LEARNING HOW TO "FALLOW" INSTEAD OF "FREEZE"
If you have been following my channel, you probably noticed my silence for the past few weeks. When friends ask me how I am doing the words that come out for me are: “I am in functional freeze mode.”
What exactly is a freeze response?
Here is a video from Luis Mojica from Holistic Life Navigation that explains freeze response and how we experience it in the body.
I have also written about the different trauma responses in previous posts. You can read more about them here:
What If Instead of Flight, Freeze, Fawn or Fight, We Flock?
But I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall
Receiving As An Act of Surrender
HOW DID I NOTICE THAT “SOME PARTS OF ME” ARE IN FUNCTIONAL FREEZE MODE?
Have you ever felt overwhelmed to the point of numbness?
Or have you found yourself doing the bare minimum of what is expected from you because there is hardly enough energy to go by?
Yet you override that exhaustion and carry on in a somewhat hazy state?
It's a state I've come to know as functional freeze.
It's what happens when we're so bombarded with stress and exhaustion that we instinctively disconnect from ourselves. We become numb to emotions, sensations, and needs as a result of overwhelm, chronic stress, or emotional exhaustion. We go into survival mode, our body's way of shielding us from the onslaught of pressures.
On the outside, we might appear as if we've got it all together, ticking off tasks, socializing and maintaining an air of normalcy. But on the inside, it often feels like we're simply going through the motions, propelled forward by survival instincts. We end up living in a state of constant shutdown, our body's default response whenever the stress reaches a certain level.
I know this state far too well.
This was my “operating system” when I was going through the sexual trauma I encountered as a teenager. This was coupled with “fawning” which I now recognise as a freeze response plus a “performing response”.
This was also my state when we were taking care of my mom as she experienced years of medical treatments to heal from breast cancer.
I was also in functional freeze/fawning when I moved to the Netherlands, had to give up my career which was a big part of my identity, learned to navigate a new culture and new language, and be a full-time mom to our babies.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
At those times I knew I was going through the motions of getting through the day… of surviving.
I know this period I am in now as a survival mechanism after having experienced major medical traumas. I recognise how it feels in my body and where the energies are stuck. I wish I been able to watch Luis’ video years ago on Healing Medical Trauma: What To Do Before & After to have supported me in my medical journey. Watching this now gave me a lot of insights into how my body has kept these unprocessed energies for all these years.
I feel a lot of compassion and softness entering those parts of me that feel stuck and paralysed.
LEARNING HOW TO FALLOW
What is your relationship with the word “fallow”?
A friend, Tecca Thompson posted this and I have been reflecting on it ever since.
Fallow means “1. left untilled or unsown after plowing. 2. : dormant, inactive. used especially in the phrase to lie fallow.”
There isn’t a word in Filipino that I know that can easily translate and that’s when I realised I didn’t have “fallow” in my vocabulary.
Given that fallow is so attached to “undeveloped, not utilized” which to my Filipino upbringing is such a big no-no. Being in survival mode with deep colonised histories, and oppressed culture, we were raised to be hyperproductive, useful, and as much as possible efficient with resources.
Which is why I got curious to learn more about fallow and how I can lean into fallowing.
This summer I’m aspiring to be the grasshopper, not the ant.
Remember Aesop’s fable? The grasshopper fiddled away the summer months, while the ants toiled to ready their grain stores for winter. When autumn arrived, the ants refused to share food with the hungry grasshopper. The ostensible moral: There’s a time for work and a time for play.
But what if the grasshopper only looked like it wasn’t working? What if, as an artist, its play was critical to its work, only no one saw it? As summer begins, I’m going to argue for fallow time.
Fallow time is necessary to grow everything from actual crops to figurative ones, like books and children. To do the work, we need to rest, to read, to reconnect. It is the invisible labor that makes creative life possible.
Bonnie Tsui- You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything
I agree with what Bonnie Tsui wrote in her article about how our perspective on taking time can seem indulgent. In the article she wrote “If you aren’t visibly producing, you aren’t worthy. In this context, taking time to lie dormant feels greedy, even wasteful…”
This sums up my upbringing. It is deeply entrenched in my being that it is a challenge to unlearn.
