216: Why You Freeze Instead of Walking Away

Do you go silent mid-argument and only find the words hours later in the shower? Stay in a situationship you can't end? Become whoever they need that week until you can't find your own taste anymore? In this vulnerable solo episode of The Sabrina Zohar Show, Sabrina unpacks the freeze, fawn, and flop behaviors that get mislabeled as being chill, low maintenance, or the "cool girl." She explains why people-pleasing is really self-abandonment, why going blank isn't you being broken, and why the avoidant "they don't care" story is a lie we tell ourselves to feel better. Through raw personal stories about chasing older men, buying concert tickets to be chosen, and finally coming home to herself, Sabrina reframes these patterns as survival skills you can actually change. If you deal with anxiety, decision paralysis, overthinking, situationships, attachment wounds, or feeling "too much" or "too cold," this one is for you. There is nothing wrong with you, and it's time to stop earning everyone's love except your own. Pre-order Sabrina's book coming out October 2026,⁠ "Why Am I Like This?"⁠ Get your free workbook and access to the companion course after pre-ordering 'Why Am I Like This?' by filling out the form at the bottom of the page at http://sabrinazohar.com/book Take the new and improved dating quiz! sabrinazohar.com/quiz If you’re ready to slow down, trust your instincts, and break your old dating patterns, the Healthy Relationship Foundations Course walks you through it step-by-step ⁠HERE!⁠ If you’re serious about changing your dating patterns instead of repeating them, the Art of Going Slow course helps you unlearn urgency, regulate your nervous system, and build real connection without rushing, chasing, or abandoning yourself ⁠HERE!⁠ Get Ad free ⁠HERE!⁠ Watch on Spotify. Spotify subscribers get fewer ads on my video. Want to work with Sabrina? ⁠HERE!⁠ Get merch for The Sabrina Zohar Show ⁠HERE!⁠ Don't forget to follow ⁠Sabrina⁠ and ⁠The Sabrina Zohar Show⁠ on Instagram and ⁠Sabrina ⁠on TikTok! Video now available on ⁠YOUTUBE!⁠ Chapters: 00:00 Why You Shut Down Instead of React 02:20 Why Avoidants Really Pull Away 05:30 Why You Freeze in Hard Conversations 08:25 My Situationship and Self Abandonment 11:08 Decision Paralysis in Dating 13:32 Freezing and Coming Home to Yourself 16:38 People Pleasing and Losing Yourself 19:12 Why Your Body Freezes and Goes Numb 22:27 How to Stop Overthinking Right Now 25:31 There Is Nothing Wrong With You Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formerly known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A. Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 0:30Sabrina Zohar?

  Three people get the same gut punch text. One fires back something they cannot take back. One goes silent and reorganizes their whole weekend to avoid it. But the third feels nothing. And they can't get off the couch for two days. And they decide they're broken. This is for the third person. I know, you think you're chill and low maintenance and we're going with the flow and I'm never needy. But what if your body just learns that disappointment is the safest thing it can do? And then sold you on it by calling it a personality? We see fight as the obvious, right? Go outwards, do something. Flight, leaving, chow. Those are the body trying to get rid of the threat. It's loud, it's fast, it's really like a lot easier to spot. Freeze, fawn, flop. Those are all what the body does when it decides it cannot get rid of the threat. Those are the quiet ones. And they don't look like a stress response.

• 1:11Sabrina Zohar?

  So people skip, my body is protecting me and land on, there's something wrong with me. And boy, oh boy, was I that girl for fucking years. I never really understood, right? I understood that fight was the snapping and picking a fight. And when things get close, you cause an issue and burn it down before they leave. Flight was the disappearing. That one to me was the obvious. Whether workaholism, ghosting, like, you know, phone over and like just never really acknowledging on the person. The exit always kind of was the reason that this person was leaving, right? That's the flight. That is them trying to get safety. What they share is that both of the body mobilizing and spending energy to make the threat leave. But today is the opposite. The body decides that the threat isn't leaving, so it stops spending and starts shutting down.

