You and I have explored many topics about getting through the initial betrayal discovery and crisis. When you’re in those first moments where you can’t breathe, and life feels like it’s collapsing around you, those aftershocks rock and roll ad nauseam.
In their book Where Do I Go From Here?, Dr. John Trent and Kari Trent Stageberg refer to these crisis moments as freeze and flash points.
If you’re human, you don’t escape them, but what you do with them significantly impacts your life.
An emotional freeze point is “a season of time over which unexamined and unprocessed layers of hurt are laid down, restricting or blocking personal and spiritual growth.”
Think of the changing of seasons, which happen over a while. But, as Trent and Stageberg caution, not all seasons of hurt cause a freeze point.
Remember the childhood game freeze tag? The person who is it tries to tag as many people as possible, so they freeze in position. Only the unfrozen players can unfreeze a person by tagging them while still unfrozen. It’s a fast-paced game with many variations.
Freeze points, like freeze tags, happen when you don’t process the trial, pain point, or crisis. You get stuck in that issue even though you can get unfrozen.
How do you know if you’re stuck in a freeze point?
Some characteristics Trent and Stageberg identify include:
- Pessimism is your lifestyle of choice.
This is a developed response resulting in an emotional callus that prevents us from seeing hope and faith in circumstances. You don’t see any meaning or purpose for your life. Left unresolved, this critical attitude of pessimism could literally kill you.
- Pessimism bias.
You might feel dashed hopes when experiencing an ongoing trial, resulting in your inability to see a positive outcome. You believe this is the “norm.” Besides, things won’t get better, so why even try? How often do you procrastinate? Interestingly, procrastination is intentional and rooted in fear: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being controlled, or fear of intimacy.
- Playing God.
You decide to be judge, jury, and executioner in a situation rather than God. Unfortunately, when you make this decision, you increase the wounding person’s hold on you rather than finding the freedom you desperately desire. God understands that the only way to thaw the freeze point is through forgiveness, which means to “untie the knot.”
Perhaps the operative word with freeze points is drama. To unfreeze them requires Godly forgiveness.
A flash point is a one-time occurrence, often hitting you like a lightning bolt.
The trajectory of your life changes. A flash point could be a car or sports accidents, cancer diagnosis, discovering your husband’s porn use, infidelity, your dream job promotion, a marriage proposal, or the like. Flash points can be positive or negative.
If you look back, you probably see several flash points.
According to Trent and Stageberg, all the flash points have four things in common.
- Happens suddenly.
A flash point often catches you off-guard.
- Unplanned.
You can’t prepare for it. It is sudden and unexpected.
- Unexplainable.
The only thing that makes any sense is God’s involvement in your life.
- Individual.
You understand deep inside that your life has undergone a significant change, whether anyone else realizes it or not.
According to Dr. Trent, the operative word for a flash point is direction. At that moment, your life changes, pushing you in a new direction.
You most likely experienced a flash point when discovering your husband’s porn use.
However, along with processing the flash point, betrayal recovery often involves unfreezing several freeze points even though you might not recognize some of these freeze points until further along your recovery journey.
We were four months into our recovery journey when I experienced another significant flash point—my suicidal depression diagnosis. You can read more about that here. The following days, weeks, and months of counseling revealed multiple freeze points uncovered by the newest flash point. The unthawing phase offered many opportunities to choose forgiveness and freedom or pessimism. It’s true that forgiveness unhooks you or unties the knot.
While Dave and I worked on relational healing, I also worked to unfreeze past dramas that affected my ability to work through the betrayal trauma. Thankfully, my counselors and coaches walked the journey with us because I believe I would have stopped at any point. The journey to unfreeze was that painful.
Colossians 3 talks about this unfreezing process (emphasis mine):
So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.
You choose how you deal with a freeze point.
Will you process it when it happens and find purpose in your life? Or will you allow it to cause emotional, relational, and spiritual damage and sink into critical pessimism?
Flash points happen. You don’t control these.
Evaluate the flash points in your life. Did you move toward something good? Or did you push back to a place of hiding, vowing never to risk again? Thus, creating a freeze point.
You can find your fun, free, and fulfilling future even after experiencing betrayal trauma.
For the last seventeen years, this has been my journey. I’d love to show you how you can do this, too. The betrayal recovery process unties the knots of unforgiveness and gives you the tools to process freeze and flash points well. You don’t have to do this alone. Please reach out. Let me help you find hope again and conquer that critical pessimism.