our nervous system from letting us feel free to fell it.

Humans are incredibly sensuous beings and our senses are how we experience the world through our five senses of smell, taste, smell, sight and touch/feeling. We experience pleasure through these sensory experiences. When we are consciously doing this we are building new neural pathways for our body to feel this expansive energy. We need to do this in small doses, like microdoses, otherwise that nervous system kicks in, says I’m not enjoying this, or this is too much and that shame reaction comes back.

Let’s just talk about shame for a minute. There is a relational component to shame. It’s usually something like this, “That person made me feel ashamed by saying/doing……. “. People definitely use shame as a weapon, and shame definitely been used to stop us feeling and embracing our bodies need to feel pleasure. It’s been used to take away autonomy and choice without a doubt.

But shame occurs when there is a part of us that agrees with the other. There is some part of you and me that agrees with the shaming idea/assertion/concept and then we feel shamed. The shame that is living there in the unconscious, actually agrees with what the other is saying or their perception and ideas of you. The person might be actually saying the thing that we have always feared is actually wrong with us and now it must be true because they’ve said it.

What this shame tells us is that we are seeking external validation to tell us we are ‘good person’ and that there is a part of us thinking what they are thinking. It wouldn’t bother us if that part wasn’t there feeling the shame.

When we realise this it is liberating because we know that anyone can say anything to us and we don’t have to feel shame.

When we are children we don’t really have the life experience and inquiry skills to look at it this way. To do the self inquiry and perspective seeking work. We rely on our parents and caregivers to support our nervous system through co-regulation and to give us information about ourselves, our behaviour. What is ok and not ok, help us with our boundaries.

When we don’t get that support as kids, we tend to continue to look for external validation from others into our adult life. It would be silly of us to expect children and traumatised nervous systems to not feel shame.

So back to pleasure. That cultural conditioning that said you are a bad person if you feel pleasure, well a lot of it comes from religion and came in times of austerity when the cultural austerity came in to curb the excess of hedonism. The pendulum of culturally acceptable behaviour swang really hared the other way. Those Romans they were hedonists. The French revolution came about after years of hedonism and sensually gratuitous behaviour by the French Royal court. Kind of makes sense, but the pendulum swang too far and here we are a couple of hundred years later disconnected from our bodies because we don’t feel safe to feel pleasure.

This is why sensual pleasure is a good start and starting small is a good way because that small dose of it will feel safe in your nervous system, and that part of you that feels shame, it won’t go into overwhelm. Our sensory experiences help us connect to our bodies, they are the language of the nervous system. So by starting small we build and strengthen the nervous system. Our autonomic nervous system is beautiful and it is always working really hard to keep us safe and to regulate us. Small doses, titrate it for us. We have to practice. It takes devotion too. We have to commit to letting ourselves feel pleasure every day and the best way to do it is by starting off your day with pleasure. Our body will fight us, there will be resistance. “I’m too busy, I have work to do'“. Flight response. “I feel like I don’t deserve to feel pleasure it feels terrible putting myself first’. Flight and freeze working together. “I’m too tired to do it”, that is collapse.

Pleasure is the counter vortex. It builds that alternative neural pathway to the vortex of trauma. This is how it resources us.

So what are some pleasurable activities that are healthy choices.

• Singing, Chanting or Dancing

• Using our breath; doing breathwork or breathing exercises

• Movement, exercise, walking in nature.

• Eating nutrious food and really being present to the taste of it

• Surfing, skiing, rollerblading - they take a lot of concentration and ask of us to be truly present in the moment with our body.

• Going to an art gallery and admiring the art

• Listening to music or creating music

• Sexual self-pleasure is very nourishing and supportive

This helps us in everyday life and it helps us in the bedroom. When we know what we like we can talk to our partner about it. We can ask for what we want.

It turns out that being able to access aliveness & pleasant sensations in the body actually supports our nervous system and makes us more emotionally resilient.

Pleasure isn't only sexual, it's about enjoying being in your body throughout your day.

When we're more connected to pleasure, we're more loving and generous to those around us, we have more energy, we're able to focus better, we're more relaxed... and…

we get more done!

-Source unknown

What about the pleasure we might feel from coffee, drinking alcohol and taking recreational drugs?

Well you might feel good but actually we take them to avoid, to not feel and to soothe most of the time. So coffee is great but it stimulates adrenaline in our body which creates that fight and flight energy. So if we are taking it because we are tired and need more energy, we are ignoring our bodies boundary and its message that we you need to stop and rest. Alcohol is a downer and generally distracts us from feeling. Or for some people they can only express themselves and find a voice when they are drunk which is still avoidance. Recreational drugs, the stimulus response depends on the drug, but they are a tool of avoidance from being present in the moment, to wanting to feel.

Addicted to the pleasure of shopping, that high from buying stuff? This is a little hit of external validation that elevates us to help us feeling a sense of belonging but its a super quick hit and we often feel empty afterward. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with shopping per say and personally I love a good spot of window shopping and looking at clothes, but when you use it as a distraction to make yourself feel good, to not feel the ‘difficult’ emotions, or can’t stop your online shopping, that is a problem.

Finally, pleasure, how does it help us grow?

Well when we build up our capacity to receive it in our nervous system, we build up our capacity to feel more expansive energy. This is an open and vulnerable energy, we can only grow from this position. We cannot grow from constriction and shutdown, from invulnerability. We are not open to other perspectives in this state, we rarely inquire, we cannot listen to another person’s point of view and we certainly find it hard to let ourselves feel bigger emotions. We are in disconnect.

As always if you like this post, feel free to share it with someone for whom you feel it might be valuable.