• 1:56Sabrina Zohar?

  I actually thought this was a super cool topic. Because I'm a big fan of understanding ourselves even more, right? I think that we're on this perpetual journey of what makes us tick? What are we doing? And like, here's kind of the spoiler alert. There is not one Way that everybody shows up. I personally can fight. I can go into fight mode where I'm, I need to have the last answer and you need to say I'm sorry and I need to hear you say it and I'm getting in your face and I'm big and I'm, I'm bold and that was what I was taught. Then there's the other side of like, I can't handle this shutdown. And I just am like, I'm out of here and I leave the room and I storm off and I'm like, they're gonna come back and get me. Usually that doesn't happen. And then there's the shutdown. There's the shutdown where you feel so overwhelmed, you legitimately don't know what to say. Your body just starts to collapse

• 2:39Sabrina Zohar?

  in itself and you just literally freeze. You don't know what to do. You're immobilized and you can't figure it out. And I know that for a lot of us, we might be thinking like, these are just excuses. They're not. These are actually legitimately not excuses. This is actually how the nervous system works, which is why I fucking hate the avoidant narrative. Because when somebody shuts down, right? When we think about the avoidant withdrawing, when we think about them leaving, for a lot of us, we see it as they don't care. Because if we can see the avoidant leaves because they don't care, then it gives us an answer. It closes the loop. When an avoidant leaves and leaves you on the fucking floor crying, the reason it's easier to say they don't care is because it allows your brain to close the loop. Well, they don't care. That's why the fuck they did this. But it's actually that they got overwhelmed and they removed themselves. Your emotion was too much for them to handle because then they'd have to tap into their own. I'm not

• 3:24Sabrina Zohar?

  saying it's okay, but I am explaining why they do it. So we can let go of the bullshit narratives as if people don't care, when it's really just that they get overwhelmed. Then we move into the freeze. When my mama used to just disassociate and just shut down, I used to sit there and be like, oh, my God, she's just like not even paying attention to me. She doesn't care. But her body was registering, this threat is too overwhelming. I don't know what else to do. Think about it. There's a tiger. You either fight the tiger, you run away from the tiger, or you freeze. You don't know what to do. You just sit there. Or you appease and you start to caress the tiger and hope that it's going to not eat you. Or you flop, or you just have nothing left and you're completely like a starfish. Those are all defense mechanisms. Those are all protection. Those are

• 4:06Sabrina Zohar?

  all ways that your nervous system is learning to keep you safe. The problem is, we need to now understand how to override that and what to do. So, there was something called the ladder. The ladder was a model called the Defense Cascade. So, six responses in sequence. As you feel more trapped, the first goes into freeze, flight, fight, fright, flag, and faint. Early stages run on the gas pedal. That's that sympathetic energy. You're amped up, you've got a lot to go. That's why when you're in early dating and that person texts you and you're like firing back and you're fucking freaking out and you're losing your shit on them and you're going na na na na na na. That's the fight. That's being like, I have to do something about it. I need to be heard. That's sympathetic. The later stages flip onto the break. That's the parasympathetic. That's the shutdown, the disassociation.

• 4:51Sabrina Zohar?

  And so we see it as a literal ladder. Fight and flight is at the top. When climbing feels pointless, what happens? The body comes down the shutdown side. So freeze is at the top of that side. Flop is at the bottom. Fawn is a trap door off to the side. And I think it's really important for us to dispel a lot of these narratives. There is nothing fucking wrong with you. You are not broken, there's nothing to fix. If you are acting in ways that you don't really feel like are aligned with the person that you're becoming, you can actually fucking do something about it, but you now need to make a choice about what that thing is. Are you going to regulate? Are you going to come back to your body? And are you going to actually see this for the situation that it is? Or for the one that your body is projecting? Now you get to fucking decide. Then we think of a study that was done, Freeze for Action. Freezing is not the body going passive.

• 5:33Sabrina Zohar?

