"I Had A Freeze Response"

The first thing I want you to know is that you are not making a big deal out of nothing and I am so thankful that you wrote in. This is exactly the right place to reach out. It sounds like you’ve been carrying this weight on your own and writing in is the first, important step in choosing not to continue doing that. In doing this, you’re telling yourself that the impact of something bad that happened to you is not yours to carry alone. It isn’t, and I hope I can hold some of the weight for you if only for the time it takes you to read this response.
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Firstly, I am so sorry that this experience, which should have been a safe and enjoyable one, turned into something different. Sexual experiences shouldn’t go further than we are comfortable with and your sexual partner had a responsibility to check in with you throughout sex to ensure that each act, activity or development of an interaction was something you genuinely wanted to be part of. The fact that this didn’t happen is not on you.
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You mentioned that you “didn’t speak up” and are coming to realise that you had a freeze response in the moment. I want to get clear about what this is, because you followed this realisation by sharing that you haven’t told the people close to you about what happened due to a fear that they may ask why you “didn’t get yourself out of the situation”. Wanting to protect yourself from hearing this from loved ones is absolutely understandable because it’s victim blaming. You are under no obligation to have conversations with people who can’t support you with care. Victim blaming is harmful and unhelpful. The response you think they may give is also deeply unrealistic. I want you to read this next sentence a few times: someone who is in a dangerous, unsafe, or vulnerable situation can never respond in the “wrong” way. We do not get to choose how we respond in those moments because our brain chooses for us.

A freeze response is one of the five – that we currently know of – trauma responses to unsafety or perceived unsafety.

I mention perceived unsafety because these responses can happen for different reasons to different people: being unsafe, feeling unsafe, when we perceive something might signal unsafety is coming (whether it does or not), or in response to traumatic memories that trigger us even though we are currently safe. Those “Five Fs” represent instinctual functions of fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop. Evolutionarily, we really needed them when we were in danger. Have you ever heard a loud noise and jumped out of your skin? That’s fight or flight mode kicking in for a moment before you realise you’re okay. These responses have to be instantaneous in order to keep you safe so when our brains kick into this mode, our reasoning parts of the brain (that are required to strategise or make decisions) go offline because it would take too much time.

That’s why it's deeply unhelpful and incredibly unrealistic to ask someone why they didn’t try to override their brain’s fear response and bring their decision making centre back online to “get themselves out of the situation”. It is also incredibly harmful because it places the burden on you, not the person who made the situation unsafe and sends a completely untrue message that you could have made this turn out differently. You couldn’t have. You were at the mercy of your brain trying to protect you. Not speaking up at that moment was not your fault. It was your partner’s responsibility to ensure your comfort and safety and ask. And besides, you can speak up. You’re doing it right now.

You said in your message that people mostly expect you to be able to handle things on your own.

This must feel like pressure. Do you expect the same of yourself? I want you to ask yourself that and take time to explore it. You’re absolutely right that there is stigma placed on male victims and survivors.

Dominant expectations of masculinity raise boys, men and people socialised into masculinity to become self-sufficient individuals who solve things alone, perform stoicism, remain in control of everything and never show “weakness” (which is a stand-in word for anything from vulnerability and sensitivity to sincerity). Our culture encourages and rewards this all the time, so it’s very common that male victims and survivors simply don’t have vulnerable conversations about what happened or how they’re feeling.

It’s also unsurprising that you feel you’re expected to solve things alone.

But that doesn’t mean you should, or that you have to. Would you want someone you love to keep this to themselves forever? Or would you want them to tell you and let you hold it with them? We are social beings. We’re not meant to disconnect from each other when we need each other the most, and from a physiological perspective, when you’ve been through an experience that was unsafe, a conversation with a safe, caring person is exactly what your brain and nervous system needs.

That‘s why I’m going to ask you to identify someone not only close to you, but who you think would do a relatively good job at holding space for you and having a conversation about this. Just one person. Next, you’re going to think about how you’d feel most comfortable going about it. This is about your comfort. You decide how this goes. Where would you like to be? What would help ease any nerves? Remember, it doesn’t have to look how it does on TV or in movies; maybe you want to go to the pub. Maybe you’d prefer to sit in the sun and chat or maybe you’d really struggle face to face and would prefer to write a message or a letter. If even that feels like a stretch, you could share this message and response with them. The only advice I would give, is to prep the person a little bit by telling them you need to talk about/tell them something difficult you recently went through that you haven’t told anyone yet. By giving them a sense of what’s going on they’ll be able to prepare themselves and will be more likely to show up how you might need them to.

It’s also possible that you might not have someone in your life who can have this conversation with compassion and care.

If that’s the case, working with a therapist who specialises in this area could be really helpful if you can afford it. Having a space to put down that weight you mentioned, process the experience, make decisions with a professional about where you want to go from here, and even explore the expectations placed on you as a man that could have stopped you seeking support could be really important for your wellbeing now as well as your future and relationships.
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If you are really struggling to talk about it and don’t feel ready to tell someone, maybe start by journaling and exploring what might be stopping you. Working towards being able to talk is a great start and might take some time. Whatever happens next should be about you, lead by you and for you.
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I hope this helped in some way. Look after yourself and good luck.