Flight, Fight…or Freeze? 5 Tips to Reboot an Exhausted Nervous System

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01]Are you feeling kind of unmotivated?

[00:00:04]There's things you want to do, but you can't really seem to get off the couch and do them. Um, you've kind of gone more into response mode than initiation mode. Your get up and go has just kind of gotten up and gone. Um, you might think you're depressed. You might say, "Oh my god, I am so lazy. I'm blown through another day." You might even tell yourself that it's just a function of age. This is what we're like when we're in our 60s and 70s. But what you're probably not telling yourself is this other very real possibility, which is your nervous system has been so stressed from lowgrade trauma for so long that it has just gone on the fritz.

[00:00:48]This is the second part of my four-part series about what happens when you've outgrown your own life. And on the first one, we talked about why smart women stay stuck. And today, we're going to take that a little bit deeper and going to talk about the fact that when people say the words anxiety, stress, trauma, the phrase that comes out usually pretty soon after that is fight or flight.

[00:01:13]That's how we think of anxiety manifesting itself. the open jitteriness, the pacing, the the obvious panic, the shortness of breath, we think of it in a very specific way, but there's actually a third F, flight or fight or freeze. And while fight and flight tend to happen after a dramatic event, you know, something very traumatizing and sudden and panicinducing like you're in a wreck.

[00:01:47]Um, the third one, freeze, is more often the result of a kind of longterm trauma, a kind of a muted daily, constant trauma that older women, it seems like, to me, are especially likely to be victimized by. So, let me read you this because it hit me in the gut, and it might hit you in the gut, too. Uh the freeze reaction is more a response to long periods of stress, emotional overload, caregiving, and people pleasing.

[00:02:24]H sound familiar?

[00:02:27]It's usually not one event. is usually a lifetime of lowgrade stress and it shows up as a flatness kind of a shutdown effect kind of a lack of motivation and focus. You can even have the sense that you're standing back from yourself and observing your own life like you're seeing yourself like a character in a play. You might have difficulty making decisions. You might have it might have affected your sleep. But the one that really jumped out to me is that if you're in this frozen state, you feel simultaneously tired and wired. In other words, you're exhausted, but there's a jitteriness underneath the exhaustion.

[00:03:12]That one only spoke to me. I felt that before. And it's really just a sign that you've burned out your nervous system.

[00:03:18]This low-level stress is accumulated up to the point that your nervous system simply can't take it anymore. and it almost emotionally paralyzes you. And a lot of times this doesn't really completely hit women until that caregiving busy part of their lives is over. It's kind of a lingering effect, kind of a downstream effect of a life that spent basically whether you were a homemaker or a caregiver or you're in the work workforce, a life that was spent putting out fires and really taking care of everybody else and being on kind of constant emotional vigilance.

[00:03:57]And when that is over and you're like, "Okay, okay, I'll just rest. I'll chill for a couple of weeks and then I've got all these things I want to do, but that time passes and you still can't get up ahead of steam to do those things.

[00:04:14]That's a sign that your nervous system is still tired. There's a lingering exhaustion from that many years of playing nurse to the world. I'll read another quote. The frozen response is most likely to happen when someone has been hyper responsible, extremely productive, accommodating, and emotionally on for perhaps decades.

[00:04:41]In other words, it's more likely to happen if you're a woman.

[00:04:46]After a while, your body stops signaling distress in the normal ways. It stops signaling it with panic and it starts signaling it with you just shutting down.

[00:04:57]Uh I always think too that sometimes it's like the kind of overload that circuit can get. Uh we all know that experience that you've got like 10 things plugged into your kitchen wall and then you plug in one more, you put in the blow dryer one day and the whole circuit breaks and they all go off at once. And that's a little bit about what we're talking about here. Um, your nervous system is kind of like an electrical circuit. It's humming along and it might be overloaded on the verge of overloading, but it is it's holding all together and the toaster's working and the microwave is working and that lamp over there is still burning and you just put one more thing on it and the whole thing shuts down. And that's where a lot of women are. um once they retire, once they're in their 60s or 70s, there is that accumulated exhaustion is just built up to the point where all of a sudden they can't seem to really do anything. Everything is overwhelming.

[00:05:51]And they use that word a lot, overwhelmed.

[00:05:55]I mean, your poor nervous system is just saying, "I can't do this anymore. I can't sustain this pace."