  It's a parasympathetic brake slammed on a fully active motor system. Your heart rate actually slows while the person goes still and hyper alert. So the title says it all, right? Freeze for Action. It sharpens detection of big picture threat info. The body goes quiet so it can read the room and get ready to move. It's poised, but not checked out. And when you go blank in a hard conversation, or like your body has pulled the handbrake to read the threat, right? Here's the crazy thing. Some people need a fucking minute. Some people need a second to process and to understand what's coming up. Just because you would fucking respond to somebody in three seconds doesn't mean that your lived experience is everybody else's. Some people are having different experiences. Are you going to keep expecting everyone to show up like you? Or are you going to allow people to be a human in excess? Does that work for you?

• 6:18Sabrina Zohar?

  And so if somebody is slamming on the brakes and they can't come back to the present moment, that doesn't mean them a bad person, but maybe they don't have the bandwidth and the capability to be able to show up in a different way. Some part of you is scanning. The person's face and going still is how it scans. So what does that look like in dating, in actual practice? Maybe that's going blank mid-argument and finding words hours later in the shower. I know I have fucking done that. I have been guilty about myself where I'll fire off. And for me, I've explained this to you guys before. If you've listened to past episodes where like I feel that wave of heat come over. I start to feel really, really anxious and then I'm firing off. I'm like, but the other day, so funny. So I'll share a story with you guys. So we went to a dinner party and we were talking and one of the girls there,

• 7:01Sabrina Zohar?

  she just made a comment that didn't really sit well with me. Didn't love it, didn't feel great. She wasn't really trying to get curious about me. She was more so just making assumptions and things like that. And I just, in the moment, I was processing it in the moment. And so of course what happens, I get in the car, I'm telling Ryan what happened. And all of a sudden I'm thinking of all the things I would have liked to have said. Why? Because in that moment, once I'm processing it, I've come back online. I've given myself the opportunity to come back to homeostasis, to be able to learn. But in the moment, I totally froze. I didn't know what to do. I just sat there and huh, just kind of chuckled and was like, oh, well, you know, this person's really big in the industry and you don't want to piss them off. They know more than you do. I started second guessing myself. And so I just went blank and I didn't really know what to say. But then after, once I left, the quote unquote threat was gone,

• 7:46Sabrina Zohar?

  even though this person is like not a threat at all. She's an amazing person and I'm friends with this person. But then after I was able to go, wait a minute, but I actually would have loved to have said this and this and this. But imagine if in the moment, now learning for myself, I went to the bathroom and sat with myself for a minute or pulled Ryan aside and been like, hey, I just need to get this off my chest. I need to kind of process this quickly. Then maybe I would have come back and been able to have a conversation. But you know what we did anyways? She texted me a couple of days later and said, hey, I'm picking up on something. And I said, yeah, I'm glad you picked up on that. And we ended up talking and we were able to move on from it because we were both in a regulated state. And that's the thing. If you're in an argument with somebody, it's okay for you to take a fucking break. It's okay to say, I need a minute. Can we talk tomorrow? That doesn't make you a bad person. This whole go, don't go to bed angry is a complete bullshit advice. You're allowed to go to bed angry.

• 8:31Sabrina Zohar?

  You're allowed to go to bed and not have an answer because what happens? You sleep, you process, you wake up with a clear mind and then you can handle it like the fucking adult that you are, not the kid that's coming. Coming out trying to protect you. Let's say you're dating somebody, go mid-blank in the argument and you can't find those words, right? Maybe it's the situation ship you can't decide to end, so you just don't, right? I have had that. I've also been thinking about you guys too. Some more stories I can share with you. So as always, my new book is coming out. It's called, Why Am I Like This? And I've been starting to really think about these situations that were coming up for me. And I'll never forget, I had a situation ship when I was 19. It was this guy, we met out at a club. That was when things like that happened. This was before dating apps. This was before all of that. And we met and it was like this instant connection and we spent the

• 9:14Sabrina Zohar?

