The build-up of frozen tension
How stress gets stuck in our bodies
In a previous post, I shared that I was going on an embodiment journey and would take you with me. Then, I wrote a whole bunch of draft posts and put them away for months. I was scared to put myself out there and struggled with a bit of imposter syndrome, wondering: who am I to write about this topic? But I conquered my fears and I am here, ready to share.
It was a regular Monday morning at work. I didn’t feel particularly excited about starting my workweek, nor did I dread it. Even though I didn’t feel like I could bring all of myself to work, I generally had a pretty good time. My job was a space where I felt intellectually challenged, and I enjoyed spending time with my colleagues.
This particular Monday morning, I was just installing myself behind my desk and about to get up for a walk to the coffee machine when my manager peaked his head around the corner. “Hi, morning!” he said. “I have to run to a meeting, but there is something I want to discuss with you. Can you come by my office after lunch?” - “Sure,” I said, and before I could ask him what he wanted to talk about, he was gone again. I felt a slight panic rising in my belly, and immediately, my head took over. What is it he’d want to talk about? Did I do something wrong? What did I do wrong? Was it that email I sent out on Friday? Did I forget something? What did I forget? I triple-checked my to-do list from last week and re-read all the emails I had sent. Nothing indicated a big mistake, but my system was already dysregulated. I felt anxious and insecure for no apparent reason.
As it turned out, there was no need for alarm — I can’t even remember what our chat was about. But my body had catapulted itself into a full-blown stress response. With no tools to release the tension building up in my body, I entered a state of freeze and spent the rest of the morning biting my nails while staring at the blank page that was supposed to become a memo.
I tried to push away the fear of not-good-enoughness, eating away at my self-esteem. An open-plan office filled with all of my colleagues was not the place where I wanted those to run free. I didn’t want anyone to notice that I was feeling anxious about a quick chat with the boss. My breath was shallow, and my thoughts were running in circles, but on the outside, nothing gave away the stress I was experiencing internally. By the time lunch came around, I was feeling completely numb, and I didn’t even notice I was hungry – something that’d normally start around 11.30 am.
Going into his office after lunch, I remember feeling very tense, my heart beating in my throat. Ten minutes later, I came out, and I didn’t feel relief. Instead, I immediately started to beat myself up for making such a fuss about nothing. I punished myself for wasting a whole morning of feeling scared for nothing, and with my strong mind, I pushed away those feelings of shame and anger even further.
Running on auto-pilot
Everything we experience daily is processed by our brains. Most of it is filtered out and processed unconsciously—thank goodness. More than 90% of our thoughts, actions, and reactions are unconscious. This auto-pilot mode is helpful in many instances, like getting dressed in the morning, cycling to work, or cooking your favorite meal. The fact that we don’t have to think about cutting an onion or putting our socks on saves us time and energy.
Yet, if we encounter a stressful situation, it is often less beneficial that our unconscious primitive brain drives our (re)actions. Especially because most stressful situations in modern-day life are not really life-threatening. But when we encounter them, our brain’s primitive alarm system gets triggered anyway. It gears up our bodies to get into fight, flight, or freeze mode, whether the threat is real or perceived. Like it did for me when my boss asked me to come in after lunch. This is where our brain’s conscious control center should kick in to assess the threat and –in case of a false alarm– bring us back to a state of homeostasis. However, layers of frozen tension stored in our bodies make it harder for the brain to distinguish between real and perceived threats, leaving us in a full-body stress response.
The build-up of frozen tension
A stress response involves a big buildup of energy. Fighting back or running away allows us to discharge this excess energy and return to a state of calmness afterward. When we look at nature, we see that animals instinctively discharge compressed energy through shaking, trembling, and sweating. This is how they return to a state of equilibrium and homeostasis after a threat has passed and how they prevent the tension from getting stuck in their bodies. In our modern-day life, we rarely get the chance to fight back or run away, and we often fail to complete the stress cycle, resulting in more layers of frozen tension being stored in our bodies.
As you might have noticed from the story at the beginning of this post, I was much better at pushing my feelings away rather than welcoming them and letting them run through my system. I realize I must have done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times and that many of these suppressed feelings still show up as layers of frozen tension, even though I can hardly ever relate them back to a specific situation. Incomplete stress cycles get stuck in our bodies as layers of frozen tension and keep showing up in our lives until we give them the attention, time, and space to unravel and release them.
✍🏻 When was the last time you felt your body entering a stress response despite no real threat? Perhaps you felt unsafe walking home alone at night? Perhaps the person you’re dating didn’t reply to your message? How easy was it for you to feel what was happening in your body then? And if that was hard, what made it so? Let me know in the comments!