The Parking Lot Panic:
What My Body Knew Before My Brain Caught Up
The fluorescent lights in my oncologist’s office were the kind that drew you to look up and stare. I was sitting across from Dr. C., watching his mouth form words I had a feeling were coming, “Aggressive treatment.”
My hands went numb first. Then my chest tightened like someone was pulling a drawstring through my ribs. I nodded. I smiled. I asked questions about treatments and timelines. I asked about losing my hair.
But my nervous system had already left the building.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the car in the parking lot, gripping the seat beneath me unable to do nothing but try to breathe. My body was doing something my brain hadn’t authorized: shallow breathing, tunnel vision, hands shaking so hard. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t thinking. I was just... frozen.
This is what they don’t tell you about crisis. Your body responds before your mind has time to make a plan.
What Freeze Actually Looks Like
For twenty years, I taught five-year-olds who barely spoke English. I knew freeze when I saw it. The child who went silent when overwhelmed. The kid who stopped moving when the classroom got too loud. The student who smiled and nodded but couldn’t process a single word I’d just said.
I’d learned to recognize it in children. I’d never learned to recognize it in myself.
Freeze isn’t dramatic. It’s not screaming or running or fighting. It’s your system saying, “This is too much. I’m shutting down the non-essentials to survive!” In that parking lot, my non-essentials included rational thought, long-term planning, and the ability to utter at least one word.
Freeze though, is not weakness. It’s your nervous system trying to protect you the only way it knows how.
The problem is that freeze doesn’t know the difference between a cancer diagnosis and a vicious dog chasing after you. It just knows: THREAT! OVERWHELMING! SHUTDOWN NOW!
What I Did (And What Actually Worked)
Right then and there (a few moments later), I used what came naturally to me, I put both hands flat on my thighs. Pressed down. Felt the pressure. I said out loud, “Ok. I am in the car. I am safe RIGHT NOW. THIS moment is not a threat.” I started counting the red cars in the parking lot. Then the white ones. Then the SUVs.
My breath didn’t deepen right away. My hands didn’t stop shaking. But after maybe five minutes (or twenty, I have no idea) I could think clearly enough to turn to my husband and just cry!
The Lesson My Body Taught Me
Your nervous system doesn’t care about your to-do list. It doesn’t care that you need to get home, make dinner, tell your family, research treatment options, and hold it all together.
When you’re in freeze, you can’t think your way out. You have to give your body actual, physical proof that you’re safe enough to come back online.
That parking lot moment became my template for the next five years. Every time I felt that familiar numbness creeping in - during chemo, before surgery, after a scan result - I went back to the “basics”:
~ Pressure. Hands on thighs, feet on floor.
~ Orientation. Name what’s around you. Count something.
~ Connection. A voice. A text. A human who isn’t asking you to be strong.
This didn’t “fix” anything. What it did do was give my nervous system permission to stop fighting a threat that wasn’t actually happening right there, in that exact moment.
The cancer was real. The fear was real. But in the parking lot, in that specific minute, I was safe enough to take the next small step.
Try This Today
Next time you feel that freeze creeping in - the numbness, the shutdown, the inability to think clearly - don’t fight it. It’s ok. Don’t tell yourself to “snap out of it.” Take your time and then try this:
~ Put both hands flat on your legs or the surface in front of you. Press down firmly for 10 seconds. Feel the pressure. Feel the solidness under your hands.
~ Say out loud (or whisper): “Right now, in this moment, I am safe.” Even if everything else is falling apart, this present moment is not the threat.
~ Count five things you can see. Red cars. Ceiling tiles. Your own fingers. It doesn’t matter what. Just count.
The goal at this moment is not to “fix” what you’re going through. The goal is to give your nervous system actual, concrete, physical proof that you’re here, now, and you can take one breath at a time.
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