  whole night together, dancing and going to an after-party and then, you know, walking out at 11 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, being like, what the fuck, where am I? And then we went to the park for the day and da-da-da, da-da-da. We made out. We didn't, we didn't sleep, like do hook up or anything. For about five months, I never once wanted to ask, what are we? What are we doing? I was terrified because I was so scared that this older handsome, successful, he was like wildly successful guy, was gonna leave me or not want me. And so instead of me speaking up for myself and saying something, I just went with the flow. I was the cool girl. I was the one trying to just get this person to pick me. And what ended up happening, I spent months obsessing over him, for him to end up telling me, he doesn't see a future with me and he doesn't want to waste my time. Did I take that as an answer? No, I didn't. You know what I did anyways? I bought him concert tickets for his favorite concert. Because in my head, I said,

• 9:58Sabrina Zohar?

  well, if he commits to something in three months with me, then he's gonna fall in love with me, and then he's gonna realize and all of that. Well, no, you know what happened? We didn't talk for three months. Concert comes around. I text him, hey, do you still want to go with me? And I remember him being like, are you sure you want to do that? And he said, my sister's in town. Can I bring her? I'll get her a ticket. And in my head, I'm like, ah, it's not how I wanted this to end. You can imagine the whole show. I'm like crying, wiping back tears, trying not to hold his hand, like being with him, made me feel all of these things. After the show, he walks me home, and I remember I tried to kiss him and he was like, Sab, I don't think this is a good idea. And I said, I really, really want you to come up. And he was like, I'm being 100% clear with you right now. If I come up and we sleep together, I'm telling you right now, we're not pursuing this and I don't want to do this again. And he was like, I don't know how much clearer I can make it. And I said, that's

• 10:42Sabrina Zohar?

  fine. And I remember he came up and we slept together finally. And when he left, I completely crumbled. I completely broke down. Because I had self abandoned so hard, I had frozen. I didn't know what to do in that moment. And I was so desperate to be chosen that I wasn't actually picking myself. The irony is years later, we ran into each other in Brooklyn. And I gave him a big hug and I was like, oh, my God, hi. I'm about to age myself. That was 16 years ago. And so when I look at photos now, I'm like, man, he looks old. I'm like, duh, he was like 15 years older than me at the time. He was mid 30s. I'm like, dude, that guy's almost 50. Holy shit, he's almost 50. And it all kind of came crashing back to me of that was the prime example of my body immobilizing, not knowing what to do besides, please pick me. Please, please

• 11:27Sabrina Zohar?

  pick me. The threat is this person's going to leave me. So let me do anything I can to make sure he stays. And I know how that feels. And knowing for months and still not moving, decision paralysis, baby. And we think it's just, I'm just thinking about it. So when have you guys written in a question, why do I freeze when someone does something weird to me? Weird is ambiguous, ambiguous reads as a possible threat. The body can't tell yet if this is fine, or if this is the start of something bad. So it stops, it just goes still, and it scans. And the pause you hate is the system buying time to check if you're safe. And I want you to know that if you're trying to understand, am I entering this, freeze has a signature. The world goes flat or far away. So the thoughts start to get slow and sticky. You feel rooted at like to the spot. So kind of, we think it is like

• 12:10Sabrina Zohar?

  your brain is buffering. And that slowdown is the break going, okay, stop, right? By the way, hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Sabrina Zohar Show. You might be asking, Zohar, it's been like 10 minutes and you're just now doing the intro? You betcha, baby. Because I'm trying to connect with you guys on a deeper level. That's not just so like, welcome to my show. Here's everything. Now let's get into it. I want this to feel like a safe space. And so I'm so fucking grateful and honored to have you here. But as always, please don't forget to rate and review the show and share it with your friends. That's all I'm asking. Please leave a five star review on Apple and Spotify and YouTube and anywhere that you see this show. Please mark it as finished, even if you're like, ah, I don't love this episode. It means the world because I genuinely want to build a healthy, safe community. And that's why I have my book. So if you

• 12:54Sabrina Zohar?

