303: Three Small and Simple Steps to Overcome Freeze Mode

303: Overcoming Freeze Mode: 3 Small and Simple Steps to Get Unstuck

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Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: [00:00:00] When I think about being in freeze mode, I think about myself as a grad student. Back when I hit a rough period where I struggled to make progress on my writing. And because I couldn't make progress on my writing, I then stopped communicating and this made it so that I went MIA with some of my professors and committee members and I went weeks and sometimes in some cases months without communicating.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: This directly impacted my timeline. I experienced a lot of Feelings of guilt and shame because I believe I was the last person in my cohort to complete my program. And now I say this out loud because the people that I work with who are grad students are experiencing similar situations where they find themselves stuck.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: They find [00:01:00] themselves frozen. They feel guilt. They feel shame. They might be extending their timelines and feeling like they're the only ones. And when I was in that position, I wish someone would have told me that, Hey, it seems like you're in freeze mode. And also, Hey, there's something that you can do right now to start to get unstuck.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And so that's actually what I'm going to be covering today. I'm going to be sharing three simple and small steps that you can take today if you find yourself frozen, stuck, stalled, and you want to get out of that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Welcome

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: to the award winning Grad School Femtoring Podcast, [00:02:00] the place for first gen BIPOCs to listen in on inclusive grad school stories and learn about personal development and productivity tips. This is Dr. Yvette Martinez-Vu, a certified coach, consultant, and author, and I will be serving as your femtor, providing you with insider knowledge to help you reach your personal and professional goals.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring Podcast. This is your host, Dr.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Yvette. Today's going to be a short and sweet episode. Why? Because I do not have the spoons to provide you with a longer episode. Before I go into the topic, I just want to mention that I'm recovering from a cold and flu. It's been a rough start to the new year. And that is an understatement to [00:03:00] say, because I also want to send a message of love and support to every one of my audience member who is in the Los Angeles and greater Southern California area.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I know that I have so many family members and friends and loved ones in the SoCal area because I was born and raised in that area. I only recently moved out of state, what, just a few years ago at the end of 2021. And so I know that this has been on my mind since the fire started. From the time that I'm recording this, the fires are continuing to Ravage the area.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And it has taken up a lot of time and space and capacity. And I suspect that's also why my immune system was shot. And I dealt with the cold and the flu and the flare ups. So all this to say, please everybody keep taking care of yourselves. Please keep leaning into [00:04:00] community. Please keep tapping into resources.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: There have been a lot of resources shared and we're going to figure it out. We're going to find a way to make it through. I hate that we have to live in unprecedented times, but this is 2025. And this is a reality of what we're experiencing. And at the same time, we are still moving forward. We are still doing what we need to do to live and survive and thrive. And so I think this is a good time to transition into the topic of today, because some of y'all might be feeling frozen simply because of the times that we're living in. I actually think that it makes complete sense to struggle with your mental health.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: During these times, it makes complete sense to struggle with your physical health. It makes complete sense to struggle to focus because there's just so much going [00:05:00] on, not even just in our local communities, but in the world. And yet folks are having to keep going, having to keep working, having to keep food on the table.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And if you are someone who needs to keep going and you want to get unfrozen, then let's talk about it. Let's talk about actually first, like, what do I mean when I am referring to freeze mode? When I talk about freeze mode, I'm referring to a very common stress response.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: A lot of us respond in freeze mode where we just Don't do anything when we experience moments of high stress, high pressure, and that can happen a lot in in any work environment, but especially in academia, especially for graduate student. I see it time and time again with professors who have very high [00:06:00] expectations and who burn their grad students out.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And so if you find yourself dealing with burnout, and frozen. Please know that it is a common response to an unhealthy environment. And I also want to let you know that if you've been frozen for a while, it is not a sign of failure. A lot of folks I work with, their confidence has been shot. They they feel like they have failed and no, they haven't.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: They're still enrolled. They're still continuing to, to do what they can to stay afloat. So no, you're not a failure. And no it doesn't mean that you are not worthwhile just because you have been struggling to maintain momentum on whatever it is that you're working on. Let's assume it's a thesis or a dissertation.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So freeze mode. [00:07:00] It's a response to unhealthy environments, stressful environments, overwhelming environments, and you. might feel like you're struggling to take action, struggling to move, struggling to do things. It's different from other responses. Some folks, they have fight or flight or fawn responses to stress.