July 27, 2025
When Compliance Is Not Consent: How Freeze-Based Trauma Undermines Our Agency And Will
Emerging from the architecture of freeze—into the light of will, choice, and consent.
A Thief in Sheep’s Clothing
It has been said that trauma is a thief. The events themselves may have been horrific, but with freeze-based trauma, the worst of it often still lies ahead.
As children, we are usually outmatched by our aggressors. While the default stress responses are to flee or fight, neither is usually an option when we are small and dependent upon our abusers for survival. Children facing violence, abuse, or violations of their boundaries—and their bodies—have but one option: to survive it. A third stress response takes over: freeze.
When the nervous system chooses freeze, it does so by overriding our will. No one wants to freeze. It’s a form of paralysis. Without will, our agency, or ability to act according to our will, collapses. Now we are at the whims of our aggressors. To make matters worse, if this happens more than once our brain rewires itself to use freeze as the default stress response in the future. We are not making choices anymore in freeze. We are surviving them. What happens in the aftermath often causes far more harm than the event itself...