the thawing process

Perhaps you were a quiet child.  Calm and compliant.  Perhaps you preferred stillness to movement.  Silence to conversation.  Books over people.  Thinking over talking.  Slowness over urgency. You kept the hard, dark and scary things to yourself knowing that expressing them would rock the boat.  And rocking that boat may put your survival into question.  There were times you didn’t have the regulation skills to numb the overwhelm so explosive moments of fight or flight energy were desperately expressed.  Those expressions of hurt, fear or anger were not welcomed and instead were strongly discouraged.   

So you conserved your precious life energy, held your breath,

and developed lifelong digestive issues

as you collapsed and cocooned into the safety

of frozen solitude.

 Perhaps it's time to reach out tenderly to that child and thank them for how skillfully and brilliantly they survived by living in a state of functional freeze.  It may be time to take the cold reins from the child and wrap the child in the warm embrace of unconditional acceptance for all the hard, dark and scary things inside of them.  Maybe take them for a walk, invite them to notice their breath and their bodily sensations.  And tell them that there is nothing they will express that will impact your love for them. Support them as they experiment with engaging their sympathetic nervous system and allow them to express vulnerability in an ease-full and healthy way. You may notice when functional freeze surfaces now in your adult experience as a reminder that you survived and are still here.  With gratitude, maybe you embrace your adult self as warmly as you would a child. And perhaps, now, you can wrap your adult self in safe relationships and caring situations so you can learn the healing energy of movement, self-compassion and how to thoughtfully regulate your nervous system in relationship with other warm, healing beings and natural settings.   Perhaps it’s time.