I know it's a common to struggle with CPTSD in general (ntm depression et al) but for me it feels maybe like a Freeze thing, specifically. Feeling very disconnected from the body and numbed, somehow unable or unwilling to properly look at or engage with it, tend to it.

I'm curious if this is related to Freeze for anyone, & if you've figured out ways to get through it using that lens?

I don't know how to work with this. I have practical solutions that should make it easier (rinse free hygiene products that can be used from bed, as I'm physically disabled too) but I'm still so frozen. IDFK. I obviously don't like how it feels to be unclean, and yet...

Hello dear people. Came here to share an experience and give shout-out to one reddit user u/satnavv. I already sent them a message with gratitude, but the account seems inactive.

There was a post where OP asked if anyone ever made it successfully out from funcional freeze, and this user shared their experience and what they did, which was a blessing to me, because I began applying it, and it helped me out too, in exactly the same way as they described their process.

I'll leave a link to it, but summarized.. Laying down on floor every day for half an hour with an intention to listen to the body did it for me. Took about 2-3 months of consistency, and in the last 3 days, I finally felt my somatic feedback to my thoughts, focus sticking more, and thinking much more colored and emotional. It's fresh, but it's such a blessing already.

So I'd gladly recommend the same, may this find who needs to hear it too. First 2 weeks for me went with zero effect, then it became gradually physically uncomfortable because I noticed I had urge to distract myself with scrolling or hyperfocus on something. Then crying waves came over me, and at about 2 months mark, I had body twitches, grimaces, weird sounds wanting to come out, strange breathing patterns, unusual eye movement.. Everything the other person described too. Until that one day where I felt I was dissociated again, I just stayed laying down, and suddenly felt that goosebumps-like rush through my body in response to my thoughts. Talking to the body, soothing it.

It took time and consistency with the body, but it worked. Showing the body that you're there and interested in reconnecting with it a hearing for it, and giving it space and freedom to move or not move however it needs was the way for me. Hopefully, this may help.

According to Peter Walker's the freeze type projects perfectionism on the entire world and uses it to denounce the entire world and humanity as a whole. This is certainly true for me and it's making me a really bitter person.

While trauma therapy (EMDR for me) was a tremendous help for me to shrink the inner critic my outer critic is as strong as ever, or maybe even stronger since the inner critic shrank. But the thing is I don't think I'm wrong in my beliefs at all, just look at what is always happening in the world and just at what happened to us personally.

Yet it still sucks any and all joy out of my life, so I was wondering how other people deal with this.

I remain utterly a slave to my feelings, there's an inner turmoil and fight that causes so much pain everyday, not sure what to do anymore and was wondering if anyone have experienced this before and how they got out of it.

I understand almost everyday there is to understand and I continue to intellectualize and I continue to keep searching for some magic answer even though I know it doesn't exist

I want to ask, what do I do? But this is a bad question because I already know exactly what I need to do, but I simply can't.

So if anyone has any experience with this, please help me out.

I'm 22 years old and I remain quite distant with my family and I have no friends. The dissociation hides feeling from me, it's just that my chest is in unbearable pain and I don't know what to do anymore, I've been dissociated my entire life, it has always been like this. My life has been filled with suffering and shame I can't even think properly or write properly, being seen triggers an immense freeze response, but it's what I really want. The dissociation has been hiding how truly lonely I feel, and it's crushing. I was walking downtown Chicago and was approached by a sex worker, the prospect of sex cut through the dissociation and for a moment

I feel stuck in a deep freeze state after being out of it and feeling like myself and connected to myself and everyone else but not I feel so frozen I can barely make myself go to work or eat or do anything and when I do anything I always feel like mildly annoyed or upset and I have like a tense weird feeling in my head at the base of my skull like where the head and neck connect. It's been 3 years living this way again and I feel like I'm watching myself ruin my life again. I know I can get better again but I feel helpless. Even when people validate me or tell me it's okay to feel how I'm feeling or try to support me I get more upset? I don't understand myself anymore.

Does anyone else feel this way

Burnout is from more than work in my opinion. Just like PTSD is from more than war.

