Why You Freeze, Snap, or Check Out—And What's Actually Going On
Have you ever gotten so angry at someone (perhaps a child or a partner) that something in you just “snaps” and you find yourself responding almost automatically (and in a less-than-ideal way)? Or perhaps someone says something to you that results in you freezing in place with your heart pounding, unsure of what to say or do? Or maybe in overwhelming situations you simply mentally “check out.” If any of these feel familiar to you, you might feel frustrated with yourself when you respond this way, or perhaps confused as to what’s actually going on. First, know that it’s totally ok to be where you are—frustrations at all. We have all—and I genuinely mean ALL—experienced feeling like you’ve been hijacked for a moment (or an hour… or whatever).
I’ll never forget a moment over a decade ago where a male coworker dropped to his knees and hugged a single one of my legs (I was standing) in the middle of the office. This was not a person I had a close relationship with, this is not a person I wanted touching me, and there was nothing about this that felt comfortable. Guess what I did? … Nothing. I FROZE. I mean deer-in-the-headlights, brain-went-bye-bye, totally, utterly frozen. It confused the hell out of me, and it was many, many years before I fully understood what happened for me in those… I don’t know, likely 10 seconds but felt like an hour?
Believe it or not (hopefully you’ll believe it after you finish reading this post), these automatic responses are actually a sign your body is trying to protect from a threat. It’s actually all about your nervous system and how it responds to threats.
Now, I spend a lot of time thinking about the nervous system. And while there are so many things I could tell you about the nervous system and what happens when you’re overwhelmed, we’re going to keep the scope pretty small here. I’m going to explain the different flavors of overwhelm (you’ve probably heard about fight or flight, but maybe you’re not sure what it means exactly), the state of not being in overwhelm, and how therapy works with all of that. That’s all. (otherwise we might be here for awhile)
What does overwhelm look like?
Hyperarousal—we’re fighting, we’re fleeing, we’re freezing
Hyperarousal is the fancy term for “you are overwhelmed and very activated right now!” Hyperarousal feels like energy—not necessarily energy that feels good, mind you, but energy nonetheless. This might look like rage, anger, or outbursts (we will fight the lion!) or anxiety and fear (RUN AWAY) or totally immobilizing panic (we will freeze in place and hope the lion doesn’t see us oh god oh god). Someone in this state of overwhelm is likely hyper vigilant—constantly aware of and scanning for danger.
Hypoarousal—we’re playing dead
Hypoarousal is the fancy term for “you are overwhelmed and not at home.” Hypoarousal looks like the total absence of energy and emotion (like a vacancy in the eyes). It can make you feel numb, slow, and like there’s absolutely no hope in the world. Total defeat. Someone in this state of overwhelm might seem like they’ve “checked out.” Like the freeze response in hyperarousal, the hypoarousal response is immobilizing.
Freeze (hyperarousal) vs. Feigning death (hypoarousal)
Although playing dead might seem like the same thing as freezing, they’re fundamentally different responses from a nervous system perspective. That difference has to do with your level of energy, arousal, and alertness. In a freeze response, you may be immobile, but your heart is (usually) pumping out of your chest, you are breathing rapidly, and adrenaline is still coursing through your body. You are, in a sense, terrified and hyper alert to your surroundings. Think deer in the headlights. In hypoarousal, however, you have gone past the point of terror, to now a sense of nothingness. Your heart slows way down, your breathing slows down, everything slows. Think playing possum.
Is there an in-between?
So far we’ve only talked about what happens in overwhelm, but we haven’t talked at all about the middle ground. The middle ground between being hyperaroused and hypoaroused is what we call your Window of Tolerance or Window of Capacity. In this zone, you’re not over- or under-stimulated, and your system is also not too stressed. This isn’t to say you’re totally calm or feeling totally safe, but rather you’re within a tolerable amount of stress.
It’s probably worth noting that you have access to the full range of human emotions from the Window of Tolerance. That means you can feel neutral, happy, sad, excited, frustrated, angry, rageful, and grief—as long as it is not overwhelming to the point of moving you into hyperarousal or hypoarousal. It’s tempting to think that surely those big emotions will always land out outside your window of tolerance, but that’s not necessarily true. It actually depends on the person, because each of us have different life experiences, different ancestral histories, differently-tuned nervous systems, and therefore a different window of tolerance.
For some of us, the window of tolerance is much more narrow. For example, neurodivergences like high sensitivity, ADH, and autism can impact your window of tolerance, and trauma can, too—including developmental trauma that we may not even be aware of. Others have a wider window of tolerance. It really just depends on the person and the nervous system—there is no right or wrong nervous system. There is only yours!
Bringing it all together: Visualizing hyperarousal, hypoarousal, and the window of tolerance
Why do we get overwhelmed when we’re clearly not in mortal danger?
Humans are pattern-matching machines. Our brains excel at recognizing patterns and making meaning out of them, which is why it’s so easy for us to see a dog as a dog and a cat as a cat, but actually it’s quite difficult to describe in words why one is visually different than the other. Just as our brain has learned over time the difference between a dog and a cat, our brain tries to pattern-match other things, too, like feelings and experiences.
