Understanding and Overcoming the Freeze Response in Relationships with Lauren Dry

Episode Summary of “Understanding and Overcoming the Freeze Response in Relationships with Lauren Dry”

In this episode of the Communicate and Connect Podcast, Liz talks with relationship coach Lauren Dry about the freeze response and how it shows up in communication, connection, and conflict.

The freeze response is one of the most misunderstood nervous system reactions, especially in relationships. It can look like emotional shutdown, disconnection, or indifference but it’s actually a survival mechanism. Lauren explains why the freeze response happens, how it affects both partners, and what you can do to move from disconnection to reconnection.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What the freeze response looks like in relationships
• How unconscious programming and attachment styles affect your reactions
• Why high-achieving people often experience freeze in their personal lives
• Simple somatic tools to help regulate your nervous system in the moment
• How to set connected boundaries that build safety instead of walls

If you or your partner tend to shut down during conflict or feel emotionally frozen, this episode will give you practical tools and new insight to create a stronger, more connected relationship.

Guest Speaker Bio – “Lauren Dry”

Lauren Dry is a Trauma-Informed Nervous System Specialist, Certified Hypnotherapist, Parts Work Practitioner, and Qualified Transformational Relationship and Parenting Coach. She brings a powerful blend of professional expertise and lived experience to her work with individuals and couples navigating disconnection, overwhelm, and relational stress.

But more than her credentials, Lauren is a wife, mother, and reformed control addict who has personally moved through PTSD, complex trauma, postnatal depression, and emotional chaos. Her journey from survival mode to deep connection and calm informs everything she teaches.

Lauren supports clients in understanding their nervous system, breaking unconscious patterns, and building emotionally safe relationships using her signature RISE Method.

Learn more about working with Lauren on Instagram @theconnectioncatalyst and at www.riseintoregulation.com.

Free Relationship Pattern Assessment

Many couples assume they have a communication problem when they’re actually stuck in a relationship pattern that keeps creating the same conflict.

Take the free Relationship Pattern Assessment to discover what pattern may be keeping you stuck and learn what to focus on next.

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Episode Transcript for “Understanding and Overcoming the Freeze Response in Relationships with Lauren Dry”

 This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual couples and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families.

To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Welcome to The Communicate and Connect podcast for military relationships. With your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go rate review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes.

We also really wanna know what it is you love about our podcast, and if for some reason you’re not loving it, we wanna know that too. Because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships

Introduction to the Freeze Response

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: [00:00:00] Have you been feeling frozen in fear, then you’re in the right place. This is episode 63 of the Communicate and Connect podcast all about understanding and overcoming the freeze response in relationships with Lauren Dry.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Lauren, I’m so glad you’re here. I know that the freeze response is something that’s so common for couples when it comes to communication, so I’m really excited to be talking about this.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: But before we, dive in too far, I was hoping you could tell us just a little bit about you and your services and your experiences really working around the freeze response with couples.

Lauren Dry: Thank you. Oh my gosh, I’m so happy to be here. I love your podcast and everything that you do. one of the things that really caught my eye about your podcast when we first connected was how you support military families.

Lauren Dry: And, I don’t know in America if you have the same term, but I grew up as an army brat, so I really resonated with a lot of the things that you share.

Lauren Dry: so. [00:01:00] I believe through my work that, we all have the capacity to reset at the root. We can find so often that we get stuck in the same patterns.

Lauren Dry: whether that’s the same patterns in the way that we communicate, the same patterns in our relationship, and it can feel really isolating. It can feel really defeating, particularly when we’ve worked really, really hard, so many of us to get to a. Place in our lives where we’re really proud of what we’ve achieved.

Lauren Dry: You know, whether it’s through our career, our family, our children, and the one place where you really wanna have a safe place to rest and enjoy what you’ve created. Often your home base can feel the most unsafe of all. And emotionally, we need that sense of safety. Am I seen? Am I heard, am I supported? And can I give that in return in a way that doesn’t feel like resentment or like I’m carrying the load [00:02:00] alone?

Lauren Dry: So my work is based on. Integrating tools that let you, yeah, understand how your brain works and the communication tools that you need, but also the three pillars that I really. Gravitate and work with, and use as our foundation, a mind, body, and soul. So mind your communication tools, body, your somatics so that you can down regulate and calm down those reactions that have you wondering why you said what you said later on.

Lauren Dry: And allow you to use your body as a tool. That helps you connect better instead of something that you have to work around so that you don’t feel triggered and disconnected as a baseline. And then for me, soul is, unconscious mind support. That’s understanding those unconscious patterns that lead you to, react or respond the way that you do, and then lovingly support you to rewire or reset them in a different way so that you don’t feel like you’re carrying the weight of your relationship [00:03:00] alone or that you don’t feel like.

Lauren Dry: On the flip side, there are, patterns and behaviors that are keeping you stuck that you don’t know how to get out of. You have clarity and you have a little bit more empowerment behind you in terms of, Hey, these are the solutions that I can work with to have a, more, supportive framework at home.