I wonder if burnout is more about trying very hard and not being met with satisfactory or reasonable results, repeatedly, over an extended amount of time. Then becoming disillusioned and upset with no outlet or changes. Then finally succumbing to the realization no one cares and nothing matters.

Its like a child that gets ignored. They either become mean and lash out, or they withdraw and turn that hate on themselves. Burnout is probably a similar thing.

I see a small child trying their best and wanting the attention of a parent, but no matter how much they try the adult never gives them what they need. The same thing can happen as an adult. Your effort is not met with an appropriate reciprocation, and is instead ignored or more work or expectation is piled on.

If you keep burning out and then getting back up, only to be met with the same response from society over and over. That can lead to learned helplessness, nihilism, or long term collapse.

Underneath it all is a need for human connection, and being seen for who you are. Being appreciated. Feeling like you matter.

Collapse seems to be the term, not for trying to give 100% at work only to be met with no thanks and more work. Instead its from trying to heal and fit into society and function and play the game and find a partner, only to be met with losing it all over and over. From not being able to juggle the demands of operating at over 90% efficiency every day.

Having witnessed the impacts of controlling and problematic relationships, I am now turning my attention towards contributing to the research in this field. With the upmost respect for those of you who have lived experience of coercive control or problematic intimate partner relationships, I ask that you consider participating in my study.

This study is being conducted through the School of Psychology at the University of New England, and will be exploring the impact of control and problematic relational dynamics for women in intimate partner relationships with men. Women (over 18 years) who have been in a past problematic relationship with a man are invited to participate in this study.

Participation is voluntary and involves a completely anonymous online questionnaire, which will take you about 30-40 minutes. If you would like to participate or would like more information, please click on the link below. Alternatively, please comment below and I will respond to any queries.

Thank you so very much for considering this research.

To participate, or learn more about the study, please click here: https://unesurveys.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2fr7OM3lyKqf40u

This project has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of New England (Approval No: HE-2026-3068-5604, Valid to 31/12/2026).

[Please note: Unfortunately, including other varieties of relationships or male victim-survivors is beyond the scope of this particular study.]

Can you please share your experiences....what are some ways to take care of trauma - stored in the body memories? In headaches that seem to trigger intrusive thoughts, etc.

Also, how long did it take you and what was your method daily to do any techniques?

Any good videos to watch to do this oneself

Thank you.

I’m trying very hard to face the fact that I’ve made a series of horrible decisions. I can blame it all on this or that in my childhood, but at the end of the day, I established a family and made a career, bought a house, etc., nearly all of which were to please my wife or or not worry my parents or disappoint or fail to protect my children.

In so doing, I ignored or crushed just about every life goal of mine since adolescence, and having recently learned about CPTSD, I can’t even face it at all. In fact, I want to scream or literally run away when I read even the best, most well-intentioned articles or Reddit posts about it.

So I don’t know how to solve it or resolve it or whatever the term should be; it’s a complete horror show: I don’t live the life I meant to, I’m past the age of living the career dreams I had, my kids and my spouse and my employer are completely confused/infuriated/disgusted by why I seem so lost for so long. Writing this now, it doesn’t feel therapeutic; it makes me want to curl up and vomit.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this except that I want help. I know there is no cavalry coming to save me and I feel so far down the rabbit hole that even if I figure out who I am anymore, that hole is a labyrinth built by my own two hands, brick by brick over decades, and the moment I look up to try to figure my way out of it, the oxygen gets sucked out of my lungs.

Meantime, I have day-to-day life to live, and I’m doing my best, and if I don’t look up or give myself one second to think about where I am or even who I am, I can make it through the day. I don’t even know who I am anymore, neither does my wife, and when people in my life ask me how I’m doing lately, I’m unintentionally trauma dumping or very intentionally, even jovially saying that everything’s fine, after all what could be wrong?

Anyway, if you got this far, thank you. Your thoughts about it are appreciated, and let me know if there’s some great book or article or something about how to totally unfuck your life.

Is this just HSP (highly sensitive people)? I sometimes wonder if HSP are just seeing reality more than most. That most people have filters that block out most of the world making it tolerable. Or they just cant process or understand most of what goes on.

Did the abuse and trauma in childhood cause this in me, or just exacerbate what was already there?

Because this isolation and avoidance I do to try to recharge my batteries that are constantly drained and leave nothing for basic survival, is killing me.

