How to Get Out of Hypoarousal: Somatic Strategies for the Freeze Response

Key Insights

Hypoarousal, also known as the freeze response or dorsal vagal shutdown, is a primitive survival state triggered when the nervous system perceives an overwhelming threat from which escape is impossible. It is characterized by hypoarousal symptoms such as emotional numbness, chronic exhaustion, dissociation, mental fog, and severe executive dysfunction. To learn how to get out of hypoarousal, one can use somatic (bottom-up) strategies that reintroduce gentle movement and sensory input, such as shaking, tapping, bilateral stimulation, and conscious breathing, to safely mobilize the trapped energy and train the nervous system to feel safe again.

The Science of Survival: Understanding Hypoarousal

There are times when life feels too heavy to move through, when even small things feel impossible. You might wake up already tired, go quiet in conversations, or feel like you’re watching life happen from a distance. That’s not weakness or laziness. That’s your body’s way of protecting you, a state known as hypoarousal, or what many therapists call the freeze or shutdown response. Understanding what’s happening underneath this response is the first step toward helping your body find safety again.

What Causes Hypoarousal? The Emergency Shutdown

In the language of Polyvagal Theory, hypoarousal reflects the dorsal vagal state, the body’s oldest survival reflex. When your system senses danger but can’t fight or flee, it takes a third route: shutdown. Heart rate slows, muscles go limp, energy collapses, all to keep you safe by conserving energy and numbing sensation.

Think of it as your body saying, “It’s too much. I’ll wait until it’s safe again.”

Trauma expert Peter Levine noticed that while animals instinctively shake off this energy after danger passes, humans often don’t. We carry that incomplete stress cycle within us, tension that never had a chance to release. Over time, this can leave us feeling disconnected, drained, and unable to fully re-engage with life.

Hypoarousal Symptoms: The Signs of Shutdown

When the body is frozen in hypoarousal, it can feel like the light has dimmed. You might notice:

• Mental fog or zoning out: like you’re present but not really here.

• Emotional flatness: difficulty feeling joy, sadness, or motivation.

• Exhaustion or heaviness: as if every task requires more energy than you have.

• Disconnection: from yourself, others, or your surroundings.

  
  

These are not signs of failure. They are signs of a nervous system that’s still trying to protect you the best way it knows how.

Symptom Category	Specific Hypoarousal Symptoms
Cognitive/Mental	Spacy, zoned out, numbness, emptiness; trouble concentrating, forgetfulness, and mental fog; inability to speak or think clearly.
Physical/Body	Flaccid body; chronic exhaustion; flashing back to the traumatic experience; feeling detached, disconnected, or having a blank stare.
Functional/Emotional	Depression; lack of motivation or interest in things cared about; feelings of helplessness and collapse; dissociation (spacing out or going out of the body).

For those who may be struggling with work demands, the symptom of executive dysfunction is particularly disruptive: "Every task feels like climbing a mountain without legs," resulting in a feeling of being done as soon as you wake up. This is why traditional approaches often fail: the prefrontal cortex, which is the logical, thinking part of the brain, is offline in the freeze response, meaning verbal communication cannot penetrate the frozenness.

Hyperarousal vs Hypoarousal: The Spectrum of Dysregulation

To address hypoarousal effectively, it is helpful to understand its relationship to its opposite state, hyperarousal. Both states represent dysregulation outside of the Window of Tolerance (WoT). The WoT is the "optimal zone of 'arousal' for a person to function in everyday life," where emotions can be effectively managed. Trauma can shrink this window, making it difficult to stay grounded and leading to states of dysregulation with even minor stressors.

Comparing the Two Survival States

The nervous system moves along a spectrum. On one side is hyperarousal, the fight-or-flight state. On the other is hypoarousal, collapse and shutdown. Both are survival responses that can get stuck when trauma goes unresolved.

Healing doesn’t mean “getting rid” of either. It means helping your body learn how to move gently between them again, to find its natural rhythm of activation and rest.

Feature	Hyperarousal (Sympathetic Activation)	Hypoarousal (Dorsal Vagal Shutdown)
Nervous System	Sympathetic (Accelerator) is dominant, or stuck "on".	Parasympathetic (Brake) overwhelms sympathetic arousal; stuck "off".
Physical Manifestation	Body wants to fight or run away. Muscles are tense, heart rate is rapid, breathing is shallow, hands may be cold/sweaty.	Body wants to shut down. Body is flaccid, numb, emotionally flat, and exhausted.
Emotional State	Anxious, angry, overwhelmed, panicky, hypervigilant, experiencing emotional flooding.	Depressed, empty, spaced out, dissociated, helpless, disconnected.
Therapeutic Goal	Soothing the nervous system; lowering heart rate and muscle tension; containment.	Upregulating the nervous system; introducing safe movement and energy; mobilization.