Understanding the Freeze Response in Relationships

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: There’s so many wonderful things that you’re talking about already, just in introducing like, oh, I wanna go down every single path. Yeah. Um, but what I think one thing that stood out in what you said was like, I can be really successful and then struggle. And I hear that a lot with the clients that I work with.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: they’re often incredibly successful in other areas of their life. And then it’s this thing about relationships that makes it extra challenging for them. Yeah. and I’m thinking part of it is the freeze response, but also you talked about like unconscious programming that Yeah.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Related to that. Yeah.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I [00:04:00] think maybe it might be helpful if we just even started with what is the freeze response and how does that make, marriage hard for people?

Lauren Dry: So just to give like a basic overview, just so we’re all working with the same information,

Lauren Dry: we all can be really, really familiar with the survival nervous system responses.

Lauren Dry: And what that means is when you feel triggered or you feel threatened, even if the threat isn’t so to speak. Real, you know, no tiger is chasing you. Your body will process emotional threat in the same way that it perceives a physical threat. And when you feel that threat, and you have this observation and input coming in to your brain and to your nervous system, that there’s danger.

Lauren Dry: So danger that we can perceive can be something as small and slight as the tone of voice change in our partner’s behavior or the change in their body language. Or it can be something more obvious as you’re already in the depths of the fight before you realize it started. but once we feel.

Lauren Dry: the common term used is [00:05:00] triggered. There is a cascade of responses in our body that tells our body nervous system and brain to react in a way that supports us to be defended.

Survival Mechanisms: Fight, Flight, Fawn, and Freeze

Lauren Dry: the four ways that you can categorize that, behavior that defends ourselves is is fight flight, fawn or freeze

Lauren Dry: fight sounds obvious.

Lauren Dry: You know, you wanna have a fight about it. there are a few other ways, but the most obvious one is, arguing.

Lauren Dry: Flight can mean, okay, I can’t cope with this. I’m leaving, I’m walking out, so the most obvious flight response will look like that.

Lauren Dry: Fawn is, how can I please you? I’m feeling a threat, I’m feeling concerned.

Lauren Dry: So how can I please you?

Lauren Dry: And you know that great, analogy in the animal kingdom is a dog rolling over and showing you its belly? Like, I’m not a threat. How can I please you and make you happy so that you don’t think I’m dangerous?

Lauren Dry: Now, this can be looked at as people pleasing, and that’s a whole other, other, um, uh, kettle of fish.

The Impact of Freeze Response on Relationships

Lauren Dry: But the freeze response is really, really [00:06:00] interesting and it can be really challenging to first understand and navigate because at first on the surface, the freeze response looks like not caring when actually, the freeze response is a survival mechanism that’s designed to conserve energy and protect ourselves in situations where active resistance and escape doesn’t seem possible.

Lauren Dry: it’s a responsive futility. So how can I dissociate and disconnect from myself in a way that allows me to feel a semblance of safety even when I don’t feel safe?

Lauren Dry: Now when I often communicate about these survival responses, sometimes the first reaction is, oh, but I don’t feel in danger. I don’t feel like there’s a sense of physical harm, although in some relationships that’s a really serious concern.

Lauren Dry: We’ll just focus on generally physically healthy relationships for now.

Lauren Dry: so there can be a sense of, rejection of the idea that you are dropping into a freeze response at all. But when we analyze what the freeze response looks like [00:07:00] and how it manifests as emotional shutdown which makes connection and communication feel nearly impossible, then we realize how it keeps you stuck.

Lauren Dry: The freeze response is a blend of parasympathetic and sympathetic responses. So sympathetic is movement. Like I have to move, I have to defend myself, but it’s also how can I keep myself really still really small and make sure that I’m not a threat?

Lauren Dry: There are parts that are similar to the fawn response, but essentially the freeze response is, how do I dissociate myself completely from this situation, which can result in emotional disconnection.

Lauren Dry: It can result in resentment, avoidance.

Lauren Dry: And it’s especially hard for people who, as you said, have achieved so much in so many other areas of their life because they are probably the type of people who are so used to using, for example, fight.

Lauren Dry: How can I problem solve?

Lauren Dry: How can I fix this?

Lauren Dry: How can I lean into the point of making sure that I have a [00:08:00] solution right now immediately from a place of hyper vigilance?

Lauren Dry: So what can happen is that people who are so comfortable and so at rest in being able to problem solve, when they are in their home and they find themselves in situations where they can’t connect, where they can’t problem solve, where they feel pushed away or they feel rejected when they do try to problem solve, the freeze response is often the only alternative left to them.

Lauren Dry: How can I remove my sense of self from this situation to be able to cope. And that can be a very lonely place to be, even in your own body, let alone in a relationship.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. I found myself thinking just now about how those different strategies go together. if I’m someone where I typically go into a fighting sort of place.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: If my partner is freezing mm-hmm. it’s lonely for the person who’s frozen and [00:09:00] frustrating for them to be feeling frozen.

Lauren Dry: Yes.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Then also, I’m thinking with a lot of the couples that I work with, very confusing and frustrating for the person who’s not frozen.