[00:06:02]So, as long as we're frozen like this, it's unrealistic to think that we are going to be able to make any decisions or get anything done. We need to reboot our nervous systems. We need to get back inside our bodies. And our number one ally in this fight to get back inside our bodies is also our number one adversary. And it is this enormous nerve that runs through our entire body called the vagus nerve. Now, this isn't like Viva Las Vegas. It's Vegas B A G- A S and it is from the same root, the same vague of as the word bag or vagabond. Something that wonders, something that travels because this nerve wonders through all the major organs of our body. It starts at the base of our brain, goes around our ear, down our throat, then it goes through our heart, lungs, all of our major digestive organs. It is actually the superighway, the albeit curvy and indirect superighway, but the superighway that connects the mind and the body, the brain and the gut. So when the Vegas is functioning, things are humming along.

[00:07:13]When the Vegas goes kapoot because it has been abused and overstimulated for too long, then nothing really works.

[00:07:23]Um, luckily there are ways to actually tone this vagus nerve to actually get it functioning better. And that is what I want to talk about for the remainder of this video because I think no matter what ills you getting your vag nerve on your side of the fight is a huge advantage.

[00:07:44]Now, I have been trying to make friends with my Vegas nerve for a long time. Uh, I faint.

[00:07:52]I just faint all the freaking time. I've fainted a lot in my life under all kinds of occasions. I come from a long line of basket cases. My grandfather fainted all the time. My mother fainted all the time. Now I faint. Now my son faints.

[00:08:06]And [laughter] I mean and it's always described when you when you become overwhelmed and the circuit in your brain flips like the circuit in your wall and you faint. It's described as a bagel event. I have lay in emergency rooms across the country and the world asking a series of ER doctors who have just pronounced I had a bagel event, what the hell is a bagel event and how do I make sure I don't have another one? And their answers to this are pretty vague.

[00:08:39][clears throat] Um because it's really not a cut and dried thing. that I have learned from from following up on this, it's possible to increase your veagal tone to actually soothe your vag nerve. The good thing about this is that all of these can actually be done in public. I mean, you can do them at home and this what I suggest is that you do them at home as kind of a preemptive strike. Uh that you on a daily basis, I'm going to give you five. Choose the one that works best for you or the one that strikes you as least res uh ridiculous cuz these are kind of weird. Heads up in advance. They look a little strange. Um the one that works for you, the one that you can can tolerate the most and you can do it preemptively to gradually tone your veagal nerve and make you less likely to respond in a dramatic way to stress.

[00:09:31]Also though, if you feel yourself spacing out, if you feel yourself on the verge of a panic attack or you feel yourself, which is more common in the frozen um type of protocol, if you feel yourself kind of just feeling spacey and floaty and disassociating a little bit, you can do these five things. The first one won't surprise you at all. It's what everybody suggests for everything. It's a deep breathing technique. And basically, you breathe in through your nose for four beats.

[00:10:01]And make sure that you're breathing all the way to your belly. You can put a hand on your chest and a hand on your belly. Hand on your chest should not be moving during this. The hand on your belly should be gradually going out as you inhale four beats. Then you hold it two and then you exhale six out of your mouth. So four to six. Let's do the four in. [snorts] I like that 426 method. Uh some people have different they box breathe four in whole for four, four out, empty for four. I don't think it matters how you count it. I think the key thing is that you're counting because the counting slows you down. It forces you to inhale and exhale more slowly, but also it gives you something to do with your mind. If as long as you're counting, your mind is somewhat distracted and it can't keep darting around whatever situation has gotten you upset enough you're needing to do the deep breathing in the first place. It's a distraction.

[00:11:06]The counting is a distraction.

[00:11:09]That one's okay. I think it's a little vanilla. You've probably heard it a thousand times, so you're like, uh, yon.

[00:11:15]The second one, I think, is a little more interesting. Um, you you can humming is great for the bagel. The veagal nerve is closest to the skin. And this is going to be a factor in several things we talked about. Right here is from behind the ear going around and into your throat. This is your chance to directly influence your your vag nerve.

[00:11:38]When you home kind of sounds like the sound in yoga, doesn't it? There's a reason for that.

[00:11:51]When you hum, it's like you put a vibrator inside your head. All the vibrations are bouncing around your cranium. It actually massages the vagus nerve. So, it leaves the brain in a nice happy state of mind because you massaged it on the way out the door. And people have headsets on all the time now. You can walk around humming. I don't think anybody would think anything about it.

