(Parts II and III for Fight and Flight responses are forthcoming)
Many activists wonder why some white people won’t or can’t take action for social change or stand up for other people being treated unjustly. There are myriad reasons for this. One answer (from a body-based perspective) is that this inaction is rooted in the Freeze Response, a.k.a shell shock, death feigning, or immobility. This is the same reason that people struggle with not being able to take action for change in their personal life either.
First, some neurobiology, in simple terms. Let us remember that we are animals with instinctual responses to threats. The Fight and Flight responses (as well as Fawn) are employed first, to try to get away from a threat or defend ourself. The freeze response is employed when the other responses are failing or are thwarted. Freeze is an important resource designed as a short term strategy to either numb us out to get through something life threatening or to numb us out while we die. Our bodies are very intelligent in this way. But the more this happens without being resolved, the deeper the freeze sets in. We can get stuck there when we are faced with the same (perceived) life threatening situation over and over with no resolution and with no end in sight i.e. ongoing domestic/partner violence and childhood trauma, as well as pervasive and traumatic cultural norms such as sexism and racism. Some people are under the constant threat of non-safety because of their gender or race and find it difficult to impossible to know when to let their guard down and begin to feel safer. Without that sense of feeling safer at some point, this freeze stays in place.
When we are stuck in Freeze, our body often experiences any kind of stressful situation as a threat on our life and their nervous system is protecting us by shutting down. Sometimes our nervous system doesn’t know the difference and it over-reacts to non-life threatening situations as such. As a result, we have less access to those responses, which are important resources for our survival and ability to thrive and feel safe.
Some common signs of someone being stuck in a chronic freeze response are: not being connected to their body (disassociation), shut off emotionally, depressed, lethargic, constipated/gut issues, difficult trusting and connecting with people, anxiety, difficulty making decisions, isolation, difficulty feeling anything (including joy and pleasure), and self harming behaviors.
We know white European ppl have chronic freeze patterns in our nervous systems from hundreds of years of perpetrating, being victims of, and being complacent in torture, war, rape, colonization, murder of women/healers/queers and people of color, etc. We learned tremendous survival strategies, some nourishing and some harmful. Sometimes, in order to survive you need to not feel emotions and white folks can be really good at this, especially when we are perceived as being “bad”. We will go to great lengths to not be perceived as bad. We believe that to be racist equals being bad so therefore we believe we must not be racist because we are “good”. It is a masterful strategy, rooted in survival responses but also very harmful, to not be held accountable for harmful behavior.
We see this Freeze show up in white “liberal” spaces, meetings, and platforms, among folks who are actively working for change and then get called out on their harmful behavior. We see ourselves as good and therefore we must not be racist since we are well-meaning and working for change. But we act (or don't act, as it were) based on what is familiar to us (rooted in early childhood attachment styles and traumas- including ancestral). Its not an "either you're racist or you're not" type of situation; there is always more learning and unpacking to do over a lifetime. White folks tend to seek acceptance in these spaces. So when we are seen as saying or doing something that caused harm, we freeze sometimes. We don’t often realize that current situations remind our bodies of long-ago overwhelming experiences that we never processed. These get buried deep in our Somatic consciousness. This is how our collective nervous system becomes stuck in survival mode over generations; we become less and less able to respond and recover well (resiliency). And sometimes it still happens even if we have done some of that healing work.
White anti-racists must continue to work to heal the frozen places in us around so that we can show up and face the pain of seeing the harm we continue to cause and see our complacency in racist culture. It is imperative that folks with European ancestry work through our intergenerational trauma and the freeze patterns we hold in our bodies and minds, as well as our attachment wounds so we can more fully show up and change the ways white supremacy, misogyny, and capitalism abuse us all, especially people of color, poor folks, women, and the LGBTQ community.
It is impossible to separate out the personal from the cultural but if we are aware of our freeze responses it can help us expand our awareness and help each other be able to access more of our resilient nervous system responses. From there, we can take action in ways that feel connected to ourself and our communities. From there, we can help our white friends, neighbors, and family members to thaw too. We can develop the on-going skills needed to own our mistakes, name the mistakes we see in each other, and to notice when we need to slow things down a bit in order to pay attention to what needs to be tended to with care.
