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Integrative Psychiatry

How to Overcome the Freeze response in COVID by Dr. Will Van Derveer

By October 5, 20202 Comments
How to Overcome the Freeze response in COVID

Unfreeze Yourself: tools for dealing with stress in a pandemic

COVID-19 presents unprecedented challenges to all of us, but there are things we can do at home to begin to cope better with this threat. We are all vulnerable to the mental health impacts of the pandemic: social isolation, stress, anxiety, insomnia, trauma to name a few. 

We have moved out of the acute stress phase and we are now in the slow burn of chronic stress. Very high stress levels are happening for millions of people: our front line health workers, people losing their jobs, not able to pay their rents, kids at home, trying to figure out what to do next. Not knowing what the “new normal” will be or when we will get there.

Now for the good news.

Stress is not necessarily bad for us. Stress can actually be very positive. In times like these we have to creatively muster the resources to actively deal with stress. When we balance the challenges of COVID with our inner and outer resources, we can shift the stress levels to “eustress,” a level of stress that causes growth.

Hormesis

Hormesis refers to adaptive responses of biological systems to moderate environmental or self-imposed challenges through which the system improves its functionality.” [1]

Hormesis is a way of understanding the necessity of stress for growth, and the benefits of getting challenged. This can happen for individuals and societies. For example, the stress of war casualties in World War II challenged us to develop penicillin, an absolute game changer in medicine, at a time in history when bacterial infection was a leading cause of death. 

Threat Responses for Mammals 

A very useful way to understand stress is to study animals and how they respond to threat. Peter Levine (who developed a highly effective trauma resolution protocol called Somatic Experiencing) designed the therapy based on observations of how animals restore balance after threat.[2] Mammals move through the stages of threat response and do not do well remaining in any stage, especially the freeze response.

Immobilization, helplessness, and inability to fight back are associated with the expectation of death from the threat. Freeze is more likely to cause PTSD than fighting or getting away.

3 Tools to Thaw the Freeze

Obviously it’s much better for us to stay out of freeze states, but we can’t always predict them, so we need to know how to deal with them. Many of us in COVID are experiencing a paralysis akin to freeze, and there is a basic toolkit for dealing with this. We can thank neuroscientist and freeze expert Stephen Porges PhD for much of the research in this area.

  1. Social engagement:[3] Get on a video call with a friend. Seeing the facial expressions of a friend smiling at you can really help to thaw the freeze response. Use the stress as a reason to connect with others.
  2. Get inspired: Freeze is a brain stem response. Watching inspiring videos such as inspiring TED talks on YouTube can get the blood flow shifting forward in your brain. Connect into yourself: what is your “Why” – knowing your “Why” is a potent inner resource that will help you endure almost anything (think Viktor Frankel [4]).
  3. Shake it off: If you are feeling REALLY frozen, you can begin to thaw yourself by standing up and shaking your body all over. Animals have been observed to do this after emerging from a freeze response. 

Let’s all take action to mobilize resources and stay connected through these challenging times! The world, our loved ones, and our own selves need us as regulated as possible.

Warmly,

Dr. Will Van Derveer
Co-Founder + Course Director
Integrative Psychiatry Institute

References

  1. Calabrese, E.J., Mattson, M.P. How does hormesis impact biology, toxicology, and medicine?. Aging and Mechanisms of Disease 3, 13 (2017). 
  2. Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma : the Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, Calif: North Atlantic Books, 1997.
  3. Porges, S., The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
  4. Frankl, V. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston : Beacon Press, 2006.

2 Comments

  • Teresa Cone, MD says:

    This has been a very helpful post for me personally and I would add to your last point about inducing the shaking mechanism that David Berceli’s Trauma Releasing Exercise (TRE available in a 49 min video on Dailymotion.com for free) has been instrumental in getting back into homeostasis on a regular basis.
    Thanks again!

Sara Reed, MS, LMFT

Sara Reed is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and CEO of Mind’s iHealth Solutions, a digital health company that provides evidence based and culturally responsible mental health services for underserved groups. As a mental health futurist and clinical researcher, Sara examines the ways culture informs the way we diagnose and treat mental illness. Sara’s prior research work includes participation as a study therapist in psychedelic therapy research at Yale University and the University of Connecticut’s Health Center. Sara was the first Black therapist to provide MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a clinical trial and continues to engage in ongoing advocacy work around health equity in psychedelic medicine.

https://psychiatryinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Jeffrey-Guss.png

Jeffrey Guss, MD is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and researcher with specializations in psychoanalytic therapy and the treatment of substance use disorders. He was Co-Principal Investigator and Director of Psychedelic Therapy Training for the NYU School of Medicine’s study on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of cancer-related existential distress, which was published in Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2016. He currently is a study therapist in the NYU study on Psychedelic-Assisted therapy in the treatment of Alcoholism, a collaborator with Yale University’s study on psychedelic-assisted therapy for Major Depressive Disorder and a study therapist with the MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) study on treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy. 