[00:12:14]So, I am actively trying now to hum. I'm trying to trigger myself to hum at stop lightss. So if you ever pull up beside me and I'm humming that's why I'm trying to soo my vagus nerve in the same boat because it again gets to the fact the Vegas nerve is close here is you can put your fingers inside your ears. Put one finger inside your ear, the other finger below your earlobe, and just kind of circle circle both fingers. And you're stretching your ear. And do it five one direction and then five the other direction. Again, the tugging of the ear around the skin, that's right where the vagus nerve is lying, right under that skin, massages the vagus nerve. Another very calming thing you can do for it.

[00:13:03]And it's interesting because when you stimulate the vagus nerve, stimulation sounds like it jacks you up. When you stimulate the vagus nerve, you calm down. It activates the parasympathetic uh nervous system. So, we are trying to stimulate our vagus nerve, which it sounds like stimulating a nerve is a bad thing to do if you're if you're already in a bad place. uh you're actually stimulating the best nerve you can stimulate to calm yourself down. So there is that rotation in the ears back both directions. And I think I do this unconsciously. A couple of you have written down and going, "Why do you pull your ear all the time?" And I do. I constantly fiddle with my ears. I think my subconscious is trying to send me a signal. Girl, calm down that freaking Vegas snur. Give us a break here. So that's another one. Then another one is to stretch the muscles around the vagus nerve because sometimes the v you know how tense you can get around the base of your face. We clench our jaws, our necks stay in a total state of tension and sometimes the poor vagus nerve doesn't get off to a very good start on its journey down to your stomach because the muscles around it are clenching it. It doesn't make it happy. So you can stretch the muscles again right here.

[00:14:21]So, what you do is you raise your chin and you kind of circle your neck one away and then you tilt your head towards the front of your body.

[00:14:33]Hold it like that for about 5 seconds.

[00:14:35]Go back with it straight. Come back.

[00:14:38]Now, your chin is slightly elevated.

[00:14:40]You're not just flopping your head back and forth like you're a windshield wiper or a dog on the way to the park. Elevate your chin slowly. Turn it. Make sure don't try and do them all three at the same time. You'll just wrench your neck.

[00:14:53]Slowly turn it when you're in a good position. Then tilt your head. That really puts pressure on the perfect place to stretch the muscles around the vagus nerve and releases the clinch in case they're clenched. And then the fifth one is cold. Expose it to cold.

[00:15:12]Now, this is why cold plunge pools have become such a big deal. They are great for your vag nerve. I mean, they're good for your muscles and a lot of things, too, but they have the advantage of being really good for your for your veagal response and very calming. There is a plunge to pool at the place where I work out. I have not managed to get past my knees. This thing is arctic. And there are people that go in there and sit and they duck under and they do all kinds of stuff. But I don't know that it's in my future to do that.

[00:15:43]Apparently, a cold shower works the same way. get in in kind of a warm shower and turn it gradually colder. The coolness is actually much more soothing than heat. We've been taught to think heat is soothing. Actually, cool is s more soothing to the bagel nerve. If you're like, I am not getting What are you talking about, Kim? What you talking about, Kim?

[00:16:04]I'm not getting in a cold pool. I'm not turning on a cold shower. The coward's way to get coldness to their veagal nerve is to splash your face with cold water. as cold as you can stand it. Just just icing water if you can stand it.

[00:16:18]Splash your face. That also immediately calms you down. Or you can put uh ice cubes like in a cloth, put them in a wash rag or something and just rub them around your veagal nerve. Again, it cools it down. And something about the cold response kind of offers you a chance to kind of reset the vagus nerve.

[00:16:37]I know that sounds weird, uh, but give this stuff a try. It can't possibly hurt you to massage your ears or turn your head from side to side. And I'm going to really try it. The humming one for some reason is literally calling to me. And I really want to get my Vegas nerve in better shape because this is the nerve that connects our minds to our bodies.

[00:17:00]And if you're feeling like you're disassociating, that you're numb, that you're disconnected from your own life, from your own body, I think this is a good way to start to kind of get your your nervous system working for you instead of against you like it probably has for so many years at this point. Um, so that's that's number two. Next time, we're going to talk about tiny disruptions you can make in your day that will also help get you out of the rut that you're in and help you to find aspects of life that feel new and fresh.

[00:17:33]So, the next one, not big stuff, but small disruptions. I think this one's going to be kind of fun and playful, as if it's not playful enough to be standing in cold water [laughter] humming and rubbing our ears and turning our head around. Oh god. I know you're probably like this. This girl is whacka doodle.