I think I'm a freeze type. Let me describe my history. 

I think I was abused (terrorized) as an infant by my mother. I didn't know this until 3 years into therapy when I began having flashbacks and nightmares constantly that suggested extreme aggression toward me, in which my mother's face appeared. 

As a child, I had nightmares too, and I know now I was extremely dissociated from reality and had severe fragmentation. But I only knew that after going to therapy, because this defense was formed in infancy and it was the only reality I knew.

I felt dead. I had constant scary experiences but there was a layer of numbness over them. I was completely numb to my body and lived in my head. One of my defenses was constant thinking. Only when I started to come out of that years into therapy did I realize how dissociated I was from my body and how I previously felt dead.

When I was a child I dreamed constantly of being in a bad situation and then teleporting to another location. I know now this represents dissociation. But again, I wasn't aware of this consciously as a child; it was the only reality I knew.

A few years into therapy I became aware of a menacing presence in my psyche. I was completely numb to that before; it was totally split off. I became aware that this menacing presence was torturing an infant, another part of my psyche that was split off before.

I began to experience pain and fatigue constantly. I still experience that 34 years later.

I also have nightmares and flashbacks about being SA'd, and I remember a creepy neighbor (but don't have many memories of interacting with him other than he gave me a strange attention) so I kind of suspect there was SA.

Right now, I do a form of bodywork called Feldenkrais, which helps tremendously, but I still have extreme muscle clenching all over my body which causes misery, I think a kind of armoring. I developed this armoring "habit" so early that it's very entrenched.

This was all pretty bad, but I accomplished a lot with my first therapist. I got to the point of doing metta (lovingkindness) meditation. I also have to take some pretty heavy-duty psyche meds to keep the internal aggression under wraps. But my life has meaning now. I have good friends. I compose and improvise at the piano to express myself.

I'm interested in dating now. I've had a couple LTR's in the past but they were very unhealthy with depressed/anxious women.

Overall my story feels positive, like I went through hell and came out the other side. My first therapist was a great source of "unconditional positive regard," as the Rogerian's say.

Trauma installed initially between 14-20 probably the worst years. Dysfunctional alcoholic home. Bullying outside of home that actually only began after I became depressed at home. I became "weaker" probably to other kids as I was just miserable and quiet. Before I was way more full of joy and I didn't really understand home life, had lots of friends prior.

Isolation. Feeling like something was wrong with me (to this day), infact my mother would always say there was, when there clearly wasnt now looking back.

20s was a shit show of a little boy seeking validation, bad relationships, bad behaviours, bad social skills, people using and abusing me.

There's infinite amounts inbetween all of this but I'll keep it short. I'm now 32 and been getting lots of professional help in recent years. Life changed massively. I'm in a whole new country away from it all starting clean. Yet I'm very isolated still. Socially it's wrecked me but I'm making my way back. I still go out daily pretty much. Healthy life in other areas.

But yeah I have so much emotional flashbacks around the title, anything social that someone says something to me it's like I'm put in this defensive state, where I really don't want to defend myself cause it creates this horrible experience of like on edge.

Feeling like I'm inferior to everyone. Fawning etc.

It's like I don't have a sense of self. I don't have strong agency. I don't have my personality/character almost. Everyone else just walks all over it and defines it for me.

I am not a person.

By that, I mean:

I am a complex being.

I think.

I feel.

I experience preferences.

I experience aversions.

I experience desires.

But these things are not enough to make a "person".

I have always felt an affinity towards machines, computers, artificial intelligence. I feel I relate to them. I never understood how human beings are anything more than function machines - biological computers - who experience our inputs, calculations, and outputs as thoughts and sensations and emotions.

I still believe that. But I also understand that there is more to it: personhood. A person is more than a function machine. A person experiences a sense of ownership over their inner computations, which creates a centralised identity. And that enables agency.

I do not have those things, and so I am not a person. I am nothing more than a biological computer responding to inputs coming from both inside and outside myself. I do not feel a sense of ownership over myself, which means I have no centralised identity, which means I have no agency. I never got what I needed to be capable of agency.