Lauren Dry: Yeah. Yeah. It really, really is. And it’s a pattern that you see, and this is like a whole other podcast, but in the attachment style theory as well.

Lauren Dry: You have people who are the chasers and people who are the runners.

Lauren Dry: And that’s a really common pattern in relationships of someone leaning in, trying to solve and do the work of two and the other one trying to maintain connection by actually distancing themselves ’cause they don’t have the skillset and the understanding to be able to navigate the fight response or the chasing response in someone else.

Lauren Dry: So it’s really lonely.

Lauren Dry: It’s really isolating.

Lauren Dry: It’s scary.

Lauren Dry: It can be very threatening for both people because what can happen is we resort to labels.

Lauren Dry: You good? I bad.

Lauren Dry: You attack. I run.

Lauren Dry: You leave me. and I have to do all the work.

Lauren Dry: And those labels, they create this dynamic of this resentment and this [00:10:00] confusion, which comes from a place of,

Lauren Dry: “Hey, how come we could get it right for a while?

Lauren Dry: But now when it’s crunch time and we really need each other, we our own worst enemy.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: As you’re saying that, I’m thinking about how the labels then create more problems for the relationship.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And I’m imagining that is coming from not understanding what is actually happening in their body that it’s not like it’s a choice in the moment.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: that they’re nervous system is reacting.

Lauren Dry: Yeah, and you’re probably familiar with the term splitting as well. It’s a way to compartmentalize and crunch down into the bare basics of the information. I’m so overwhelmed that I can only handle a certain amount of information. I need to be able to know whether you’re a threat or not.

Lauren Dry: And if you’re a threat, then I engage with fight, flight, fawn or freeze. And in this case, for this podcast, we’ll talk about freeze.

Lauren Dry: And so labeling you gives me the ability to compartmentalize, to crunch down and be able to respond from that place as opposed from to a place of overwhelm and confusion [00:11:00] where everything feels unsafe.

Lauren Dry: So when you look at it from that angle as to why we reach for labels, why we try to, put someone, even the person closest to us in a box.

Lauren Dry: Are you good? Are you bad? Are you safe? Are you not safe?

Lauren Dry: That active splitting of using black and white thinking is a tool that our body uses to be able to reduce the amount of information that’s coming into us to make it usable.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. Like just really simple, not complex. I can just, do I protect myself or not? Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And so I’m thinking, I know you really like neuroscience all sorts of like facts and stuff related to this.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: But I’m thinking if part of what’s happening is a choice, why aren’t you doing my strategy? Right? What sort of facts would you want people to know to help them realize this freeze response really is not a choice. It’s stuff that’s happening to you. Yeah.

Curiosity: The Key to Connection

Lauren Dry: I think it’s really helpful to begin with, to understand what each of the survival states looks like. And not only so that we can identify in our partners with, but so that we can identify in ourselves. Because when we are in these situations with our partner, again, it’s so easy to label the other person without showing curiosity for what’s happening in our body.

Lauren Dry: And our body will communicate to the other person much more loudly than our words ever will, whether it’s safe to communicate from a place of authenticity, from a place of repair, from a place of being willing, open, and able to hear you.

Lauren Dry: So having that curiosity is always the first place to begin.

Lauren Dry: Because the opposite of disconnection is not necessarily connection, it’s curiosity and curiosity allows us to be able to create just that little bit of space to understand a situation outside of ourselves that maybe we didn’t have the ability to be able to before because we were in such a challenging nervous system state. So the first place I would start [00:13:00] is curiosity. If there’s no curiosity, then that’s a big flag for our own self.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I’ve never heard someone say it that way, but I really like that. I’m probably gonna write it down. Uh, yeah, right.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: The opposite of disconnection is not connection. It’s curiosity. That it’s the curiosity that would help us get back to connection. that’s what

Lauren Dry: Absolutely.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: together.

Lauren Dry: And I think when we frame it like that, and we start understanding the power of curiosity, then we feel a little bit safer to be able to explore that safely and not from a place of resentment.

Lauren Dry: Because until we understand the power of curiosity, we think curiosity is giving up our own self for the benefit of the other person. We think curiosity is giving in, rolling over, surrendering our own needs and wants in the interests of the other person.

Lauren Dry: But when we understand that, that’s actually when we are not in curiosity, we are a [00:14:00] part of the dynamic.

Lauren Dry: I don’t like saying part of the problem. We’re part of the dynamic, part of the pattern. Then we realize that by staying in that pattern, we are not serving our own needs. Then we start to be able to rewire how we see communication and what communication can be and what it can look like.

Lauren Dry: Because often we really need those reframes to stop the cycle of viewing connection when there is a rupture as a choice between either you or me.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. The labels that I have to somehow let go of the label. Yeah. Be open to the possibility that there’s another way to see what’s happening between us and be curious enough to be checking out is there a different interpretation or way of looking at what is happening.

Lauren Dry: Yeah. And that’s so important when we have feelings and we have needs and we are recognizing that we are not in the place that we wanna be in a marriage, in any relationship, to [00:15:00] start viewing curiosity as a tool that really can be supportive for us and can be really supportive of our own needs.

