As a part of our biology we are equipped with a mechanism to help us manage threats in our life, the so called fight-flight-freeze instincts.
Whenever you can't either eliminate or get away from a threat there is a last attempt your body is going to try in order to survive.
It is going to freeze, if you ever played with a cat you probably noticed that they have the tendency to attack things that move, they will wait until you move and then jump on you. This is a typical predatory instincts a lot of carnivorous animals have, so it makes sense that if you don't move you have an increased chance of survival.
But today we have other threats more complex than big cats. So our freeze response adapted to the modern threats. Today being frozen it is not staying unmoved to avoid the potential attack of a predator animal it is avoiding confrontation with certain people in your life. Because people are the main animal that preys on other humans. Just because you are moving it doesn't mean that you are not frozen.
Ideally if it is possible, if you are not really trapped in that abusive situation, which are very little cases where people are trapped and there is no really a way out. Basically if you are a child with abusive parents or you are in a gulag there is not much you can do about that abuse, you pretty much have to adapt to it and live the rest of your life in denial. Which is basically a way to paralyze yourself.
But for the rest of the people that don't find themselves in those situations you can get out. But in order to do that you can't stay passive. As the freeze is an impulse, it is impossible to stop it, impulses are massive releases of energy design to make you stop everything you are doing and start something new, generally speaking they are automatically triggered by your body in emergencies.
So because you don't have any control about not being impulsive anymore, the only thing you can do is to re channel that energy, in a constructive way. It is better to be angry on a threat than be paralyzed by it if you have a chance to win that confrontation. You have the choice at any point to move from any stage of threat management to the other two. What you can't do is shut it off when you want to, it will only turn itself off when there is no threat.
Because impulses are masive releases of energy, you can't think or rationalize your way through or out of them. The way to re channel that energy is not with your mind, it is more with your body.
If you are frozen in fear, the way to unfreeze yourself is to start moving towards the threat or away from it. The only thing that will eliminate it from your life is you moving towards it.
The purpose of the abuse is to control someone's body. Regardless if you abuse that person with violence or lies, you are targeting that person's mind.
When you got control over someone's mind you got control over their body. As the purpose of abuse is to use someone for your own benefit, not just to make someone think certain things. So the final purpose of abuse is to control someone's body.
In order to stop the abuse you have to reclaim your body, in this case the mind follows the body. Because the mind is broken so it won't lead you in the right place. As it is commonly said you have to act from the heart.
The irony is that, because others tried to control our minds, if that is internalized, the victim starts to abuse herself by controlling his own mind, this is why you can't solve this problem with your mind alone because your mind is under the control of your abuser.