While you’re not in mortal danger here-and-now, your brain has linked what you’re experiencing to something that was once fatally dangerous and has mobilized your entire nervous system to keep you alive. This is actually pretty freaking cool, if you think about it (and aren’t currently experiencing it). Your brilliant body is trying to keep you safe from danger because it has learned from the past! Amazing! Unfortunately, though, it hasn’t consulted your cognitive brain to determine whether this is, in fact true.
Trauma specialist Janina Fisher likes to refer to this as a “feelings memory.” It’s similar to the idea of a flashback in that your body and nervous system are reacting as if the past is happening in the present.
Do we have any control over this thing whatsoever?
You may be thinking, well shit, what if I’m stuck with a narrow window of tolerance? Does that mean I’m just going to get more activated than others for the rest of my life? And the answer is a big resounding no! It turns out our window of tolerance can grow wider, which means your nervous system can be re-tuned and become more flexible over time.
A trauma-informed somatic therapist will help you practice noticing when you’re inside or outside of your window of tolerance, and teach you the tools you need to come back inside that “safe enough” zone. That might look like using certain skills and techniques like breathing, orienting, or grounding—all designed to bring you back to both the here and now, and your window of tolerance. Then, you can learn to work on the very edge between your window of tolerance and either hyper or hypo arousal. While you feel, experience, or talk about something that might normally cause you to spike outside of the zone, your therapist might invite you to tap, oscillate your attention between the content and your body (for example), or invite you to slow down enough so that you won’t get flooded. And that helps you actually widen your window of tolerance over time. It’s like a workout for your nervous system that simultaneously helps process stuck memories or sensations while teaching your body how to be safe.
At first, you might not notice a huge difference in your day-to-day life. That’s totally normal, and it’s totally ok. If you keep practicing in therapy, you will start to notice changes slowly but surely. I often see this happening in a few different phases for clients (and for myself, too). The first step is usually clients beginning to notice in retrospect (maybe a few hours later) that they experienced something that overwhelmed their window of tolerance. For example, they might realize, “Ohhh, when I blew up at my friend earlier, that was actually a fight response!” This might seem like a really small change, but it’s the foundation for everything to come. With time, I find those realizations (awareness of overwhelm) happen closer and closer to the actual event. Perhaps you realize 10 minutes after getting overwhelmed instead of hours later. And then eventually you might be able to recognize you’re in hyper or hypoarousal while in that state.
And that’s where the big change really begins. If you can sense when you’re outside of your window of tolerance, you can begin to use the regulation tools you’ve practiced in therapy to bring yourself back out. A couple years ago my mom was visiting and staying with my partner and I in our relatively small apartment. (Hi, Mom! She reads this.) As a person who likes to have a lot of space and who used to live completely alone, I was getting a little, well… cranky. All of a sudden I was really angry and inconsolable and ready to lash out. That’s when it hit me—ohhhh I am getting hijacked outside of my window of tolerance! And I promptly put myself in time out. (I highly recommend this technique—putting yourself in time out is the best.) I slowed down, I came back to myself and my body doing some grounding and breathing, and, when I was ready, I rejoined my family. I felt better, and they definitely felt better because I was no longer being the worst version of myself toward them.
The final phase of all this super yummy change, is beginning to understand your typical precursors to overwhelm. What are the situations that seem to coincide with overwhelm? Are there specific phrases, scents, sights, thoughts, or sensations that seem to be correlated with these events? Or maybe it happens more often when you don’t get enough sleep, or when you’re feeling hungry, or when your calendar has been too full for too many days in a row. (Looking at myself here.) This understanding gives you your power back. You can begin prioritizing the right kind of self care for yourself so that you’re more resourced. When you’re more resourced, you can notice how you’re doing and deploy your regulation tools as preventative techniques. You’ll be able to reassure your body that, no, this angry email you received does not actually mean it’s not time to start fleeing right now. Your life is not actually in danger.
No, this is not solely a you problem
I just gave you a lot of information about what’s happening inside you when you’re overwhelmed, and ways to make your window of capacity larger, and how feeling better might look over time. But there’s some important stuff I haven’t told you. Like, it’s not actually your fault when you’re overwhelmed. And while learning how to stay regulated in times of safe-enough is really important, it’s also not your responsibility to keep yourself regulated when genuinely overwhelming shit is happening to you. Because sometimes you really are in dangerous, life-threatening situations.
If you are a member of a marginalized class, you likely face actual threats on a semi-regular basis. This is an us problem, a systems problem, a societal problem—not a you problem. That is not to say that this work of understanding your nervous system, learning tools, and widening your window of tolerance isn’t still helpful—you might find genuine relief from this work, even if safety is fleeting. But I do want us to all recognize that tuning your nervous system in this way is not sufficient if you’re stuck in overwhelm due to systemic issues (like racism, trans-phobia, economic instability, war, genocide… just to name a few). If this is your experience, then I wish for you to have as many moments of safe-enough where you’re able to take in some rest for your nervous system as possible.
Final thoughts
Ok, real quick before you go: how are you doing right now? It’s not a rhetorical question. Did reading this calm you down, or did it spike your anxiety a little? Did you check out halfway through? There's genuinely no wrong answer—that is your nervous system doing its thing, right now, in real time. Maybe the most useful thing you can do with this post is just notice that. You don't have to fix anything today. Noticing is where it all starts.
