Don’t Feel Disempowered After Waking Up to the Freeze Response

Most people have had the experience where they have woken up in fear and not been able to move. You’re afraid that a stranger is in your room or in your home, but you’re pinned to the bed. You can’t rise, you can’t run away, you can’t even talk. It can be very frustrating and humbling. I remember having this experience several times as a child and I felt ashamed that my fear could immobilize me in this way. It’s also scary, because your body‘s freezing response seems to be putting you in danger. My mother called me last night and related an experience that she had with this recently telling me that she took it as a sign to be more courageous. I have taken it as a sign to be less fearful. If I have felt this way, and she has felt this way, many others likely have too.

If you’ve had this experience before, and were similarly subdued by and disappointed in yourself, this short entry is for you. I’m gonna give you three reasons why you shouldn’t worry about it, and should not feel disempowered. 

 

Number one, freezing is an adaptive response and it’s all about survival. All mammals do it and we do it today because it saved our ancestors and abetted their survival countless times. Called the freeze response, it is a survival mechanism triggered by unconscious brain modules in response to a perceived threat. We also share this response with reptiles. It involves physical mobility, rapid heartbeat, shallow, breathing, muscle tension, and a sense of being trapped or dissociated. It helps prey animals avoid detection, remaining still to reduce the chance of being noticed by a predator. Some people, when faced with perceived inescapable threat enter the state of tonic and immobility. It’s a vestigial defense mechanism that, in other animals, is called playing dead. The most extreme form of this parasympathetic response involves shutdown, collapse, or folding where animals go limp and numb. It’s important to recognize that freezing is not a choice, it’s a hardwired biological reflex. Recognize your bodies innate intelligence, and that if you are freezing, it may help you remain undetected or stop you from provoking something much stronger than you.

 

Number two, it may not feel like it, but your body will know when to snap out of the stillness. Trust your body’s wisdom that the freezing will end abruptly, you will totally regain your strength, and your flight or flight will kick in full force. Your unconscious mind is looking and waiting for an opening. As soon as the moment presents itself, you will be able to run or defend yourself with vigor.

 

Number three, it’s very likely that you were not frozen in fear, but in sleep paralysis. Even though you may have begun to wake up, the paralysis was part and parcel of the dream state. All mammals enter sleep atonia (a form of paralysis) during REM sleep. It inhibits all voluntary skeletal muscles, except for the eyes and diaphragm. It stops us from acting out our dreams. This ensures that we do not thrash about in ways that could hurt us or our sleeping companions. So you may not have been freezing in fear at all. The paralysis may have been from the rapid eye movement sleep. 

 

To recap, when you're waking from a nightmare, especially during REM sleep, there can be a brief overlap between REM atonia, a freeze response, and conscious awareness. This can result in a transitional hybrid state where you're conscious or semi-conscious, experiencing intense fear, and your body is frozen and unresponsive. This can be made more uncomfortable because the threat content from the nightmare is still present in your mind, you cannot move or call for help, you may be hallucinating (intrusions of dream imagery), and it feels like being "attacked" from both inside (the dream) and outside (the paralysis).

 

Just last week, I had this familiar experience of waking up and being frozen in fear. The dream involved a home invasion, and I wasn’t able to rise or prepare myself in anyway. But something interesting happened. I heard an outside noise from a neighbor and that noise completely woke me up out of the dream. I was instantly able to move completely normally. I rose out of bed, preparing to defend myself before I realized that there was no real threat at all. So, this showed me that even though I have often had these disempowering dream experiences, I likely have never been frozen in a completely awake state and never been frozen in response to a real threat. 

If you have had this experience, it is normal. Let’s not feel ashamed because it is not indicative of weakness or vulnerability. Instead, now more informed, let’s feel empowered by the wisdom of our body’s powerful survival instincts and deep evolutionary preparedness. I hope that this explanation helps people realize that even though they may have been terrified by what seemed like a freezing response, they were really just transitioning out of a nightmare. Have some faith that if there really was an external threat, such as an outside noise, your awareness of it would rouse you and pull you into action.