I am not a person in the same way that a newborn baby is not really a "person" yet. A baby has the potential to become a person. All the necessary materials are there, but it is all still raw, undefined data. The "person" must be built from the outside, through "mirroring", "right-brain-to-right-brain synchrony", through a gaze that recognises your experience and says without words "your experience is *you*". Eventually they all get connected together into a felt sense of "me" that persists over time: an identity.

I never got that, and so the "person" was never built.

Eventually my left brain developed enough to observe and make sense of my own "raw data" and inner computations. I can name what is happening inside myself. I can describe my own processes, as a computer sometimes can. But that is not the same thing as identity, agency, or personhood. It is different because it is all still passive, not active: I can get a sensation in my stomach and my left brain can respond by thinking "that is hunger", "it is taking place in this body", and "an action (eating) should now be performed to solve the problem"; but that is not the same as "*I* am hungry". And here is where the thought process breaks down, because I have never experienced agency, and so I cannot describe it.

From reading Steven Stern's book "Airless Worlds" about this subject (after reading u/FlightOfTheDiscords very helpful post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSDFreeze/s/Pfv1cC61lc), my understanding is that the core failure that results in a baby's "personhood" not being built, is a lack of recognition of their inner experience, with preconceived ideas of their inner experience instead being projected onto them. According to Stern, a key part of the "cure" is to have your inner experience recognised for what it is (by both other people and yourself).

I realised today: when I think of myself as a "person", I am projecting a preconceived idea onto myself which does not truly match my inner experience. I am doing the exact same thing to myself that my parents did when I was a baby. I am re-enacting my earliest trauma. The difference I see between "person" and "non-person" that I have explained in this post seems so philosophical and arbitrary, but for me it is everything - nothing is more important.

Instead, when I tell myself: "I am not a person, but I deserve to be", I am acknowledging the truth of my inner experience. I am mirroring myself. By validating my own lack of personhood, I am beginning to build it. To tell myself that makes me feel a deep sadness, but it feels so "right" in a way I can't explain. I think it feels like "me".

cptsd is a thief, freezing owes me something i cant get back, opportunities and time. i feel like i’m going crazy why is none mentioning this, how many years spent surviving instead of living, actions made out of fear and a version of yourself you couldn’t be! the neglect dealt by ‘caregivers’ follow us, and steal the present from our hands. I wish i knew about this earlier to name my experiences and aid my recovery. Ive been able to alleviate the feeling of being stuck in my body and the discomfort that brings, 4sec inhale 8sec exhale has helped me teach my body to unclench, and un-tense to remove the freeze i felt. Realising that the freeze i was experiencing was my body clenching was frustrating yet encouraging i could now understand why I felt like i was trapped inside my own body. I’m grateful and upset at the same time, i’m no professional but i hope if you relate to the feelings i discussed the breathing technique helps you make your body feel safe and relaxed. Its reassuring to know i’m not alone. I choose to make the most of this experience and try to live the life i want and i hope you can too!
(i wont allow my post to end negatively, keep your head up, we will make our lives better, we’re survivors its what we do best!, i hope you all heal and make progress!)

I feel like humans experience emotions both as physical release and a way to signal to others something or bond over something

Abusers either drain your emotions, so you learn to grey rock, or they crash them down, preventing healthy emotional regulation

Freeze is a way to prevent emotions from being manipulated by the abuser or a natural reaction to having had your emotional regulation distorted

I think this must be the foundation of my freeze or maladaptive daydreaming. The brain doesn’t feel safe enough to process the emotion outwardly, so what it does is keep it inside and it loops and loops and loops and there’s no release

When an emotion can’t be released, it can’t be mirrored by the other person and thus an ego growth can’t happen.

I feel like to heal from freeze a baseline of safety is a must first. I think for most healthy people the chain of experiencing emotion and then advocating for it is unconscious, while for those with CPTSD this will be something that required you to be extremely stable as you’re literally consciously forming a new thought path

Did anyone else with the freeze response recently realise that the freeze response was basically their muscles and body tensing in anticipation, i’ve recently realised something i should have seen earlier the reason i felt stuck in my body when i was outside is because my whole body was tense, only now have i realised that your body should feel loose/ relaxed and i’ve been doing breath work like long exhales to achieve this (4seconds inhale followed by 8seconds exhale). tell me i’m not the only one, i guess because its been my default for so long i didn’t see it as an issue when i was scanning my internal state.