Lauren Dry: Instead of, “Oh, no. If I engage with curiosity, I’m abandoning myself in some way, shape, or form.

Lauren Dry: So it’s a really powerful first step.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. so what would be step number two, if that’s the first step? What would be step number two?

Personal Story: Overcoming Relationship Challenges

Lauren Dry: So curiosity about your own, patterns and behaviors and how your nervous system’s responding in the moment. And I’ll give you a really powerful, example that I talked to my clients about a lot.

Lauren Dry: So when we were first, my husband and I were first walking down the path of trying to get on the same page ’cause we just couldn’t. We couldn’t get through a day, let alone a year together. Without just tearing each other to shreds. It was a really lonely, it was a really isolating and there was a real deep sense of failure in that season.

Lauren Dry: HOW?

Lauren Dry: We have everything that we need. We are doing the things that everyone tells us to [00:16:00] do. We like to think of ourselves as relatively intelligent people who have the ability to problem solve. There are people who have gotten through far worse things than us. Why can’t we just get along?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah.

Lauren Dry: And not to say that our problems weren’t important and valid and things that we needed to work through.

Lauren Dry: But when you understand the depth and the breadth of what people can recover from and lead full and connected and amazing lives, you realize that with a bit of curiosity, you can find tools that at best repair your relationship and at worst give you a lot of peace and clarity that perhaps you’re not compatible.

Lauren Dry: But that gives you the freedom to surrender and allow a friendship to form instead of a resentful partnership.

Lauren Dry: Now, the very first awakening moment I really had about how blind we can be to our own patterns and behaviors was when I was first. So the journey that I like to go on is, first we experimented with all sorts of counseling. Then I explored what it meant [00:17:00] to use somatics and so the body pillar and then really rewired my unconscious mind to be able to stop these patterns from coming back.

Lauren Dry: And that really created space for my husband to lean in and start doing the work too.

Lauren Dry: Those early stages where we’d experimented.

Lauren Dry: We’d done marriage counseling.

Lauren Dry: We’d done individual therapy.

Lauren Dry: We’d done all sorts of different things either alone or together.

Lauren Dry: And I’d been referred to someone who was a heart-centered relationship mentor. When I tell you I was killing it. We’d walk into these sessions and I’d be like, damn. Yep. I can just spit off fire about what he’s doing wrong, why it’s wrong, why I’m so right and you know, this pattern and I’m doing everything.

Lauren Dry: And the humility that I would speak with was very entertaining in hindsight. I’m doing everything and I want this to work. But what happened is, I think maybe by the second or third session, we had a moment where my husband had recently, in the last few days just behaved in a way that I had taken in my nervous system and [00:18:00] said it was so wildly unsafe that this person is not worth the time of my day.

Lauren Dry: So as I was recounting this to our heart-centered mentor, my husband started interrupting and putting his point across. And I could not have jumped down his throat fast enough.

Lauren Dry: At that point in time, what my nervous system had learned is that past a certain point, you’re justified. That there is a justifiable reason for me to behave a certain way. I get a free pass.

Lauren Dry: And so for the first time, this mentor that we were speaking to was able to see that unconscious pattern in me of, “Okay, you’ve hit a tipping point. You’ve done so much, but also within you, there is a whole pass that you like to use every once in a while.”

Lauren Dry: That means that you are mean. That you are cold. That you are aggressively assertive in your language.

Lauren Dry: And again, what we’re aiming to [00:19:00] do, even though my aim was to protect myself, even though my aim was to be super clear, even though my aim was to provide enough information for us to be able to understand the situation and move forward. My delivery was contributing to the dynamic.

Lauren Dry: It was getting us to the point where, yes, I had a point, but also at that point where solutions started to become available and usable, I would self-sabotage.

Lauren Dry: And I would contribute by tearing the house down. So yeah, there might’ve been a fire in the house, but I’d throw grass gasoline in it and dance on the flames. Because my nervous system believed at that point in time, it was necessary. That lack of safety had hit a limit and my nervous system said, right fight response on full ball.

Lauren Dry: And in that moment was the first time that I had ever been called out objectively in a way that my brain was able to understand. And I think it was something along the lines of, you won’t talk like that again, and you won’t talk like that in my [00:20:00] space. And you won’t behave like that in this way.

Lauren Dry: I had never in an objective, caring, safe, and connected way from a place of assertiveness, but also calm confidence. Which allowed me to integrate the information before.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yes. person you were working with, they weren’t triggered. Their nervous system could be calm and so then they could hold a boundary around grounded that helped you feel safe because their nervous system was regulated.

Lauren Dry: And it’s something that is really signature to the work that I do as well. What is a connected boundary? How can we ensure that there are hard lines in our relationships that are never crossed in a way that allows and creates space for those boundaries to be held?

Lauren Dry: Because what I was doing was trying to hold a boundary by setting the property on fire.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Dry: I was going down in the flames. Now in terms of after curiosity, what you do next?

Recognizing and Regulating the Freeze Response

So curiosity for your own patterns, your own behaviors. Start trying to find a way to [00:21:00] regulate. Because the freeze response specifically and the way that it can show up and disconnect us in relationships might not be as obvious as the fight response.