  guys preorder the book, Why Am I Like This? You get a free course at sabrina zohar.com backslash book. You could just be part of this fucking family and I'll let you know when we have our tour and all of those fun things. But we're changing the way we do things around here because for me, I've been struggling really fucking hard. To the point where, yeah, I started to pick my hair out again. I know that on the last episode with Russ, when I talked about Trichotillomania, a lot of you guys reached out to me feeling like you were seen, feeling like you're not alone. And I think that that's such a beautiful place to be. And so I want to keep sharing with you guys and connecting in different ways. And I'm sharing right now, not everything's going to be about dating and relationships anymore. I cannot just keep talking about the same thing over and over again. And if you guys choose to leave, thank you for coming.

• 13:35Sabrina Zohar?

  But I am tired and I am going to stop talking about studies as much and start talking about real shit. Like the real shit of, I got a new college and I'm obsessed with, this isn't sponsored, it's agent a tour by Dr. Will Cole. This right here is because of that. My hair is growing back. I don't have my bald spot as much. My hair is growing in stronger. That's me bringing to you guys something I genuinely love that I think will help you. And so I really, really, really want to start shifting the way we do things. Cause you know why? I've been freezing. I've been freezing. I've been like, oh, threat. Oh, my God, I'm going to be left. And it's interesting. I was in acupuncture today. And I started crying for a solid 10 minutes. Because I saw me and I literally had like, I want you to envision this, especially when you're in that freeze.

• 14:21Sabrina Zohar?

  I had like a campfire and I had all my littles around me. And I had my 22 year old self, I had my 10 year old self, and I saw the self of mine that started software. When I was really, really sad and scared and lost and I held her and I said, baby, I'm sorry. I have to be the one to tell you, but this doesn't end up working. And I felt her break down and I held her. And then I saw the me from a couple of years later and I said, baby, I hate to break it to you. This doesn't work. And she broke down and I held space. And you know what? When I came out of that appointment and I had sat with my littles and I was there for them. And I was understanding them and I was holding space for them. I felt so much fucking better.

• 15:01Sabrina Zohar?

  Not because I have an answer, but for the first time, I actually felt better without anything in my life changing because I was finally okay with myself.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 15:39Sabrina Zohar?

  I'm really grateful to have you guys here. And I hope that you guys like the new way that we start to do the show, where it's gonna be a lot more... Oh, I forgot to mention. If you guys want, on the website, sabrina'sohard.com/podcast, we are gonna have, I'll show you a photo, of a new feature where you can leave me a 60-second voice note, and we're gonna start playing them on the show, and then I can help you with some dating advice. That way, I don't have to read it to you. So don't forget. Or you can email in the trenches at sabrina'sohard.com. So, whatever you guys want. Okay, let's get back to it. So, we talked about the freeze. I wanna talk about fawn. Because this is kind of the finality. We had fight, flight, and now we have freeze, fawn, and flop. I didn't think this was enough to have an entire episode for each. But I think that this is really important so that we understand the nervous system states, so that you can start to assess and go, "Oh, I'm in freeze right now. Oh, I'm in fawn right now." Okay, because even naming it,

• 16:23Sabrina Zohar?

  name it to tame it, turn your prefrontal cortex on. So, let's talk fawn. Walker did a study in 2013, and it named the fawn response from a pattern he kept seeing in survivors of chronic childhood trauma. Hi, it's me. Fight attacks, flight runs, freeze hides, fawn appeases. You survive by making the dangerous person happy. That's why we say people pleasing can often be seen as manipulative. Because when you're people pleasing, you're not doing it because you just genuinely have such a big heart and you want everyone to be happy. You're doing it so that they choose you. You're doing it so that they love you. And you're doing it so that they don't run away. Please know, I am not trying to villainize anybody who is a people pleaser. But if I don't fucking call it like I see it, nothing is ever gonna change for you. And you have to remember, fight, flight, and the collapse states have decades of hard data. But you know what doesn't? Fawn. Not yet. It started honestly as a clinical observation and the research is still catching up,

