Thaw Functional Freeze with Essential Oils

I stumbled upon a blind spot in my therapeutic.

It has not been enjoyable. 

In actual fact, over the previous week, I’ve been experiencing extra overwhelm, fatigue, lethargy, distractibility, and lack of productiveness than ever earlier than in my life.

The set off was not a shock to anybody however me.

My former husband –  the driving force within the automotive accident that killed my son and his pals – accomplished his jail sentence and was launched final week.  

The feelings this has launched in me – all the unstated grief, anger, unhappiness, disappointment, and rage that my ex might by no means be capable to focus on bubbled as much as the floor and bought caught.

As a result of my physique remembers how scary it was to lift youngsters with this man who didn’t prioritize security in the identical manner.  Who not solely didn’t agree with among the well being decisions I used to be making an attempt to make on behalf of the household however would usually undermine me in meals decisions and security choices.

I sensed the hazard, however I suppressed it.  

The technical time period for that is useful freeze, the involuntary, motionless state triggered by the mix of each the battle or flight and the freeze response  – you expertise persistent stress, however are unable to battle or flee so it’s a must to freeze, whereas additionally feeling always alert and attuned to the hazard.

What’s Practical Freeze?

Practical freeze refers to a state the place you could stay able to performing duties and functioning in your each day life, regardless of being caught in a physiological response much like the freeze response noticed in animals beneath excessive stress or risk. 

The useful freeze response is correlated with an imbalance within the two branches of your autonomic nervous system which primes you for survival by both combating, fleeing, or freezing, in different phrases, both ramping up or shutting down.

Your sympathetic “battle or flight” department primes you for battle by releasing stress hormones like adrenaline, growing blood and oxygen stream to the extremities, and powering your physique with power to both battle or flee.

Your parasympathetic “relaxation and digest” department permits your physique to loosen up and heal, routing blood stream to the organs of digestion and detoxing, and turning on techniques that help therapeutic like your immune system.

These two branches assist regulate your physique’s response to stressors and preserve a steadiness between arousal and leisure. 

That stated, chronic and prolonged stress can hold your nervous system locked in an ongoing state of “battle or flight”, generally known as sympathetic dominance. 

This extended stress coupled with the re-emergence of unresolved trauma (like my ex being launched from jail and all of the unresolved feelings that stirred up) can tip you over the sting from sympathetic dominance into dorsal vagal shutdown, a stress response initiated by the parasympathetic nervous system that redirects your restricted power in the direction of important features akin to conservation and self-preservation.  

In different phrases, trauma can shift the 2 branches of the autonomic nervous system from functioning harmoniously – pendulating between arousal and leisure – into over-activation of your parasympathetic department inflicting you to freeze reasonably than merely decelerate.  

In his ground-breaking e book, The Polyvagal Theory, Dr. Stephen Porges explains how your vagus nerve consists of three distinct branches: ventral vagal (security), sympathetic, and dorsal vagal (shut down).

The dorsal facet of the vagus nerve responds to cues of maximum hazard.  When it’s too aroused, the dorsal vagus nerve can shut down all the system, pulling you away from connection, out of consciousness, and right into a state of self-protection.  You might expertise this as useful freeze, responding to worry or trauma by turning into motionless, frozen, numb, shutting down, dissociating, or feeling unable to suppose clearly or entry phrases or feelings.

Signs of Practical Freeze

In a useful freeze state, your physique might turn out to be nonetheless as a protection mechanism which may current as psychological, bodily, emotional, or behavioral signs, together with:

• Excessive Fatigue
• Social Withdrawal or Self-isolation (like canceling plans and never returning calls)
• Always Feeling Overwhelmed, even by easy duties
• Issue Making Choices
• Feeling caught or unable to maneuver ahead.
• Emotional Detachment or Apathy
• Disengagement or a way of detachment from the surroundings
• Inertia, missing the drive to pursue targets or have interaction in actions that after introduced pleasure
• Weight Acquire (useful freeze reduces metabolic exercise)
• Need to Distract, Numb, or Dissociate
• Procrastination, No Power or Motivation
• Incapacity to focus 
• Escapism and Process Avoidance (suppose binge-watching TV or scrolling in your telephone)
• Much less prone to train (freeze response makes it arduous to maneuver and be lively)
• Issue talking up (your voice feels frozen)
• Spacing Out or Working on Autopilot
• Crankiness/irritability that usually adjustments with out warning.
• Lack of sense of time

My blind spot – The Polyvagal Ladder

I’ve been over-simplifying the branches of the vagus nerve, focusing solely on the sympathetic “battle or flight” and the parasympathetic “relaxation and digest” with out sub-dividing the parasympathetic nervous system into the wholesome ventral vagal security response, and dorsal vagal immobilization response that I’m at present experiencing. 