Lauren Dry: So that’s a really clear example that I like to share with my clients. You know, like girl or mate. I walk the walk, I talk the talk. Like I get it.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah.

Lauren Dry: The freeze response shows up in a different way. It shows up when your partner is trying to fight for your affection, either in a loving way or a non-loving way. There may be a pattern there, and this is where the unconscious mind piece comes in of believing that maybe you are not worthy of that, even though your logical brain tells you you are.

Lauren Dry: There may be a pattern that says, as soon as someone tries to get close to me, this feels unsafe. So I’m going to emotionally shut down. I’m gonna find a way to sabotage. I’m gonna find a way to disconnect because of the overwhelm of what’s required of me.

Lauren Dry: Whether it’s connective overwhelm, or whether it is more obvious overwhelm if someone’s trying to fight with me. And I can’t cope with this. And the freeze response will show up in obvious ways.

Lauren Dry: So in a [00:22:00] debate it’s dissociating and stonewalling. So it’s quite clear in those cases that’s what the freeze response looks like.

Lauren Dry: But also, for so many, the freeze response can look like not having any in interest in emotional or physical intimacy. Not being able to connect enough to your own body to be able to say,

Lauren Dry: “Hey, do I want to physically connect? Do I want to emotionally connect?”

Lauren Dry: And the dialogue in the brain will say things like,

Lauren Dry: “Oh, well, create excuses. Maybe even create fights and find ways to physically and emotionally dissociate and have a reason to rest and withdraw back into that freeze response.”

Lauren Dry: And so it leaves the other person feeling really physically and emotionally disconnected. Particularly if someone is not aware of it, because curiosity hasn’t been used. And so what we do from that place of a freeze response is create excuses.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Mm

Lauren Dry: Oh well, he didn’t take the trash out.

Lauren Dry: Whatever the reason is, it becomes extremely justified. And I want the audience to remember when I was in this moment with this heart-centered mentor of how justified I [00:23:00] felt to use that fight flight fawn freeze response.

Lauren Dry: We need to start understanding and showing loving attention to when we are using a survival system response. Otherwise, we can’t disconnect it. We can’t overcome it.

Lauren Dry: And in that case, even if the other person is completely in the wrong, we will not be able to find windows that support us to get our needs met because we’ll be burning the house down on the way out.

Unconscious Programming and Survival Strategies

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, I’m maybe like taking in everything you’re sharing and trying to contrast them a bit in my mind. Because I’m hearing the strategy is different. But it’s one of those four survival strategies.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And there’s unconscious programming that probably is unique and varies from person to person. But there is some sort of unconscious programing that’s related to this survival strategy. And I know you gave your example of at a certain point I have a pass.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: And I’m hearing that for somebody who might have a freeze response, they might have [00:24:00] some sort of programming that says ” people actually aren’t gonna wanna be with me. I don’t actually deserve their love, care, and attention.”

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: This is somehow fake. This is not safe. Don’t trust it. Make sure to pull away.

Lauren Dry: Yes.

Dissociation and Physical Intimacy

Lauren Dry: And so the unconscious mind will seek reasons to justify dropping into the freeze response. And what’s really interesting is the freeze response can be any kind of dissociative tool.

Lauren Dry: And what’s really interesting about that is we think of the freeze response as shutting down. And I do use physically intimacy as an example, often for the freeze response. But equally the same pathways are utilized when some people use physical intimacy to dissociate completely,

Lauren Dry: What that can look like is,

Lauren Dry: “Oh, okay, I don’t wanna have this fight. I don’t wanna have this debate. So, why don’t I distract and dissociate by just engaging in physical intimacy and then pretending that everything’s fine, you know, and that’s dissociating from self. That’s just dissociating from our own feelings and needs in the interests of trying to find a baseline level of the mask of everything being okay.

Fear of Abandonment and Hypervigilance

Lauren Dry: [00:25:00] Because the thought of dropping into and processing conflict in any way, shape, or form feels like to the unconscious mind, an invitation into disconnection. Because at the base of so many of our unconscious wounds and the reasons why we use fight, flight, fawn or freeze, but we’re using freeze as the example today, is this deep fear of abandonment.

Lauren Dry: If I engage in this fight.

Lauren Dry: If I bring up my own feelings and needs.

Lauren Dry: If I show curiosity of any way, shape, or form.

Lauren Dry: What’s going to happen is I’m going to be seen as a threat and I will be abandoned.

Lauren Dry: Whether that abandonment is physical.

Lauren Dry: Whether that abandonment is emotional.

Lauren Dry: Whether it’s my own interpretation.

Lauren Dry: The threat underneath that is this deep fear of abandonment.

Lauren Dry: And so in order to navigate that fear of abandonment from an unconscious mind patterning and wiring that was created many, many years ago for so many people, sometimes more recently, that originally was designed to protect us and actually worked.

Lauren Dry: So, for [00:26:00] example, if you were raised in a family that perhaps didn’t have the emotional awareness that was required for you to feel like you could be your whole healed and authentic self.

