Why shame stories are associated with freeze states

I was hanging out with the freeze in a client’s dysregulated nervous system recently, and up popped feelings of shame.

I saw the teeniest amount of surprise flash across their face before they plummeted to shame’s depths and were caught in the murkiness of shame stories to explain their feelings.

So I reminded them of the nervous system adage: ‘STORY FOLLOWS STATE’.

What this catchy phraseology means, is that the sequence of our neurobiology goes like this: a change in our nervous system STATE creates discomfort in our body, which generates STORIES in our mind. Those stories are used by our mind to EXPLAIN our nervous system state.

Clients often report feelings of shame when they begin embodied trauma work and embodiment training. From a nervous system mapping perspective, a shame state usually signals they have dropped into ‘freeze’.

'Freeze' is an ‘inhibitory’ physiological state, capable of magnetising other inhibitory states – especially ‘shame’.

This means that when clients experience freeze, they easily feel shame – even if their memory doesn’t have anything to do with shame. But because the freeze state appears to have caused their shame, they search for a story to explain the shame experience happening in their body.

Shameful stories are experienced by our autonomic nervous system as a threat to our sense of belonging, and they prevent us from completing the stress cycle. When we let go of those stories and allow the experience of freeze to reveal the path to ‘what wants to happen next’, the body will change patterns of freeze, dissociation, disconnection and collapse that happen when we are stressed or feel too much energy moving too fast in our system.

For soul-focused entrepreneurs, perhaps the most compelling reason to explore freeze in our nervous systems (that means not over-riding it through dance and movement) is to let go patterns of appeasement (popularly referred to as ‘people-pleasing’ or ‘fawning’).

I recently participated in a somatic therapy training online course where we explored ways of increasing coherence in the nervous system. The course was a wonderful reminder of the interconnectedness of everything – particularly that we are connected to the earth through our bodies; that we can tune into a felt sense of having a similar energetic frequency as the earth; and how our awareness of that brings coherence to not only our body-mind-spirit system, but also to the earth-human system.

The course was both personally and professionally validating – it confirmed the potency of the shamanic wisdom I share in my 12-week Expansion Training program, and also illuminated a pathway to addressing a personal challenge I have been wrestling with for a couple of years in my business - but in truth, all of my life - the issue of support.

What the course allowed me to clearly see, was that each time I was invited to meditate on the felt sense of being supported, I dropped into a dissociative and disconnected nervous system state. On the nervous system ‘map’, I dropped down into dorsal vagal shutdown, where I could not stay in contact or connection with myself or anyone else, and therefore I couldn’t maintain the appropriate physiology to receive support. The mere suggestion of support caused my system (but not my mind) to disappear.

This is one of the reasons it’s important to differentiate between a nervous system pattern and a thought pattern/mental habit. It’s true, I have lots of stories about, “not being supported”, “having to do everything on my own”, “not being able to receive - or even recognise - support when it’s there,” “being left to figure out stuff without help”, etc. etc., but the thing that will actually shift this pattern (and the stories too), is to meet the physiological presentation of the pattern as it cycles through the nervous system, carefully mapping increasing and decreasing arousal in turn, and helping the nervous system experience being held and met in the arousal/stress cycle that happens when support is introduced.

When I took Deb Dana’s 5-day training in Spain in 2019 (before COVID stopped international travel), I collected stones from the beach to represent my different nervous system states.

The white ancient brain-like stone is my dorsal vagal (parasympathetic system), the dominant red one is my sympathetic nervous system, and the smooth golden one is my ventral vagal (parasympathetic system). Although we were instructed to select objects to represent those three nervous system states only, the round wiry ball is my pre-frontal cortex - which has a lot of influence on my nervous system states, though much less than it likes to think it does! Together they make a pretty image, don't they?

Read more about the nervous system here.

In my trauma-informed group program for healers and neuro-sensitives, I teach methods to eliminate overwhelm and rewire patterns of protection, banish procrastination and self-sabotage and metabolize trauma that's holding back neurodivergent practitioners from thriving. All set within a safe container of shamanic wisdom practices.

Expansion Training for Healers is a 10-week group program for just 12 healers and neuro-sensitives - with plenty of individual support.

Doors are now open for the next round of Expansion Training for Healers, starting Tuesday 9th May, 2023.

If you're curious how healing and expanding your nervous system can help you, book a co-regulation call to explore whether this trauma-informed training is for you.