• 17:07Sabrina Zohar?

  which is where it has like, you know, that's where we're starting to try to figure out what's going on. The reason fawn went unstudied so long is the same reason it fucking wrecks dating. It doesn't look like a stress response. It looks like you're just being nice. You're easy. Again, you're low maintenance. You're the cool girl. Let me say this. If you're scared of speaking up because you're worried that the person's gonna run away, I fucking encourage you to do it good. Let me open the door for you because if me simply saying something to you sends you running, the baby, I wasn't missing out on anything if it's that easy for you to walk away. And the reality is like, when you start to do this, nobody flags this as a problem. They flag it as a personality and you should be proud of, but fawning is self abandonment. That's it. You disappear yourself to keep the connection and everyone applauds you for being such a great partner. But the crumble feels like a feast because you stopped expecting a meal.

• 17:52Sabrina Zohar?

  How does that look in dating? Yes, when every cell in your body is telling you no. Becoming whoever they need that week. You're mirroring their taste until you can't even find your own. Apologizing when they bumped into you and you're just being like, it's cool, I'm chill. It's whatever. You want to know why the cool girl or guy fucking finishes last? Cause they're one dimensional. This person doesn't have an actual personality. You know what's really fucking sexy in dating and relationships? Someone that says no, someone that has an opinion, someone that will push back and have a decent fucking conversation with you. So if you're trying so hard to just be cool for the other person, baby, you've already lost yourself in the process. That's fawn, right? Fawn never clocks out. The nervous system is stuck in fawn for a long time and oftentimes it's because you're scared and I totally understand that. Let's talk flop. A lot of you guys were like, I have never fucking heard of this. And by the way, if you're wondering where I get all these audience questions,

• 18:37Sabrina Zohar?

  at the Sabrina Zohar Show on Instagram, I do a question box for all my solos and I'm gonna be doing more and more because that's how I'm actually conceptualizing the episodes. So don't forget to follow along or at least submit some questions for me. Flop is the full collapse. That's not the alert stillness of freeze, the opposite. Your muscles go slack, the mind goes far away and you honestly, you might even feel nothing. It's the body's last resort when escape feels genuinely impossible. So it's the extreme clinical version is tonic immobility. And one of you guys had asked, what's the difference between fawn versus flop? Fawn is active. You're managing the other person to survive, right? You're people pleasing. You're trying to say anything right. How can I just read your body language and intonation and try to figure out what the fuck you're trying to get from me? Flop is the body giving up. It's the body being like, I can't do this.

• 19:21Sabrina Zohar?

  Cut the lights, it will hurt a lot less. Everyone lumps freeze and flop together because both look like stillness, but biologically, they're quite the opposite. Freeze is the alert handbrake. Heart rate down, but engine is on and you're scanning, you're ready, right? Flop is the engine cut. That's it. Freeze is poised to act. Flop is the body deciding it can't and it goes limp and stay, it just can't do it. Now, before I continue, I want to give a trigger warning on the study that was done against SA victims. I don't know if I've ever shared with you guys that I am myself a victim of that. Maybe I have and maybe I haven't. I'm still trying to find ways to share that. All I know is when it happened, I blacked out and can't really remember much, but I flopped

• 20:03Sabrina Zohar?

  because I genuinely believed if I just stayed there, right? The tiger was there and if I just let him sniff around, that maybe he'd leave me alone. So I really want to make sure that I give you guys this trigger warning. If that's too sensitive for you, then please skip the next about 90 seconds. So there was a study done in 2017 in 298 women assessed soon after SA. 70% reported significant tonic immobility during the attack. 48% reported extreme. The body physically overrode the will to move. Can you blame it though? When, as a woman, and this guy was double my size, snuck into my bedroom. I didn't have a choice. I was sleeping. Uh, he was friends of my roommate at the time when I was, uh, 19.

• 20:46Sabrina Zohar?

