Your supervisor gives you unexpected feedback at work, and suddenly you're frozen. Your mind goes blank. You can't form words, can't process what's being said, can't think clearly enough to respond. You're there but not there.

Two hours later, when your thinking finally comes back online, you're left wondering: What's wrong with me? Why can't I just think my way through this?

If you've recently started processing trauma—maybe you just received a PTSD diagnosis—this freeze response might be showing up more than ever. And it might be making you question everything: Are my decisions even trustworthy if trauma affects me like this? Does being triggered mean I'm broken?

Here's what almost no one tells you about freeze responses: You can't think your way out of them because your thinking brain is literally offline.

Let me show you what's actually happening—and why the tools that work have nothing to do with thinking.

What Your Two Parts Really Mean

Maybe you've noticed it feels like two different people exist inside you. There's the logical part—the one that can look at situations clearly, check your cognitive maps, make good decisions. And then there's the emotional part—the one that takes over when you're triggered, when someone is unexpectedly kind, when intrusive thoughts flood in during quiet moments.

When you're in that emotional state, accessing the logical part feels impossible. You've probably tried to force it: Just calm down. Just think rationally. Just use the tools you know work.

But what if I told you those "two parts" aren't a personal flaw at all?

The Freeze Response Mistake Everyone Makes

Most advice about managing freeze responses assumes your thinking brain is available. Take deep breaths and remind yourself you're safe. Challenge your thoughts. Use your coping strategies.

The problem? When you're frozen, your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for logical thinking, decision-making, and accessing learned strategies—has significantly reduced function. This isn't a failure of willpower. This is neurobiology.

Your nervous system has different states. When you're calm and regulated, your ventral vagal system is online—this is when you can think clearly, connect with others, and access cognitive tools. But when your system detects threat (even a false alarm), it can shift into sympathetic activation (fight or flight) or dorsal vagal shutdown (freeze).

In freeze states, the parts of your brain that handle complex thinking are genuinely offline. You're not failing to think clearly. Your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do when it perceives danger: shutting down higher cognitive functions to focus all resources on survival.

This is why you can't force yourself to "just think logically" when you're frozen. The hardware required for logical thinking isn't available.

The Smell Pathway That Bypasses Your Thinking Brain

So if thinking doesn't work when you're frozen, what does?

You've probably already discovered part of the answer without realizing it. When you smell your Delina Rose perfume while thinking about something tense, your muscles relax almost instantly. Not in an hour. Not after you've talked yourself through it. Immediately.

Here's why: Your olfactory system—your sense of smell—has a direct neural pathway to your amygdala and limbic system, the emotional centers of your brain. This pathway bypasses your prefrontal cortex entirely.

Think about what this means. When you're frozen and your thinking brain is offline, smell can still reach your emotional regulation centers. It doesn't need your permission. It doesn't require cognitive processing. It doesn't depend on you being able to think clearly.

It works precisely because it doesn't require the parts of your brain that are currently unavailable.

This is why sensory-based tools—smell, bilateral stimulation, attention training focused on what you see and hear—can work when cognitive strategies fail. They use bottom-up pathways (from body to brain) instead of top-down control (from thinking brain to body). And bottom-up pathways remain functional even when top-down control is offline.

Why Trying Not to Think Makes It Worse

Let's talk about those walks you can't take alone.

When it gets too quiet and thoughts start coming, you try to push them away: Don't think about it. Look at the trees. Don't think about it. You spend 10-15 minutes fighting with your own mind.

And the thoughts just keep coming back.

There's a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with you not trying hard enough. Researchers call it "ironic process theory"—when you try to suppress a specific thought, your brain has to keep checking whether that thought is present. And each time it checks, it activates the very thought you're trying to avoid.

Telling yourself "don't think about it" is like telling yourself "don't think about a white bear." The instruction itself requires you to think about the thing you're trying not to think about.

But you said something interesting about those walks: when you're really looking at the trees—actually noticing the branches, the different shades of green, how the leaves move in the wind—the thoughts aren't as loud.

That's not a coincidence. That's a completely different strategy.

How to Quiet Thoughts Without Fighting Them

Here's the approach that actually works: Instead of trying to stop thoughts from coming, give your brain something more interesting to pay attention to.

Your working memory—the mental space where you actively process information—has limited capacity. When you fill it with rich sensory details (five things you can see, four sounds you can hear, three textures you can feel, two scents you can smell, one thing you can taste), there's simply less room available for intrusive thoughts.

This isn't suppression. You're not fighting thoughts. You're redirecting your attention to something that naturally crowds them out.

Think about the difference in effort. Suppression requires constant vigilance—you have to keep battling thoughts as they arise, which means you're engaging with them continuously. Redirection lets your brain get interested in something else. The thoughts might still show up, but they're background noise instead of the main channel.

