Demons From the Past

Dear therapist,

Whenever my wife gets upset, I start feeling anxious and end up freezing and shutting down. My wife keeps telling me it probably has to do with my childhood and the fighting I grew up with,
My wife believes my childhood experiences are contributing to this and wants me to get therapy. However, I'm afraid of therapy because I feel I already know the issues, and past talk therapy actually made me feel worse. I don’t want to spend months digging up the past, I just want to stop shutting down when things get tense now.

Response:

It can be really jarring when you want to connect with your wife and work through things, and then find yourself frozen and unable to engage in stressful moments. I hear in your question that you want to work through this challenge in your relationship, but struggle to see how digging up the past will help with that, especially if doing so in the past made you feel worse.

So let’s talk about a different kind of answer.

You’re right that there are many traditional types of therapy which focus on the past. Some people find that type of therapy to be helpful, but it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Many people, like yourself, want something more immediate and present focused. This is where experiential therapy comes in. Experiential therapies are a broad category of evidence-based approaches which include some common modalities such as internal family systems (IFS), emotionally focused therapy (EFT), EMDR, and somatic-based work. These types of therapies focus less on the story of what happened and more on what is happening for you right now.

To understand experiential therapies better, I like to use the analogy of a bruise on your arm. If something brushes up against that spot, you will feel the pain and probably flinch, even if you had the bruise for a while. Experiential therapies view painful past experiences as bruises, and they focus not on when or how the bruise happened, but on the flinching, or the specific reaction that tells us the pain is still there. From this perspective, we don’t need to analyze the origin of the bruise. We can work directly with your nervous system’s reaction in the moment, because that’s the part that’s asking for healing now.

In other words, instead of “digging” into the past to find healing, these approaches work with the emotional and physical responses that are still alive in you today and help you slow down the moment, get curious about what’s happening, and offer yourself a new experience that your body and mind may not have had before. Experiential therapy stems from the idea that insight alone isn’t enough to heal; there needs to be new emotional experiences to help your body and mind integrate safety in the present moment.

Moving back to your original Dilemma,

You freeze when your wife gets upset. Could that be connected to your past? Possibly, maybe even probably. However, you don’t have to go back and analyze your past to change what is happening now. Being curious about what is happening in the moment when you are shutting down, and slowing down to better understand it and create a new experience for your nervous system, can be what you are looking for in healing.

You don’t have to jump into therapy right away.

There are several tools that you can use which draw from experiential approaches which can help you feel more in control when the freeze response shows up, and they may be enough to shift your experience. If not, they can give you a strong foundation for doing this work with a trained therapist later on.

To begin, next time you start having a freeze response, see if you can pause and get curious about what is happening internally. Try to tune in to your physical sensations before, during, and after the freeze. Notice places where you lack any noticeable sensations as well. Some people find it helpful to do a body scan, where you focus on each part of your body from head to toe, to really pinpoint what’s happening in your body in those moments. Similarly, try to name any emotional sensations. A feeling wheel can be a helpful tool to identify emotions which are harder to label.

The purpose of all this is to slow things down. When we’re triggered, our nervous system kicks into high alert. Everything speeds up, and we move into automatic survival modes like shutting down or getting reactive. But when you name what’s happening in your body and emotions, you’re lowering the energy. You’re stepping back into what’s often called your “window of tolerance”, which is the zone where you can experience emotions without becoming overwhelmed. That’s the place where healing and new responses become possible.

Once you’ve slowed down, pay attention to the moment right before you shut down. Was there something your wife said? Did you notice a shift in her tone or body language? Was there something in your internal landscape which felt overwhelming? Is there something that you are looking for that you don’t feel like you are getting (usually things like acknowledgement, appreciation, value, and love fall into this category) right before you freeze? Often, what we’re actually longing for in those moments is something like safety, reassurance, or appreciation, and when we don’t feel it, our system shuts down. The more you can slow things down and track these cues, the more space you’ll have to choose a different response.

Once you have that extra space, you can go a step further and use this experience as a way of connecting.

The shutting down that you naturally do protects yourself, but it can also unintentionally create distance between you and your wife. If you feel open to taking a risk, try sharing with your wife what is happening internally either after or during those moments. For example: “I notice I’m starting to freeze up, and I think it’s because I’m feeling overwhelmed right now.” Doing this takes a lot of vulnerability, and when it lands, can create deeper closeness and healing for both of you.

Using these tools may be enough for you. You may find that bringing more awareness and choice to these moments allows you to shift your pattern and leads to real, lasting change in your relationship.
But if you try these practices for a few weeks and still find yourself stuck, you might benefit from doing this work with someone who’s trained to guide it. A good experiential therapist can help you feel safe, supported, and help you create lasting change.

To sum up, you don’t have to go back and relive the past in order to move forward. There are other approaches that honor the here and now, and that can feel more aligned with what you’re looking for. Whether you explore this with an experiential therapist or begin with some of the reflection practices above, there is real hope for change.