Till now, I mistakenly assumed that activation of the parasympathetic nervous system was a superb factor, not realizing that there might be detrimental penalties from an excessive amount of of a superb factor, within the type of useful freeze.

I’d due to this fact wish to elaborate on my earlier explanations by introducing the idea of the polyvagal ladder, developed by Rhythm of Regulation® founder Deb Dana.

Dana describes three distinct states or pathways that people expertise in response to perceived threats or security cues. 

Social Engagement (Ventral Vagal or Wholesome Parasympathetic State): Characterised by a way of security, connection, and social engagement. The ventral is the entrance facet of your physique. On this state, your coronary heart is open and ready to hook up with others and your vagus nerve promotes leisure, social engagement, and adaptive responses to emphasize. People within the ventral vagal state really feel grounded, current, and able to forming significant connections with others.  That is the optimistic model of the parasympathetic response that I’ve referred to to date the place you get pleasure from higher digestion, immune response, circulation, and also you’re extra relaxed.

Mobilization (Sympathetic State): This refers back to the sympathetic “battle or flight” state of mobilization, and prioritization of sources to answer perceived threats or challenges. Whereas mobilization may be adaptive in sure conditions, extended activation can result in emotions of stress, nervousness, and hypervigilance.

Immobilization (Dorsal Vagal State or Parasympathetic Collapse/Practical Freeze): Characterised by immobilization and shutdown responses. On this state, the physique perceives overwhelming stress or threats or ongoing trauma (together with interpersonal trauma), triggering a cascade of physiological responses aimed toward selling survival. People in dorsal vagal shutdown might expertise emotions of numbness, dissociation, and disconnection from themselves and the surroundings.

Identical to you may get caught in “battle or flight” sympathetic overdrive, traumatic experiences can hold you caught in a useful freeze, because it assist to numb you from feeling life’s ache so you possibly can survive it.  This shuts you down each emotionally and bodily.  It actually shuts your physique down, storing unprocessed feelings in your physique and your nervous system.

Odor and Practical Freeze

With the intention to thaw the freeze and transfer out of caught and shutdown, it’s essential to start feeling once more starting with feeling your physique sensations which helps discharge caught power.

Connecting to your physique is the important thing to thawing your freeze response.  Your cognitive mind turns into largely disengaged throughout stress, when every part aside from fast survival is shut down, and might’t be accessed, so attempting to suppose your manner out of freeze or entry your cognitive perform turns into unavailable beneath high-stress states.

Your sense of odor and your different senses may be highly effective instruments to deliver you into the current second and into your physique so that you defrost the freeze.  Odor  can be utilized to as a set off to stimulate the physique to re-engage in its personal self-defense mechanisms.

Whenever you odor one thing sturdy, it’s very arduous to deal with the rest.  Odor can be utilized as an anchor to assist reorient you from the current to the right here and now.

Important oils are light instruments that enable you to not overwhelm or overload your nervous system as you are trying to calm the overwhelm and defrost the shutdown.  Mild methods are useful for unpacking freeze as once you really feel frozen emotions that you’ve got been avoiding, it could actually make you are feeling worse.

Important oils can be utilized as a behavioral immediate to assist shift you out of your head and into your physique, for various causes. Your mind responds to smell-based stimuli like important oils inside seconds.  In actual fact, research estimates your sense of odor to be 10,000 instances extra acute than your different senses. As soon as registered, scent stimuli journey extra shortly to the mind than do both sight or sound.

Scent has direct entry to the emotional heart of your mind that controls your hormones and motivation ranges, generally known as your limbic system.  On a bodily stage, solely two synapses separate your amygdala out of your olfactory nerve.  No different sensory system has this type of direct and intense contact with the neural substrates of your mind’s emotional management heart.  Your different 4 senses, together with sound, sight, style, and contact should journey to different areas of the mind first, earlier than reaching your limbic system. This makes important oils an extremely highly effective immediate for triggering desired habits.