Lauren Dry: What would happen is anytime you started to show your authentic self, your authentic feelings, whether they were authentic feelings of joy or sadness or anger, that would either get shut down or you would be emotionally or physically abandoned in the sense that your unconscious brain interpreted, it’s not safe for me to be myself.

Lauren Dry: It’s not safe for me to get the connection on a deep level that I really need. So what I’ll do is I’ll adapt. And so we create these pathways that say to ourselves and in analysis of the situation around us and in all our relationships, where can I stay hypervigilant and hyper aware as to where the threat is that disconnection is about to happen.

Lauren Dry: And when I think it’s about to happen, whether it’s really about to happen or not, how can I engage with my fight, flight, fawn and freeze response? So in this case, the freeze response.

Lauren Dry: How can I dissociate in a way that, allows me to maintain a [00:27:00] semblance of connection without being abandoned, but also prevents us from ever having that deep, authentic, and safe connection that we really need.

Lauren Dry: Because our body is constantly seeking in a state of hypervigilance where the threat is. And then creating those situations even often when they don’t exist.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, I was, thinking about, sometimes my husband will be like, oh, is that a trap? or he’ll say, mm-hmm. This feels like a trap. And, I’m thinking this feels like that moment of if I get them wrong, it won’t go well. I’ll lose the connection with you, so I’m not gonna step into the trap moment.

Lauren Dry: Exactly, exactly. And so many couples will resonate with that feeling of, is this a trap? You know, whether I answer it one way or another, am I doomed?

Lauren Dry: the fact that he can articulate that, it’s quite powerful. ’cause what often so many couples do, they don’t ask if it’s a trap. They behave as though it’s a trap. And they will often utilize the freeze response in return.

Lauren Dry: So what happens is that it looks like the other person doesn’t care when you’re asking them a question or you’re trying to problem solve or you are in your own fight or whatever the nervous system response is.

Lauren Dry: And the other person, because so much of our communication has nothing to do with our words, even when we’re trying our hardest, our body might be communicating like a big middle finger.

Lauren Dry: and so what the other person does is they emotionally, physically shut down. They engage with their own freeze response. And they think, well, I’m not going to get onto this trap trap one way or another. And so that dissociation, even if they’re saying the right things and doing all the right things, often, what the other person perceives is a complete emotional disconnection, withdrawal and dissociation.

Lauren Dry: And they see that as a threat.

Recognizing and Overcoming the Freeze Response

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: If this is happening either I’m freezing or I see my partner freezing. Do you have tips for how either individuals or couples could try to overcome this in their relationships so that they can feel successful, feel like they’re not just stuck in this [00:29:00] pattern, but feel like they have this way out of it, I guess.

Lauren Dry: If we’re trying to solve the freeze response itself, we need to look at it from two angles. So one is the person who’s perceiving the freeze response. So first of all, if you have the ability to even discern whether the other person is in a freeze response or not.

Lauren Dry: Amazing. You’ve done 80% of the work. Because what you are already doing is you’re showing curiosity as opposed to that splitting response of like, you’re bad, you’re disconnecting, you are dissociating from me.

Lauren Dry: Round applause. If you can recognize that your partner is in a freeze response at all.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Mm-hmm.

Self-Compassion and Rewiring Patterns

Lauren Dry: We’ll move over to the person who feels the freeze response at all. First of all, the most important step before you do anything at all, because if we don’t get this first step right, none of the other tools will make a bit of difference.

Lauren Dry: The first step that we need to utilize is self-compassion. Because we judge ourselves so much more harshly than anyone else will.

Lauren Dry: And if we even recognize that we are utilizing a freeze response, we’ll either drop into a shame cycle or we [00:30:00] will drop even further into dissociation to try and defend or protect ourselves from ending something that on an unconscious mind level, we believe is protecting us.

Lauren Dry: However, we need to understand that an attitude of fix and defend. So even that freeze response and dissociating is an attitude of fix and defend, is an attitude of hyper vigilance which is the enemy of connection.

Lauren Dry: But trust and curiosity, even for our own self, is the solution that creates connection first within ourselves and then with other people.

Lauren Dry: So trust and curiosity, having that self-compassion, that’s where we must first start. And I know that it sounds a little woowoo to some people. But I can give you all the tools in the world, and if you can’t engage with self and compassion, it’s just like pouring water all over the floor. It’s just useless and messy.

Lauren Dry: So start with self-compassion. These patterns and these behaviors were created for a purpose. Trust them. And also after you’ve trusted them and listened to the little bit, [00:31:00] let’s redirect them. We don’t need them anymore.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah.

Lauren Dry: That’s the first step. Super, super, super, super, super. I cannot stress how important this first step is and how often it’s overlooked.

Lauren Dry: The second step is to understand that this is a pattern.

Lauren Dry: This is wiring that was created, and so in order to rewire it, you can actually use tools to downregulate that response. It is a nervous system response. It is wiring, it is patterning.

