Is your procrastination a freeze response?

Sometimes, we have such a long list of things to do that we feel overwhelmed, and as a result, we don't do any of them. Instead, we find ourselves wanting to do other tasks like washing, tidying the house, or going for a walk alone, but we're not addressing that huge to-do list.

Generally, we consider this to be laziness, avoiding the 'hard work' we need to do. We speak down to ourselves and question our self-worth.

It can be really frustrating.

But have you ever considered that maybe your body is in a state of overwhelm and going into a freeze response?

Understanding our nervous system is really important.

We often hear a lot about nervous system health these days, but mostly from the 'fight-flight' perspective. We need to understand that there are four different nervous system states we can be in.

Ventral Vagus: grounded, calm, relaxed Fight-Flight: anxious and high alert Freeze: overwhelmed and dissociated Fawn: people-pleasing

Ideally, our 'home base' resting nervous system state 'should' be the ventral vagus nervous system state. This is the feeling of being safe, supported, grounded, and relaxed.

The truth is hardly anyone has this as their 'home base.' Our resting nervous system state largely depends on the environment we grew up in and how we coped. This varies a lot, and it's not as simple as x + y = z.

However, if our caregivers weren't fully attuned and present with us all the time, we spent time alone or in a chaotic, noisy environment, or experienced arguments, yelling, or other emotional outbursts, it could put us in a nervous system response state.

It's interesting to observe and start to notice how we respond to things when life feels overwhelming. Do we get anxious and become dissociated and avoidant? Are we people-pleasing to try and get through a situation? Or are we actually in our ventral vagus nervous system, slowly grounding ourselves?

Moving through this problem or challenge and noticing how our nervous system is at work is a huge part of trauma-informed spirituality because often our traumas are tied up in one of these nervous system states, and we end up automatically operating from one of the states.

It takes time, but it's very possible to start regulating our body to make the ventral state our home, the normal state we return to as our home base. This way, we won't have freeze, fight, or flight as our home base, and we won't wonder why our life feels a bit up-and-down and chaotic.

Self-awareness practices and nervous system toning practices are key here. To delve deeper into this from a trauma-formed perspective, then check out our mentoring services.