Many activists wonder why some white people won’t or can’t take action for social change or stand up for other people being treated unjustly. There are myriad reasons for this. One answer (from a body-based perspective) is that this inaction is rooted in the Freeze Response, a.k.a shell shock, death feigning, or immobility. This is the same reason that people struggle with not being able to take action for change in their personal life either.
First, some neurobiology, in simple terms. Let us remember that we are animals with instinctual responses to threats. The Fight and Flight responses (as well as Fawn) are employed first, to try to get away from a threat or defend ourself. The freeze response is employed when the other responses are failing or are thwarted. Freeze is an important resource designed as a short term strategy to either numb us out to get through something life threatening or to numb us out while we die. Our bodies are very intelligent in this way. But the more this happens without being resolved, the deeper the freeze sets in. We can get stuck there when we are faced with the same (perceived) life threatening situation over and over with no resolution and with no end in sight i.e. ongoing domestic/partner violence and childhood trauma, as well as pervasive and traumatic cultural norms such as sexism and racism. Some people are under the constant threat of non-safety because of their gender or race and find it difficult to impossible to know when to let their guard down and begin to feel safer. Without that sense of feeling safer at some point, this freeze stays in place.
When we are stuck in Freeze, our body often experiences any kind of stressful situation as a threat on our life and their nervous system is protecting us by shutting down. Sometimes our nervous system doesn’t know the difference and it over-reacts to non-life threatening situations as such. As a result, we have less access to those responses, which are important resources for our survival and ability to thrive and feel safe.
Some common signs of someone being stuck in a chronic freeze response are: not being connected to their body (disassociation), shut off emotionally, depressed, lethargic, constipated/gut issues, difficult trusting and connecting with people, anxiety, difficulty making decisions, isolation, difficulty feeling anything (including joy and pleasure), and self harming behaviors.
We know white European ppl have chronic freeze patterns in our nervous systems from hundreds of years of perpetrating, being victims of, and being complacent in torture, war, rape, colonization, murder of women/healers/queers and people of color, etc. We learned tremendous survival strategies, some nourishing and some harmful. Sometimes, in order to survive you need to not feel emotions and white folks can be really good at this, especially when we are perceived as being “bad”. We will go to great lengths to not be perceived as bad. We believe that to be racist equals being bad so therefore we believe we must not be racist because we are “good”. It is a masterful strategy, rooted in survival responses but also very harmful, to not be held accountable for harmful behavior.
We see this Freeze show up in white “liberal” spaces, meetings, and platforms, among folks who are actively working for change and then get called out on their harmful behavior. We see ourselves as good and therefore we must not be racist since we are well-meaning and working for change. But we act (or don't act, as it were) based on what is familiar to us (rooted in early childhood attachment styles and traumas- including ancestral). Its not an "either you're racist or you're not" type of situation; there is always more learning and unpacking to do over a lifetime. White folks tend to seek acceptance in these spaces. So when we are seen as saying or doing something that caused harm, we freeze sometimes. We don’t often realize that current situations remind our bodies of long-ago overwhelming experiences that we never processed. These get buried deep in our Somatic consciousness. This is how our collective nervous system becomes stuck in survival mode over generations; we become less and less able to respond and recover well (resiliency). And sometimes it still happens even if we have done some of that healing work.
White anti-racists must continue to work to heal the frozen places in us around so that we can show up and face the pain of seeing the harm we continue to cause and see our complacency in racist culture. It is imperative that folks with European ancestry work through our intergenerational trauma and the freeze patterns we hold in our bodies and minds, as well as our attachment wounds so we can more fully show up and change the ways white supremacy, misogyny, and capitalism abuse us all, especially people of color, poor folks, women, and the LGBTQ community.
It is impossible to separate out the personal from the cultural but if we are aware of our freeze responses it can help us expand our awareness and help each other be able to access more of our resilient nervous system responses. From there, we can take action in ways that feel connected to ourself and our communities. From there, we can help our white friends, neighbors, and family members to thaw too. We can develop the on-going skills needed to own our mistakes, name the mistakes we see in each other, and to notice when we need to slow things down a bit in order to pay attention to what needs to be tended to with care.
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