Dr. Guss is interested in the integration of psychedelic therapies with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and has published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. He has published (with Elizabeth Nielson, PhD) a paper on “the influence of therapists’ first had experience with psychedelics on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy research and therapist training” in The Journal of Psychedelic Studies, August, 2018. He is an Instructor and Mentor with the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Supervisor in NYU’s Fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry. 

Dr. Guss maintains a private practice in New York City.

Will Van Derveer, MD

Will Van Derveer, MD is Co-Founder of Integrative Psychiatry Institute and Integrative Psychiatry Centers. Dr. Van Derveer was co-investigator on a phase 2 MAPS study of Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant PTSD, and co-authored the publication of this study in 2018. He has also provided Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in two MAPS training studies. An active provider of KAP at his clinic in Boulder, CO, he has been teaching others KAP therapy for several years. Dr. Van Derveer contributed a chapter on mescaline in the 2021 "Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens" (edited by Charles Grob and Jim Grigsby). He is co-host of the Higher Practice Podcast.

Dr. Van Derveer regards unresolved emotional trauma as the most significant under-recognized root cause of psychiatric symptoms in integrative psychiatry practice, along with gut issues, hormone imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and other functional medicine challenges. He is trained in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and other psychotherapy techniques. His current clinical passion is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which he mentors interested doctors in providing. An avid meditator, he has been a meditation instructor since 2004.

For the past several years Dr. Van Derveer has taught psychiatrists and other psychiatric providers integrative psychiatry in a number of settings, including course directing the CU psychiatry residents’ course as well as with Scott Shannon and Janet Settle at the Psychiatry MasterClass.


Scott has been a student of consciousness since his honors thesis on that topic at the University of Arizona in the 1970s under the tutelage of Dr. Andrew Weil. Following medical school, Scott studied Jungian therapy and acupuncture while working as a primary care physician in a rural area for four years. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy became a facet of his practice before this medicine was scheduled in 1985. He then completed a psychiatry residency at Columbia program in New York. Scott studied cross-cultural psychiatry and completed a child/adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the University of New Mexico.

In 2010 he founded Wholeness Center in Fort Collins. This innovative clinic provides cross-disciplinary evaluation and care for all mental health concerns. Scott serves as a site Principal Investigator and therapist for the Phase III trial of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD sponsored by (MAPS). He has also published numerous articles about his research on (CBD) in mental health. Currently, Scott works extensively with psychedelic-assisted-psychotherapy. He lectures all over the world to professional groups interested in a deeper look at mental health issues, safer tools, and a paradigm-shifting perspective about transformative care.

Will Van Derveer, MD is co-founder of Integrative Psychiatry Institute (IPI), along with friend and colleague Keith Kurlander, MA. He co-created IPI as an expression of what he stands for. First, that anyone can heal, and second that we medical providers must embrace our own healing journeys in order to fully command our potency as healers.

Dr. Van Derveer spent the last 20 years innovating and testing a comprehensive approach to addressing psychiatric challenges which transcends the conventional model he learned in medical school at Vanderbilt University and residency at University of Colorado, while deeply engaging his own healing path.

He founded the Integrative Psychiatric Healing Center in in 2001 in Boulder, CO, where he currently practices. Dr. Van Derveer regards unresolved emotional trauma as the most significant root cause of psychiatric symptoms in integrative psychiatry practice, along with gut issues, hormone imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and other functional medicine challenges. He is trained in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and other psychotherapy techniques. His current clinical passion is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which he mentors interested doctors in providing. An avid meditator, he has been a meditation instructor since 2004.

For the past several years Dr. Van Derveer has taught psychiatrists and other psychiatric providers integrative psychiatry in a number of settings, including course directing the CU psychiatry residents’ course as well as with Scott Shannon and Janet Settle at the Psychiatry MasterClass. In addition to his clinical work and teaching, he was co-investigator in 2016 a Phase II randomized clinical trial, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He continues to support this protocol, now in a Phase III clinical trial under break-through designation by FDA.

Dr. Van Derveer is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine (ABoIHM) since 2013, and he was board certified in the first wave of diplomates of the new American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABIM) in 2016.