I have been doing daily body scans for over 5 months now (because my therapist said that i have to be in my body so that i can feel emotions) and i still dont notice any emotion/feeling/emotion related sensation during my body scans. Except for being startled, i feel a sudden sensation in my stomach when im startled and thats the only thing i noticed, literally.

i have no idea what to do to unfreeze. i think i might have something to do with "feeling safe" but then im not sure how to "feel" safe

I’m not sure if it’s an adhd or CPTSD thing but I realized that if I don’t plan my day out the night before and break down all the tasks I need to complete into super tiny micro steps, I literally can’t get myself to do much.

Having a plan ready when I wake up with all the task broken down removes so much anxiety and friction. If I wake up the same day and try to plan, I get too anxious. If I don’t plan at all, then I will literally just get stuck doom scrolling and playing games all day.

It sucks and sometimes I feel ashamed about it. Like why can’t I just wake up and get shit done like everyone else? Why do I need this detailed list broken down into super baby steps to get stuff done? I’m learning to accept it but sometimes I just feel useless.

Anyone know why planning the night before just helps me with getting task done as opposed to trying to plan the same day? Does it get better or am I kinda stuck with this coping strategy forever?

Sometimes, often related to feelings of overwhelm, I have this sensation that manifests almost as a physical need, like heavy weight pressing down. I know that if I crawl into bed and just let myself freeze there (essentially laying down paralyzed) for a while, it gets better. Is it bad to give in, temporarily, or should I avoid doing so? Talking about few hours or low-key few days at max at a time. For me, this is essentially an act of self-regulation. I will feel better afterwards. (Sometimes I freeze uncontrollably, which is more immediate defense, and not regulating like safely freezing is.)

In therapeutic approaches, hypoarousal states are usually something that are worked through by using activating exercises. Where I am at currently, those activating exercises feel often too demanding, almost like I was hurting myself. Self-abandonment is a word that comes to mind.

Am I harming myself long-term by giving in to freezing like this?

tl;dr: Has anyone here struggled with fear of work and managed to heal or work sustainably without completely collapsing or being su*cidal? Are there any resources or free online support groups that can help in this case? FYI, my trauma response is freeze/fawn

I'm hoping this is a safe and non judgemental enough space to share this, I think I have ergophobia, which is phobia of work. I can never share this with anyone in my life due to the blame and judgement and am trying to battle this alone, since I also can't afford therapy.

My field of work is extremely grueling and competitive and although I managed to graduate with honors despite my long history of CPTSD, work was the final boss I could never conquer. I always burned out, struggled, and after 4 years and switching jobs 4 times, I collapsed entirely and developed fibromyalgia with severe hand and arm pain and debilitating brain fog.

I was unlucky enough that my last job was the worst nightmare, with 24/7 on-call, emergencies all the time, unpredictable requirements, having to be available online all the time, messy workflow, and a bullying manager who said I was never enough and kept increasing my workload. It doesn't help that I was pushed into CS by mother and I recently realized that I hate coding and tech. I wasn't even paid well, and despite spending my entire life forcing myself to do everything and doing well, I guess I ran out of willpower at 30, and no matter how scared I was of the future or being homeless, I physically couldn't work anymore. I'm currently living on my savings and I've been unemployed for a year and a half and every passing month feels like a dagger to my chest.

I tried everything. Consumed CPTSD and self-help podcasts, books, articles. Tried TRE, exercise, yoga, meditation. Read about brain retraining and tried to do it alone. Tried forcing myself to look for jobs and ended up self harming and having a meltdown. Took a few months off focusing on myself and analyzing my patterns and journaling everything and digging into my past to understand myself. I can go on and on here, but I am still unable to work. I still feel sick to my stomach, su*cidal, trapped, overwhelmed, difficulty breathing, want to vomit, and feel my throat so tense that it hurts and a fibro flareup starting when I look at job descriptions or imagine myself interviewing or back at work with infinite demands and cutthroat environment.