When you practiced the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, you said it gave your brain "a big break." That feeling of lightness, of not working so hard—that's what happens when you stop fighting and start redirecting.

The 4-Step Sequence to Bring Your Brain Back Online

Now we can put this together into a sequence that actually matches how your nervous system works:

When you feel freeze beginning:

1. Smell first. Three to five deep breaths with the Delina Rose perfume (or even just remembering the smell). This activates the olfactory-limbic pathway for immediate nervous system shift. You're not trying to think your way calm—you're using a direct route that doesn't require thinking.

2. Then redirect attention. Use 5-4-3-2-1 to fill your working memory with present-moment sensory information. Notice five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can physically feel, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. Your brain is now occupied with something other than threat detection.

3. Then breathing. Square breathing or any other breathing technique. Now that you have some regulation, you can follow a cognitive pattern.

4. Then cognitive tools. Only after these three steps is your prefrontal cortex coming back online enough to use your cognitive maps, make decisions, or process what happened.

Notice the order: sensory → attention → breathing → thinking.

Most people try to start with thinking. But you can't access thinking when your thinking brain is offline. You have to bring your nervous system into a state where cognitive function is available first.

How to Make These Tools Automatic

Here's the piece that makes all of this work when you need it most: Practice these tools when you're calm, not just when you're frozen.

Your brain has two types of memory. Declarative memory is conscious—it's the stuff you know you know, like facts and strategies. Procedural memory is automatic—it's the stuff your body knows how to do without thinking, like riding a bike.

When your prefrontal cortex goes offline during freeze, declarative memory becomes hard to access. That's why you can't remember your coping strategies in the moment, even though you "know" them.

But procedural memory—the kind built through repeated practice—remains accessible even when executive function is impaired.

So when you practice the 5-4-3-2-1 technique during your morning coffee, when you smell the perfume while calm and notice how your muscles respond, when you do square breathing before bed—you're building procedural memory. You're teaching your body the pattern so deeply that it's available even when conscious thought isn't.

This is why athletes practice the same movement thousands of times. Not so they can think through it during the game, but so their body knows what to do when there's no time to think.

What This Means for Trusting Yourself

Let's come back to that question you've been carrying: Does being affected by trauma mean my decisions aren't trustworthy?

Now you can see why that's the wrong question. The question isn't whether trauma affects you—of course it does. The question is: Do you have tools that work in the state your nervous system is actually in?

When you're frozen, trying to make big decisions doesn't work—not because you're broken, but because the decision-making hardware is temporarily offline. But when you use sensory regulation to bring your nervous system back into a state where your prefrontal cortex is available, then you can access your full cognitive capacity.

You're not learning to override your nervous system. You're learning to work with it.

Those "two parts" you feel? They're not a problem to fix. They're different nervous system states that need different tools:

• In ventral vagal (calm/social) state: Cognitive tools work. Use your maps, make decisions, process information.
• In freeze/dorsal vagal state: Sensory tools work. Smell, bilateral stimulation, attention redirection.
• In transition: Layer them. Sensory regulation first, then cognitive processing becomes possible.

You're not choosing between being emotional or logical. You're learning to recognize which state you're in and match the tool to the state.

Your Practice Plan This Week

Before your next trauma processing session, your job is to build procedural memory for these regulation tools:

Daily practice (when calm):

• 5-4-3-2-1 attention training once per day—maybe during morning coffee or before bed
• Intentional perfume smelling paired with noticing muscle relaxation, three times throughout the day
• Watch the bilateral stimulation video once, noticing what you feel in your body

On walks:

• Instead of fighting thoughts, proactively fill your attention with tree details. Count branches. Name specific shades of green. Trace the pattern of bark with your eyes. Notice movement.
• Practice 5-4-3-2-1 while walking
• Notice the difference between suppression (hard, exhausting) and redirection (lighter, easier)

When freeze happens:

• Test the three-step sequence: smell → 5-4-3-2-1 → square breathing
• Keep notes on which sensory modalities (smell, sight, sound, touch) provide the strongest anchoring for you
• Notice how long it takes to feel regulated compared to just waiting it out

During writing or decluttering:

• Keep the perfume nearby
• Use smell or breathing between thoughts if you start to feel overwhelmed
• Notice how combining tools (sensory + cognitive) feels different than using cognitive tools alone

What's Next

You're building a foundation—learning to recognize your nervous system states and regulate them enough to access your thinking brain. You're discovering which sensory tools work best for you, and you're building procedural memory so they're available even when conscious thought isn't.

But there's something we haven't explored yet: What happens when you start deliberately working with trauma memories? How do you know when you're approaching the edge of your nervous system's capacity? What does it look like to move between trauma processing and sensory regulation without overwhelming yourself or avoiding the work?

Those are the questions waiting for you in your next session—once these regulation tools are solid enough to support deeper work.