Lauren Dry: You are working with a body that is flushed full of hormones that are designed to create disconnection because if you are in a fight flight fawn freeze response, your body believes that there is a physical danger, that you are in danger, that your life is in danger. let’s honor that for a second.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Mm-hmm.

Somatic Tools for Downregulation

Lauren Dry: If your body is flushed with all of these chemicals. And your heart rate is really high, your digestive system is slowed down or halted completely. Or sometimes for some people it’s the complete opposite as well.

Lauren Dry: These are physiological responses and we have physiological solutions.

Lauren Dry: So I actually have a free YouTube video that I’d be happy to send to you the link to use for your podcast.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Absolutely

Lauren Dry: We can use some somatic tools. So these are free tools that you can just practice and it’s quite a short video. But it talks about how you can bridge from dissociation for example. So this specific video is all about the freeze response.

Lauren Dry: Back in to self connection.

Lauren Dry: And when you’re at back in self connection and you’ve down regulated these response using simple tools that you can use in the moment. So many somatic tools look beautiful on paper, but you’re not going to pause in the middle of an argument in the kitchen so that you can do the downward dog.

Lauren Dry: Like, that’s just not gonna happen. We need somatic tools that are accessible to us in the moment.

Lauren Dry: Get curious about what those somatic tools will look like for you in the video. I go over a couple of really simple ones. Some of them are gonna feel really natural and normal until the other person you, it’s gonna feel like walking around cracking like a duck.

Lauren Dry: So, just experiment with what feels really, really good. But essentially for freeze response, we wanna be engaging the body in any way, shape, or form. Even if it’s just tapping your [00:33:00] fingers and you can tap your fingers with it at like an internal affirmation statement, which can sound like pieces within me as you tap each finger.

Lauren Dry: It sounds a little woowoo, it sounds a little I suppose disconnective from the situation that you’re in. But just remember, if you are associating with your body in any way, shape, or form, you are reminding your body that you have a body.

Lauren Dry: if you’re kind of trying to come out from dissociation, you’ve separated from your body completely.

Lauren Dry: You don’t wanna feel your body.

Lauren Dry: You don’t wanna feel your nervous system.

Lauren Dry: You don’t want to connect with your own self at all.

Lauren Dry: So the first aim is to come back into your body a little bit and downregulate so that you have the capacity to take a few big breaths.

Lauren Dry: And any parents out here will tell you right now, if you tell a child who’s angry and frustrated to take 10 big breaths. You know what that child’s gonna say to you? And it’s not gonna be, yes. Okay, sure. Let me take 10 big breaths.

Lauren Dry: We’re the same. We’re not gonna stand there in the middle of an argument and take 10 big breaths. So let’s use some bridging tools to get us there. Even if they’re super simple, they’re bridging tools for a purpose. Okay? It’s just a bridge over to deeper the regulation.

Connected Boundaries Method

Lauren Dry: And then once you have understood and navigated and worked through what the freeze response is and how to disconnect from it, the next tool that you need is something that I speak about often, not only in my program, but on my page is some form of boundaries but in a new way.

Lauren Dry: So the method that I use, that signature to rise is called the connected boundaries method. It’s a way of understanding how we operate at a baseline level.

Lauren Dry: What are the values that we have at for communication?

Lauren Dry: What are the values that we have for our lifestyle?

Lauren Dry: What are the values that we have for our core?

Lauren Dry: And then understanding how to lovingly hold those boundaries in a way that creates bridges across to the other person. If that person starts to burn that bridge on their way over, how do we navigate in a loving way? And I want you to remember the first heart centered mentor that I had in a loving, secure, and calm way.

Lauren Dry: No, we don’t talk to each other like that. I’m happy to keep talking to you. I’m happy to keep connecting with you, but my brain’s gonna start shutting down and I’m gonna push you away, and I’m gonna do my own reactive behaviors if we keep down this [00:35:00] path.

Lauren Dry: Loving connected boundaries allow the relationship to stay at a high standard.

Lauren Dry: Loving boundaries are the difference between secure connection and walls.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Oh yeah. That feels huge when you say that. Yeah. ’cause so often I see people trying to set boundaries and they create walls.

Lauren Dry: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: We cut off from each other versus saying, no, I still wanna be with you if you can treat me this way.

Lauren Dry: Exactly. Exactly. And that’s why we call it the Connected Boundaries Method because it really supports people to understand and reset what boundaries are.

Lauren Dry: In pop psychology at the moment, everyone’s about boundaries and yeah, you know, you gotta look after yourself. And if they’re not treating you right, just leave. And look. There’s a time and a place for that. I’m gonna be the first person to say that.

Lauren Dry: But in the majority of our relationships in navigating conflict, no, hard line, you or me boundaries, don’t only not work, but they remove the capacity from you to be able to have nuanced relationships.

Lauren Dry: Whereby you understand, okay, is this person just different to me?

Lauren Dry: Have we just not had a conversation in a way where we understand each other?

Lauren Dry: Or are they so different from me and their value system is so greatly opposed to mine. Because I’ve shown curiosity, I can understand what their value system is. We are talking about anyone here from the check to your husband or your wife or your boss.