  And all I remember was just crying and saying, maybe this will be over soon. And it was, thank God. And I was okay. Well, I was okay, I'm ever gonna be. And the crazy thing is I normalized that. And I actually didn't want to tell anybody about it because I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was scared. That's all. I was scared to say something because when I did tell somebody, their response was, why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you yell? Your roommate was home, they didn't help you? No, no, they didn't because they didn't know what the fuck was going on because I was in survival mode. And you know what I'll say? I'm so fucking proud of that girl. I'm so fucking proud of that version of me who stayed, who didn't leave, and who was there for me and protected me and kept me safe because I'm here now.

• 21:30Sabrina Zohar?

  I'm here now to share my story. And I'm grateful that you guys are here to listen. This is what I mean by I'm getting a lot more vulnerable on this show. I want to go back to when I started this podcast and felt so in love with talking to you guys. And I lost myself along the way, but I'm coming back home to myself. And that includes every part of me along the way. The other thing that this study predicted was a lot of those people developed PTSD and severe depression months later. And so if a body will physically refuse to move in the most extreme situation imaginable, then why didn't I just leave? Why didn't I say something is asking the wrong organ in question. The body answered before the mind got to say anything. And realistically, the everyday version is quieter. The breakup that flattens you for weeks, going somewhere else in your head during intimacy

• 22:15Sabrina Zohar?

  you didn't fully really want. That flat, hopeless numbness that isn't sadness, it's just your offline. It's the same branch, it's just a little bit of lower stakes, right? And you can absolutely change this, but not by white knuckling through it. It's not by reading one more thing. The body learned this when it was the smartest available option. And the body learned that something can learn something else. You can't think your way out of a body state. Your work with the body, which is why willpower has failed you, it was never a willpower problem, right? This is for now. For now. Freeze, fawn, flop, none of it is a verdict. It's where your body is for now. And if I learned anything from freeze, the most game-changing advice I've ever fucking heard from my mama was you gotta love yourself more than the need to be loved by other people.

• 22:59Sabrina Zohar?

  You can't hate yourself into change. That's it. You can't hate yourself into being a different person. But you know what you can do? You can show yourself a lot of love and compassion. This is the first time you've been this version. And if you have been freezing and fawning and flopping for fucking years, or you know people that have, then maybe it's time we hold space for them that that's their experience. That's their experience.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 23:50Sabrina Zohar?

  And so now, we get into our Tool of the Week. Yay! I'm excited. I hope this helps you guys, because this is really, really what helps me. And sometimes, it's even me just stopping and being like, "Oh, man, where do I go?" And I had this thought the other day. Have you ever noticed that when something happens that's really scary, or hard, or tough, you remember how you felt, but you don't necessarily remember what you thought? That's because the body legitimately remembers more than the brain does. So when you start to feel something, in the same way that in 10 years, you're gonna look back, you're not gonna remember what you thought in that moment, but you will remember how you feel. So maybe we can make different choices for ourselves. So at the very least, if you're gonna look back, you can remember feeling really fucking good about your decision, and not attacking yourself and feeling like shit the way you always have. So somebody asked, "How do you connect back to your senses?" It feels impossible.

• 24:34Sabrina Zohar?

  It feels impossible, because in freeze and flop, the thinking brain is the part that goes offline. We have to stop trying to think your way back into your senses. So here is the tool. Slowly and on purpose, I want you to turn your head from left to right, and let your eyes land on five real things in the room, and name them. So for me, right now, I'd be like, "There is the camera, there's the door, there's my new book, why am I like this? There is my pink mic stand, and there are candles." The slowness is the medicine. Why this works is you're sending the body proof you're not trapped. Because if you believe right now that you don't have any choices or options, then you're gonna be pushed up against the wall and be like, "Ugh." That you can actually move around, you can look, you can do all of these things. And that is a signal, right?

• 25:18Sabrina Zohar?