When a client is experiencing trauma, they are primed to detect threat, which keeps their nervous system highly reactive. The goal of Somatic Experiencing is to facilitate a return to the healthy rhythm, the natural contraction and expansion seen in life, rather than remaining fixated in either the hyper- or hypo-aroused state.

Somatic Strategies: How to Get Out of Hypoarousal

When your body is in a shutdown state, the thinking part of your brain, the one that plans, reasons, and finds words often goes offline. That’s why trying to “talk yourself out of it” doesn’t work. Healing from hypoarousal begins not with logic, but with the body.

Somatic, or bottom-up, approaches focus on sensations, movement impulses, and gentle emotional awareness to help release the impact of trauma. The goal is never to force activation, but to invite your body to remember that movement and energy are safe again.

Learning how to get out of hypoarousal is a gradual process of reawakening- one gentle, rhythmic cue at a time.

Step 1: Mobilization and Movement

The first step is to help your system shift from stillness toward a sense of safe energy and motion. Think of it as slowly turning the lights back on.

Introduce Micro-Movements: If you feel frozen, begin with the smallest possible actions- tiny, almost invisible movements. Even wiggling your fingers or toes can start to signal to your body that it’s okay to re-engage.

Orienting: Gently look around the room. Let your eyes land on objects, colors, or shapes. Silently name what you see: “window,” “plant,” “blue chair.” This practice, known as orienting, reminds your nervous system that you are in the present moment and safe right now.

Joint and Facial Movement: Invite motion back into your face and joints. Circle your wrists or fingers. Squeeze your eyes and face tightly as you exhale, then open them wide on the inhale. These small actions help release muscular tension and bring warmth and mobility back into the body.

Dynamic Movement (Somatic Shaking): When your system feels ready, experiment with larger, rhythmic movements to mobilize stored energy.

• Shaking or Dancing: Allow your body to shake naturally or move to gentle music. This helps calm the amygdala (the brain’s alarm center) and reduces chronic muscle tension. Like animals trembling after danger passes, shaking helps your body discharge “stuck” survival energy.

  
  

• Patting and Tapping: Use your hands to lightly pat up and down your legs, or stomp your feet on the ground. This rhythmic contact increases blood flow and strengthens the connection between mind and body, bringing vitality back into the system.

Step 2: Vagal Stimulation and Rhythmic Grounding

Once small movements begin to return, rhythmic and soothing sensory input helps stabilize the nervous system. These exercises stimulate the vagus nerve, the body’s natural brake, and build your capacity for self-regulation.

Self-Co-Regulation with Touch:

• The Butterfly Hug (Bilateral Stimulation): Cross your arms over your chest, interlace your thumbs, and gently tap your shoulders in an alternating rhythm. This bilateral tapping sends calming signals through both hemispheres of the brain and helps integrate emotional and sensory information, reminding the nervous system that it’s safe.

  
  

• Havening: Slowly stroke your hands down the sides of your arms from shoulders to wrists. This gentle, slow touch activates specialized C tactile fibers that detect comforting touch and send soothing signals to the brain’s body-awareness center. Research shows this can reduce cortisol (stress hormone) and increase serotonin, supporting calm and safety.

  
  

• Warmth and Pressure: Rub your hands together until you feel warmth, then place both palms over your chest. Move them in slow, gentle circles. The warmth and rhythmic motion stimulate the vagus nerve and promote self-soothing through gentle chest wall movement.

Breathing Techniques:

Your breath is one of the most direct ways to influence your nervous system.

• Diaphragmatic Breathing: Bring your attention to your belly and let your breath expand downward. Try paced breathing- inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold again for four. These slow cycles help activate the parasympathetic system, lowering heart rate and inviting calm.

Step 3: Cognitive Reframing for Mobilization

Once your body begins to wake up, your thoughts can join the process. For many people, the freeze response is tied to perfectionism, fear of failure, or shame, which are the internal narratives that reinforce paralysis. Shifting these cognitive patterns gently supports further mobilization.

Embrace “Good Enough”: If you notice yourself thinking, “I can’t do it perfectly, so why try?”, pause and breathe. Try focusing on “good enough.” Small, imperfect actions are often the most healing.

Action Beats Hesitation: Give yourself permission to take the pressure off. Say to yourself, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to happen.” Progress beats perfection, and momentum beats mastery. Even a small, imperfect step helps your nervous system learn that it’s safe to move forward.