Yet, I know it’s time to shift my operating systems.
I know I had to renew my relationship with recalibration and restoration to really sink into this period of healing with compassion and grace.
I need to cultivate and lean into learned responses of flocking, surrendering, and softening to be in flowing and vital states again.
EXPLORING THE CORE SENTENCE BEHIND MY FUNCTIONAL FREEZE
One of the key concepts Mark Wolynn introduced in his book, It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle is the "core sentence." A core sentence captures the essence of deep-seated beliefs or emotional pain passed down through generations. This term refers to a deeply ingrained belief or phrase that encapsulates the emotional and psychological essence of the trauma inherited from previous generations. These core sentences often stem from unresolved traumatic experiences faced by our ancestors and unconsciously passed down through family lines. Core sentences are subconscious thoughts that encapsulate powerful, unresolved family emotions or experiences.
A core sentence is usually a short, impactful statement that captures the essence of one's deepest fears, anxieties, or negative beliefs. It operates almost like a mantra, shaping how individuals perceive themselves and the world around them. These sentences often go unnoticed but have a profound impact on a person's behaviors, emotional responses, and overall well-being.
According to Wolynn, the ten key attributes of The Core Sentence are:
It often links to a traumatic event in your family history or in childhood.
It frequently begins with an “I’ or “They” sentence.
It has very few words, yet it’s dramatic.
It contains the emotionally charged language of your greatest fear.
It causes a physical reaction when spoken.
It can retrieve the “lost language” of a trauma and locate where this language originated in your family history.
It can recover trauma memories that could not be integrated.
It can provide you with a context for understanding the emotions, sensations, and symptoms you’ve been experiencing.
It targets the cause, not the symptoms.
It has the power, when spoken to release you from the past.
To spot your core sentence:
Pay attention to recurring phrases or thoughts that surface during moments of distress or introspection. These sentences often reflect a profound sense of fear, guilt, shame, or inadequacy. These thoughts are not random; they are the echoes of emotional wounds that might have originated with a parent, grandparent, or even further back in the family line.
Explore family history and narratives. Conversations with family members and examining significant family events can help bring these core sentences to light.
Use therapeutic techniques like guided imagery, meditation, and writing exercises to delve deeper into one's subconscious mind. Through these methods, you can uncover and articulate their core sentences, providing a starting point for healing and breaking the cycle of inherited trauma.
It is both fascinating and unsettling to think that our emotional struggles might not originate from our own experiences, but rather from the unprocessed traumas of our parents, grandparents or even earlier ancestors. Identifying these core sentences can be the first step in tracing the roots of our suffering and starting us on the path toward healing.
MOVING FROM FREEZING TO FALLOWING
Have you ever thought about the quiet winter of a farmer's field?
It's a time of rest, a pause in the cycle of growth.
No seeds are sown, and the land is left untouched, allowed to recover and replenish.
It's a necessary quiet, a time for the soil to breathe and restore its life-giving nutrients.
Looking at nature, we see this beautiful reminder that sometimes, we too need to embrace these fallow periods, these moments of rest, to allow for new growth within ourselves. Just as the farmer knows the value of a fallow field, we can also recognise the value of caring for our internal landscapes.
I know that for me to do the necessary thawing and healing from functional freeze, I have to process the core language “I have to be functional” , to be more specific, the core sentence “If I am not useful, then people won’t accept and love me.”
I am letting all of these sink in for now and reflecting on the depths of how this core sentence permeates my entire existence. I am giving myself fallow time to invite the stillness and spaciousness I need to reframe my core sentence into healing sentences.
For I know that I am loved and cared for immensely.
Hello there,
How are you after reading this post?
What is resonating for you?
Where do you feel it in your body?
What words/sentences might encapsulate the essence of your emotional experience?
Could they be a clue to understanding your own inherited trauma?
Could acknowledging them be your first step toward healing?
As always, feel free to send me a message to connect or to share what gets stirred in you.
Hiraya manawari,
Lana