Lauren Dry: And you get to be able to say, well, now that I’ve shown some curiosity, I get what your value system is around communication.

Lauren Dry: And then you have the ability to understand, okay, well is there room for us to connect and rewire how we communicate together? ’cause we understand each other’s values or is there not? And if there’s not, you get to be able to say, oh, okay, well that’s cool for you, but I actually can’t communicate if that’s what you’re asking of me.

Lauren Dry: For example, I acknowledge right now hand on heart. I have a terrible sense of humor. Don’t tease me. I’ll cry.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, [00:37:00] yeah. I’m very similar.

Lauren Dry: Right? So does that make me a bad person? No. But should I be married to someone who believes that it’s okay to tease relentlessly? That’s silly.

Lauren Dry: It’s not gonna work for me. It’s not gonna work for him. So what I can do is if I’m going to be in a marriage with someone who teases relentlessly and believes that that’s an okay communication level and value, there needs to be an agreement in place.

Lauren Dry: So that’s the bridge that you use, that level one of the connected boundaries Bible, how can I meet you in our communication values so that we both feel safe?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Dry: Now if it’s’s your brother-in-law, if it’s a family member, what you can also do is say, Hey, this is someone who I don’t live with 24/7 and I’ve been spending so much time judging them for someone who teases, but now what I see is that that’s their sense of humor and that’s what they value in connection.

Lauren Dry: I can allow them to have that while also not judging them for it. It’s just simply a different value [00:38:00] to me.

Lauren Dry: Whereas in your own home, you get to create a new agreement from a place of trust and understanding. I’ve been judging you a lot because you think it’s okay to tease me, but now I understand that that’s just how you view connection.

Lauren Dry: But now I understand myself enough ’cause I’ve shown enough curiosity. That at level one of my communication boundaries. I can’t actually feel connected when someone’s teasing me. I feel threatened. I feel hurt, I feel sad. So what’s an agreement that we can create so that we can start talking the same language again?

Lauren Dry: ’cause that’s exactly what it is. One person speaking Mandarin and the other person speaking Swedish. So you get what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That was a fun example. That made no sense.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: That’s okay. Yeah. But I think, I mean the message got across, you know?

How to Work with Lauren Dry

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Right. So I’m thinking, I love this connected boundary approach that you have. And I’m thinking like for anybody who’s listening, if they wanted to go through that with you or how would they work with you if they wanted to learn how to do this?

Lauren Dry: Okay, so for anyone who’s curious and wants to dive a bit deeper into what the rise method is about the mind, body, soul pillars, I have a free training, so you can just go to my website.

Lauren Dry: It’s in my bio. I have a chat channel, a broadcast channel that’s recently been launched where we talk about is the connected boundaries method at the moment. And if you’d like a book a call with me to chat about whether the RISE program is something that’s a fit for you, you can message me on Instagram.

Lauren Dry: You can hang out and just ask me some questions and see whether that’s been the fit that you were looking for or whether you just have more questions about some of the content I share. I really try to do my best to give out supportive information and supportive tips.

Lauren Dry: And of course, specifically for the freeze response, there’s the YouTube video that you can go and watch anytime.

Lauren Dry: If you just look up Lauren Dry or the connection catalyst, it’ll come up.

Lauren Dry: But yeah, I would love to chat to you, so if you get stuck on anything, come and hang out over on Instagram. We would love to connect and support you to feel safe again in your relationships. Because that’s all what we all want, and it’s what we all need.

The Importance of Strong Connections

Lauren Dry: I’m a bit of a studies buff when it comes to relationships. I nerd out a little, and one of my favorite studies was one of the longest studies done by Harvard around health and health longevity and life satisfaction.

Lauren Dry: And they assessed all demographics, whether you were rich, whether you were poor. What country you lived in, whether you went to Harvard, whether you didn’t graduate high school.

Lauren Dry: And what they were looking for. Well, what were the determining factors for health and longevity? And the sole, number one contributor to satisfaction and longevity, specifically health wasn’t wealth, corrected for all of those other indicators.

Lauren Dry: It was actually the strength of our connections, in our relationships. So, that can be the strength of the connection that you have with the guy at the service station whenever you get your gas.

Lauren Dry: But essentially, we have the ability to drop into our own body and have safety and authenticity within ourselves and the ability to build strong and safe connections at any level. Whether it’s someone down the road or the partner that we live with in our own house, that is the strongest indicator of whether we can live a health and satisfying and long life.

Lauren Dry: And I just love that and I love how important this work is.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, it is so important. Riches is like so many areas of life, not just feeling happy in your relationship.

Lauren Dry: Exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah. Well, Lauren I’ll include all of the links to everything you mentioned in the show notes. So if anybody wants to easily be able to click and find you, they can. And thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Lauren Dry: Thank you, Liz. it’s honestly been the best. I’ve had such a ball and thank you for having me and hanging out and talking about something that I’m so passionate about and I hope that your audience gets value for.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Yeah, I think a lot of people will.

Lauren Dry: Thanks, Liz.

 Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, please take a second to go rate review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for our free 10 week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it.

While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy, and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one.

Until next time.