Small Steps: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Each tiny action, such as making your bed, stepping outside, taking a full breath, reintroduces vitality. Healing from hypoarousal is not about dramatic breakthroughs, but about steady re-engagement.

Self-Compassion and Resource Building

Self-Kindness: When you catch yourself collapsing into judgment or hopelessness, speak to yourself the way you would to someone you love. Try gentle phrases like, “You’re having a hard time right now, and that’s okay. You’re still trying.” Compassion softens the nervous system and makes healing sustainable.

Resourcing: Recall a moment, place, or person that feels safe or comforting. Maybe it’s the warmth of sunlight, a pet’s steady breathing, or a supportive memory. Let your body register that feeling of safety. In Somatic Experiencing, this is known as resourcing, a key way to counter feelings of helplessness and help your body anchor in calm.

Professional Healing in DC and Silver Spring

Self-guided somatic techniques can offer moments of calm and reconnection, but deep, lasting healing from trauma and chronic hypoarousal often needs something more- consistent, compassionate professional support. For many people in the DC, Maryland, and Silver Spring areas, integrating somatic therapy with licensed psychotherapy provides the most complete and sustainable pathway to recovery. Working with a trained therapist helps you move safely through each stage of healing at a pace your nervous system can truly handle.

The Somatic Approach to Deep Healing

Somatic therapy, such as Somatic Experiencing (SE), is predicated on the idea that trauma is stored in the body's nervous system and muscles. SE is a specialized approach that helps the body release "stuck" survival energy through mindful awareness of physical sensations.

Key therapeutic principles used to shift clients out of the freeze response include:

• Titration and Pendulation: The therapist introduces overwhelming experiences in small, tolerable pieces (titration). This is followed by pendulation, the gentle swinging of awareness between uncomfortable sensations (the trauma vortex) and comforting, resourced sensations (the healing countervortex). This process is carefully paced to prevent overwhelming the client, which could compound the trauma.

  
  

• Discharge: The ultimate goal is to facilitate the discharge of high levels of trapped nervous system arousal. This discharge can manifest as somatic tremors or shaking, deep sighs, yawns, or tears, signaling the autonomic nervous system is returning to its baseline.

  
  

• Co-regulation: An observant therapist can help the client notice their state and facilitate the transition back to safety. The therapist acts as a resource, providing cues of safety through their facial expression, tone of voice, and body language to help the client stabilize and eventually thaw.

  
  

Choosing the Right Modality

While SE often focuses on shock trauma (accidents, single events), other somatic modalities address different root causes. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) were developed specifically to heal attachment trauma- how early relationships with caregivers impact a person's sense of self and nervous system regulation.

Somatic Modality	Primary Focus for Healing	Best Suited For (Source Examples)
Somatic Experiencing (SE)	Nervous system regulation and safe energy release.	Shock trauma, accidents, acute PTSD, or when the body feels "on edge".
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP)	Linking body patterns with emotions and relational patterns.	Developmental trauma, attachment wounds, and complex PTSD.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)	Directly targets specific traumatic memories through bilateral stimulation.	Specific traumatic memories.

Many therapists, particularly at clinics offering integrated care, will combine these approaches- using SE to settle the nervous system and then SP or talk therapy to explore relational and cognitive patterns.

Moving Toward Safety and Presence

The experience of hypoarousal- that numb, heavy, or disconnected feeling is your body’s way of holding onto an old survival pattern. Understanding the difference between hyperarousal and hypoarousal helps you see that the goal isn’t to simply “calm down,” but to help your body gently mobilize again and reclaim its natural rhythm.

Because the cognitive brain is often offline when frozen, the most effective way to learn how to get out of hypoarousal is through somatic, body-based strategies. By using consistent, compassionate techniques, like somatic shaking, grounding through the senses, and soothing touch (such as the Butterfly Hug), you help your nervous system re-learn safety moment by moment.

Healing from trauma is rarely linear. It requires patience, kindness, and the willingness to move at your body’s pace. Even a small shift, one deep breath, or one gentle movement is progress.

At Grow Your Mind Psychotherapy (GYMP), our therapists specialize in somatic therapy for trauma and integrative approaches to mind-body healing. From our office in Silver Spring, Maryland, we work with clients throughout the DC and Maryland region, helping them reconnect with their bodies, release long-held tension, and rediscover the energy and peace that come with safety.

Healing isn’t a race to the finish line. It’s the quiet remembering, again and again, that you are no longer walking this path alone.