u/Thick-General-2532

I'm looking for advice from people who have successfully dealt with a severe freeze response using body-based or somatic approaches.

Here is my situation: I am not someone who naturally wants to be isolated. I actually crave excitement, want to be active, and desperately want to make friends and date. But the exact moment I enter an unstructured social space or try to talk to someone, my body goes into a massive physical shutdown.

When this happens, my mind goes completely blank. It’s not just that I run out of things to say; it feels like my brain literally empties out. I get stuck automatically overanalyzing everything (where to look, my tone of voice, trying to guess what they are thinking) until I am totally paralyzed and unable to speak.

This has completely ruined my life. I have zero friends and have never been in a relationship. If I find someone attractive or fun, the pressure makes it impossible to function. I end up just looking from afar, looping on the anxiety for months or even years, until the window permanently closes. Right now, I am working 40 hours a week across two jobs while finishing my degree. Pushing through this constant physical panic leaves me completely exhausted every single day.

I spent five years in traditional talk therapy, and it did absolutely nothing. My therapists kept trying to fix my negative thoughts or told me to just force myself to get out there and be more engaging. But you cannot talk your way out of a physical shutdown. Forcing myself into these situations didn't make me used to it; it just trained my body to freeze even faster to protect itself from the exhaustion of failing.

I am done trying to force normal conversations when my body is in panic mode. For those who have actually been stuck in this state, what physical or somatic practices actually helped you stop the freeze response in the moment? How do you keep your body calm enough to let your brain stay online when there is no structured task to focus on? Any sort of grounding techniques haven't worked for me so far.

I'm looking for advice from people who have successfully dealt with a severe freeze response using body-based or somatic approaches.

Here is my situation: I am not someone who naturally wants to be isolated. I actually crave excitement, want to be active, and desperately want to make friends and date. But the exact moment I enter an unstructured social space or try to talk to someone, my body goes into a massive physical shutdown.

When this happens, my mind goes completely blank. It’s not just that I run out of things to say; it feels like my brain literally empties out. I get stuck automatically overanalyzing everything (where to look, my tone of voice, trying to guess what they are thinking) until I am totally paralyzed and unable to speak.

This has completely ruined my life. I have zero friends and have never been in a relationship. If I find someone attractive or fun, the pressure makes it impossible to function. I end up just looking from afar, looping on the anxiety for months or even years, until the window permanently closes. Right now, I am working 40 hours a week across two jobs while finishing my degree. Pushing through this constant physical panic leaves me completely exhausted every single day.

I spent five years in traditional talk therapy, and it did absolutely nothing. My therapists kept trying to fix my negative thoughts or told me to just force myself to get out there and be more engaging. But you cannot talk your way out of a physical shutdown. Forcing myself into these situations didn't make me used to it; it just trained my body to freeze even faster to protect itself from the exhaustion of failing.

I am done trying to force normal conversations when my body is in panic mode. For those who have actually been stuck in this state, what physical or somatic practices actually helped you stop the freeze response in the moment? How do you keep your body calm enough to let your brain stay online when there is no structured task to focus on? Any sort of grounding techniques haven't worked for me so far.

I posted here about ten months ago, but life got in the way and now I'm back to the search. I'm not sure how easy it is to meet people and make friends in this area. Since I'm going back to work soon, I'm hoping for something that's not a big commitment, and I already asked in another thread about volunteering. The hobbies I take part in now tend to be pretty solitary (reading, writing, going for walks through Westmont or Stackhouse, etc). But I really just want to meet people, so I'm open to anything.

I recently come to the conclusion that my problem isn't necessarily cognitive; it's physiological. Not in the sense like there's something wrong with my thyroid or anything like that (I already got that checked out), but the problem is my nervous system.

See, when I'm around people and I want to talk, my brain goes blank. This is because my amygdala jumps into survival mode and shuts done my pre-frontal cortex, cutting off my ability to process information or think of anything to say. This is why none of the practices I learn about treating anxiety work. Or why any of the five years of therapy or medication hasn't worked either.

Since I can't think of anything to say, I get plenty of social exposure, but I rarely participate, meaning I don't form relationships with people or make friends. So now, I'm lonely, depressed, and anxious all the time.

I don't know where this problem came from, since I had a pretty normal childhood, but I'm not sure how to stop it. I've read that I just need to try and be boring to other people (state the obvious observations that I normally filter out because I find them too boring to say), but the problem is that I have nowhere to be around people regularly enough that I can consistently practice that.

Am I making any sense? Does what I'm saying sound like it could be true? If so, does anyone know how to deal with it?

I recently come to the conclusion that my problem isn't necessarily cognitive; it's physiological. Not in the sense like there's something wrong with my thyroid or anything like that (I already got that checked out), but the problem is my nervous system.

See, when I'm around people and I want to talk, my brain goes blank. This is because my amygdala jumps into survival mode and shuts done my pre-frontal cortex, cutting off my ability to process information or think of anything to say. This is why none of the practices I learn about treating anxiety work. Or why any of the five years of therapy or medication hasn't worked either.

Since I can't think of anything to say, I get plenty of social exposure, but I rarely participate, meaning I don't form relationships with people or make friends. So now, I'm lonely, depressed, and anxious all the time.

I don't know where this problem came from, since I had a pretty normal childhood, but I'm not sure how to stop it. I've read that I just need to try and be boring to other people (state the obvious observations that I normally filter out because I find them too boring to say), but the problem is that I have nowhere to be around people regularly enough that I can consistently practice that.

Am I making any sense? Does what I'm saying sound like it could be true? If so, does anyone know how to deal with it?