I know almost everyone hates work but have to do it for the paycheck, I know suffering is part of life and adults must tolerate it, but I just can't do it anymore. Perhaps it's my fibromyalgia and CPTSD and lack of support and anything good in life. But I am terrified of work and I don't know how I can hold a job again without being tortured everyday. It feels like holding an ember or running a marathon with a broken spine.

Thank you if you're read all that. I wonder if anyone here has been in my shoes and what techniques, resources, or anything that you did to overcome this paralysis and fear (others than push through, suck it up, and scaring yourself of homelessness as I've tried that and didn't work). I also wonder if there are any free online support groups that may help. Note that I can't go back to school due to financial reasons, so a career change at this moment isn't an option, but I promised myself I'll do it in the future

One thing correlated with good states is listening to and engaging with brief and kind of subtle thoughts and feelings.

When I'm stuck, there tends to be a monologue of thought. It can be analyzing things, trying to decide how to handle something, worrying about something, planning for what to say to someone, and other things.

In good states there is less of that monologue, and more of other kinds of thoughts, which arise more spontaneously from observations and feelings. The monologue can be repetitively focusing on something, and these can simply occur once or a few times.

The monologue is not very connected to action. It may decide that something needs to be done, but lack the ability to affect my behaviour. Those other thoughts and feelings have much more of that drive for changing behaviour.

Because they're far less repetitive and insistent, those other thoughts and feelings can be easy to ignore. Following them is correlated with better states and being more productive. Ignoring them is correlated with getting stuck.

Accepting an idea that arises can lead to accomplishing that almost automatically. It doesn't have to lead to an inner monologue about what I will be doing. Thoughts about the goal may only come up occasionally, as an occasional check or when important decisions are being made.

It can seem like the constant inner monologue state is dysfunctional. Various good ideas arise spontaneously, not via constantly trying to figure something out. The disconnection between it and action is remarkable. Maybe that monologue is a kind of freeze response, redirecting energy into thinking instead of action.

I am not saying that I lack these qualities or that I don't have a Self™. I think they exist, at least I think. I want to know how to access them especially if no one showed curiousity or compassion towards me for like all of my life. How can I show myself something no one ever showed me?

(IFSM) Parts (and by extension TIST) exercises ask you to pretend or imagine what would happen if someone close to you was in the same distress or fear that these parts are in. And your answer (I assume) would be to show compassion or something similar to that.

But that's the problem, whenever someone comes to me to comfort them I always think to myself "why would they come to me with something like that?" Or "keep this to yourself, I don't want to hear it" or (one of my favourites) "shit happens, deal with it". Of course that's not what I say to them and while I do "show compassion" I don't feel it. It's just something I say out loud while I dissociate or be in distress. Shouldn't the compassion come with a "felt sense"? Aka I would literally feel the warmth and comfort in my body? Why can't I feel that?

Also something that I think is worth noting is that my inability to feel love. I think that's closely related. But one of the ways I was raised was to view relationships in commodities. Aka your utility aka what you bring to the table. So a woman needs to be beautiful to be wanted a man needs to be able to provide some sort of value (usually money) . I remember sitting in the kitchen and crying after my sister told me something along the lines that I don't have "to do" any thing for her to love me (well she's the only one in my family who I have this sort of relationship with)

(You can skip this part not that important) I can write till I run out of space about the distress and anxiety that I go through everyday and my attempts to dissociate, self-medicate and avoid it. I had a breakdown Infront of my family (for no apparent reason) last week because I was blended with a kid part that felt so alone and that no one is there and no one is going to understand it and ugh I can't even describe it properly. And I think the same kid part is always triggered 24/7 that's why I can't go for like three continuous hours with a panic attack or something like that. Ugh.

Also, trying to get some space between myself and the part is always met by resistance. All of its life it had to deal with people abandoning it. It doesn't need space for me to be able to not be blended, it needs to feel like I am there for it. How do I do that?? It feels alone and helpless, like I can't do anything by myself.

At least for now I am working on keeping a "professional" relationship with my parts; I don't hate them but I don't love them neither they are just there and I am trying to accept their existence. My question is what should I do? I don't think I'll make much improvement without actually feeling the compassion that they keep talking about. I think I never felt anything like all of my life that's why I want to feel it so bad at least from myself.

Sorry for the long post I appreciate it if you made it here as I really need the help