In my childhood, I used to collapse into a freeze response a lot whenever I found myself in a challenging and highly charged emotional situation.
The freeze response, which is the oldest defense response to threat, evolutionarily speaking, has been my system's way of adapting me, as a child, to what was perceived as a totally unworkable circumstance.
On top of this freeze response, I also got shamed for not being able to function properly in that moment, either by my parents, teachers, or even by friends. In those very moments when I needed understanding the most, adults yelled at me because they believed I was acting out, calling me a brat, even a wimp, implying I was mentally challenged, weakling, but little did they know that my neo-cortex was shut down & I was in survival mode. I couldn't think straight or do anything, even if I wanted to.
Because I didn't have any adult advocates on my side, I felt utterly alone and isolated.
And so I started firmly believing, as a child, that something inside me must be irrecoverably broken if I was acting this was because nobody around me seemed to have this problem, nor could they relate.
It was so embarassing. It made me feel less than a human being.
I internalized that. It became part of who I thought I was and I disowned it. I was ashamed of myself.
But was this who I really was? Was my survival response saying anything accurate anything about my being, my core, ultimately my truth?
No. Not at all. This was the correct biological response in a particular circumstance, that was not favorable to my well-being. And because I was chronically exposed to circumstances that my body perceived as threatening, this freeze response became embedded into how I behaved in those situations. But that wasn't me, nor was it a `character flaw`.
As children, we learn to adapt in less than welcoming environments and growing up, if we leave unchallenged & unquestioned these 'behaviours`, that we don't know are just survival strategies, they deeply taint our self perception as adults.
If we leave this unhealed, we won't discover that this is a perpetual survival state, which is opposite to and contradicts authenticity and not who we inherently are. Survival is ruinous because it excludes personal truth from all areas of life. Survival is strategic in that it makes sure you are not showing up authentic in the world,
A survival state that becomes baked into who you think you are will make sure to engage you in situations, relationships, careers, you adopt beliefs, mindsets and perspectives that are NOT beneficial to your true self and do not foster growth or transparency or unabridged expression of your own truth, but will simply enable you to avoid a perceived threat. You will live your life at the mercy of these survival strategies.
As an example - if the anger of your parents put you squarely into freeze or fawn response in your childhood, as an adult you will unconsciously gravitate towards angry people that will trigger that response and that you will have to placate (just like you did with your parents!) because that's your mechanism of surviving, hence adapting. You will look at yourself as the peacemaker. Meanwhile, you will continuously deny the terror that arises within you whenever there is potential for conflict. In such situations, the truth is that you don't keep the peace because you are looking for a scenario in which YOUR needs and the other person's needs are both met in a win-win circumstance, the truth is that you are keeping the peace BECAUSE you are afraid of conflict. That's like holding a sand castle from being blown by a tornado.
As long as you don't get the courage to look at what is true for you in the moment and work from there, you will be blind to the shadow aspect that is in crippling fear.
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