Your sense of odor can be tied to your respiration.  Deep inhalations and exhalations each aid you focus in your respiration, taking time to slowly inhale and exhale whereas serving to connect with your thoughts and physique within the current and remind you that you’re protected. 

Find out how to Thaw Practical Freeze with Important Oils

To thaw the useful freeze, it’s essential to let your physique know that you’re protected.  You possibly can incorporate your 5 senses – together with your sense of odor which performs a essential position in security – to speak security cues to the physique.  The blends which have helped me probably the most embrace:

1.  Parasympathetic™ 

Activating the ventral vagal nerve tells your physique that you’re protected.  Stimulating the vagus nerve by inhaling or topically making use of the Parasympathetic™ mix may also help activate the ventral vagal parasympathetic nervous system, which helps you regulate your nervous system, selling security and leisure which can assist counteract useful freeze mode, inducing a state of calm and openness which may also help you course of by way of the underlying feelings and traumas.

Parasympathetic™ mix may also help calm the nervous system and aid you be grounded and current within the second.  This sense of embodiment and security can forestall future Freeze Responses.  Apply Parasympathetic™ over the vagus nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) to activate the vagus nerve.  This helps discharge power and shift out of the frozen state into the therapeutic Parasympathetic.

2. Fascia Release™ 

Trauma lives in your tissues, particularly in your fascia, the tissue that surrounds each cell in your physique.  Your feelings – or power in movement –journey by way of your fascia with a view to be launched. When your fascia is tight and constricted, feelings don’t stream and usually are not launched, however as a substitute turn out to be trapped in your tissue.

To launch the trapped power within the tissue and damaging feelings, it’s essential to launch the fascia.  Important oils provide a protected and easy approach to launch damaging feelings from the tissue and create an ease of stream for wholesome fascia.  Releasing my fascia with Fascia Release™ important oil and Deanna Hansen’s block remedy.

Fascia lies just under the pores and skin so topically making use of important oils onto the pores and skin permits for straightforward and fast entry to the fascia.  The pores and skin is your largest organ and is comparatively permeable to fat-soluble substances like important oils.  Fascia Release™ mix is uniquely formulated to unravel deeply held tensions, constrictions, and energetic blockages in your tissues to scale back ache, enhance blood and lymphatic circulation, and launch worry, repressed feelings, and pressure held within the physique (organs, muscular tissues, tendons, bones, and joints) or the thoughts.

Utility Tip: I’ve been making use of Fascia Release™  to my fingertips and tapping on key reflex factors to actively have interaction my security response.  The video on this post and graphic on this post present how one can faucet in additional element.

3. COMING SOON! Limbic Reset™

I’m within the course of of making a brand new Limbic Reset™ mix as a result of odor performs such a essential position in speaking a security sign to your physique.  When your physique enters freeze mode, each your nervous system and your limbic system turn out to be hyper-sensitive to potential threats and should be calmed and reset.  

Important oils – particularly these which might be excessive within the constituent Sesquiterpenes like Frankincense and Sandalwood – are thought to assist enhance the oxygen within the limbic system of the mind which in flip “unlocks” the DNA and permits emotional baggage to be launched from mobile reminiscence.  The mix is formulated to offer security cues, drawing on the grounding power of timber with deep roots within the earth, like sandalwood and Cedarwood, which aid you really feel grounded and protected.

I’m extremely excited to launch this new Limbic Reset™ mix, which has dramatically helped me calm the freeze response and help smell-based security cues.  The mix may be inhaled and topically utilized above the eyes on the brow and on the base of the cranium to calm maladaptive stress responses, help wholesome limbic system perform and ship security alerts that assist launch immobilization to calm useful freeze response and permit the mind to soundly expertise and course of uncomfortable emotions and sensations. 

Along with inhaling and topically making use of important oils, it’s useful to maneuver your physique, as actions akin to yoga and strolling help you floor and be current within the second and know that you’re protected.  These light actions present a pathway to revive steadiness so your sympathetic and parasympathetic branches can perform harmoniously once more.

Don’t be stunned should you really feel the necessity to bodily shake as you launch and transfer out of the useful freeze response.

Featured Oils:

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