  That's the signal a frozen or collapsed system is waiting for. It speaks the body's language, not the mind. If you remember Dr. Russ's episode, anxiety is a body and mind issue. It's not one or the other. You wanna know why they say "overthinking" Is under feeling because when you're overthinking, you think at the next corner, there's the answer and I'm just gonna have it and I'll have that finality. But you're never actually going to have it. All that's doing is your brain is trying to predict what's gonna come to keep you safe and think of every worst case scenario. You wanna fuck and stop overthinking? I want you to start to understand the sensations in your body and actually learn to sit with that. That way you can make some fucking progress. This is a doorway. This is not the whole house. It takes the edge off in the moment. You're rewiring the pattern so it stops running your relationship. That's the work, baby. That's all this has ever been.

• 26:02Sabrina Zohar?

  No one is fucked up and I have to say that to myself because I will legitimately believe that I'm a flawed garment. I found out the other day I have something called pigeon chest. It's comical to say, but it's just a birth defect in my chest. My sternum sticks out in a different way and I kept having these same neck pain and back pain. And I was like, man, can I just like never work out? What's wrong with me? I have a trainer. I'm doing all the right things. No, it's pulling down on my body. And so for me even just to learn about these things for a long time, I was like, you're fucked up. There's something wrong with you. No, dude. Maybe it's just that like this is the way you were born. So you either take it or you can hate yourself for it, but that's not gonna change anything. And so if you've gotten anything from this nervous system series,

• 26:44Sabrina Zohar?

  I hope above all, it's that there has never, ever been anything wrong with you. Your body is doing exactly what the fuck it's meant to do. It's trying to keep you safe. So instead of fighting it and attacking yourself, maybe you can learn to fuck and say thank you and show up for yourself because you have got yourself to this point. No one else fucking did that for you. And I'm god damn proud of you. I am so fucking proud of you for getting through every hard day. I am so fucking proud of you for showing up even when it feels close to impossible. And I am so fucking proud of you for making choices that align with the version that you're becoming and not with the person that you're trying to let go of. That's all you have control over, baby. And I hope that you're as proud of you as I am of you. And I hope you know you're not too much, you're not too cold, you're not any of those things. Your body's actually really fucking smart.

• 27:29Sabrina Zohar?

  You're really smart. You created survival mechanisms that are keeping you safe. I hope that you can see it that way and show yourself a little bit more compassion and grace because with that compassion and grace, we can meet ourselves with love. Oh God, the New Yorker in me hated what I just said because that sounded so Venice and crunchy, but it's true. Sometimes we're maybe I've been in LA for too long, but it's real. And that's me getting rid of all the woo and all of this. I want to also end with something. If you think doing all of this work is going to make your anxiety go away, you're fucking kidding yourself. Anybody on the internet that is telling you just do this and you'll never feel this again is a fucking liar. They're a grifter and they're trying to capitalize on your vulnerability. You learn to live with it. You learn to live with heartbreak and to live with anxiety and to live with grief. Because at the end of the day, you have decided that it is not going to dictate your life.

• 28:14Sabrina Zohar?

  You are going to dictate your life. And now you have tools in order to be able to fucking get through it. So show up like that, baby. Now you get to make choices. Okay, so you might be in freeze, fawn, flop, regulate, go for a walk, do something to come back home to yourself, call a friend. You can co-regulate, you could do something to bring you back to you. And then remember who the fuck you are. You're amazing and you do not need to earn anybody's love, except your own. And so I hope you don't forget that. Guys, as always, don't forget to please, please, please preorder my book. As we get closer, I'll read you guys a little excerpt on the episode. And don't forget to share this episode with a friend, if something you, somebody you think that could benefit from it, please don't forget to leave a rating and review. It means the world. And we're in this together, my babies. I'm trying to show up differently for you because I think you deserve that. And honestly, so do I.

• 28:59Sabrina Zohar?

  And so I'm so grateful if you guys need anything, courses, one-on-one, work with me in any capacity, everything is at sabrina zoe.com. And you know what? Thank you for being here. If you want ad-free, you know, you guys can subscribe. But you know what? I'm just stoked to have you here. And thank you again for showing up as you and allowing me to show up as me. All right, my babies, I'll see you next week. Count on it.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.