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: But for the purpose of today, we're focusing on, on being frozen and being stuck. And like I mentioned earlier, this might happen for you because you're feeling like a failure, or this might happen to you because you're overwhelmed and fatigued, like you don't even know like what to do. This might happen to you because you feel this strong sense of pressure and perfectionism, and it's just easier to do nothing than to risk doing something in a way that's nowhere near perfect and it takes a toll, like [00:08:00] I mentioned earlier in my example of myself, when I struggled, I mean, that's not to say that I no longer struggle with freeze mode, trust me, I still get frozen.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Time and time again, but one of the worst moments of freeze mode for me was as a grad student, because grad school was a traumatizing period for me. And I did feel guilty. I did feel frustrated. I did doubt myself. My confidence was low. And it didn't help. It didn't help that I was missing deadlines. It didn't help that I was setting new deadlines and then miss them again.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It didn't help that I was avoiding things. I was avoiding people and it didn't help that I wasn't making progress on my goals. And so if I could go back in time and tell my previous self, you know, here, just try these small things out. I would do that. And [00:09:00] this is what I'm going to tell you right now. And so the three steps are the first one is to ground yourself.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The second step is to start with a micro step or a micro action. And then the third step is to maintain momentum with connection. So those are the three steps. So let's go into that in more detail. The first step ground yourself. A lot of times when we're feeling frozen, our nervous systems are out of whack and we are struggling to calm our nervous system.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So you need to find some sort of tool or strategy or technique that will help to calm your nervous system down. What does that look like? That can look like deep breathing exercises that can look like playing [00:10:00] a guided meditation that can look like doing some stretches. If you're, you're able to, it can look like going outdoors and taking a walk.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It might look like talking to a friend who's a really good active listener. It can look like journaling out your thoughts and feelings and just doing a Brain dump of all the things that are stressing you out. It can look like anything that historically you know has helped you to just slow down and calm yourself down.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So do that first. And you can do that in as little as five to 10 minutes. After you feel a little bit more grounded, even me going over, I feel like I'm starting to feel a little bit more grounded. I will admit , starting this episode, I had to restart the recording multiple times because I just wasn't [00:11:00] feeling it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I am not at my baseline. I'm not at my version of a hundred percent. And even my a hundred percent is less than other people's a hundred percent because I am a spoonie. I have chronic illnesses, but in any case. I'm not even at baseline right now. I'm not feeling that great. And so I, I think it helps right now for me to even slow down, remind myself that it's okay to give myself five to 10 minutes to even get into the topic.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So step one, do what you need to do to ground yourself. Step two, start small. And by small, I mean micro steps. I mean the babiest of baby steps, because if you're frozen, everything is hard. So, What is the tiniest thing that you can do to [00:12:00] take action towards the thing that you've been avoiding for a while?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So instead of saying, okay, today's the day I'm finally gonna open my laptop and work on my dissertation. Maybe it's today is a day that I am going to take a look at this one article that I'm going to summarize. and add to my literature review chapter. So today is a day that I'm going to write a paragraph long summary of one article that's going to go into my literature review chapter.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That's one example, like just break it down into something. And even that I don't think is small enough. So even that, I feel like, okay, that could still be too big for some people. So if that's still not micro enough, then maybe it'll be, okay, I'm going to scan this article for 10 minutes and write [00:13:00] Three lines about it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Whatever you can do. The tiniest of micro steps. And I want to share an example of this process of breaking things down and how it works in my one on one coaching sessions because I think it's important for you to Understand what it can look like, especially if you're a grad student, or if you're someone who's working on a pretty big project, that would be the equivalent of a dissertation.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I also have folks who listen to this episode who maybe you're trying to work on your first book, you're writing a book, or maybe you've got a big project at work and you're struggling to make progress. Maybe you're writing this huge grant, whatever it is, we're trying to help you break it down. So recently this week I started working with someone who I onboarded last month, but they started their sessions this month.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And this person is a grad [00:14:00] student and this person has a certain number of chapters that they have to write of their dissertation before they can defend their prospectus so that they can become a doctoral candidate. And so there's three chapters. There's the introduction, there's the lit review, and there's the methods chapter.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And what we did during the session was to break down and reverse engineering from the date that they ideally would like to have their prospectus defense. Okay. Let's work backwards. What do you need to do each week to get there? And so.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: All of a sudden it went from writing chapters 1, 2, and 3 of the dissertation to, okay, this week we're going to work on this subsection from this chapter within a page [00:15:00] range of this and this And then each week again, it was like, so what section are you working? So breaking down the chapters into subsections, breaking down the subsections into an estimate of how long they think the page length is going to be.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And the more they could break up that up, the better. And always, always, always break things down into as small of a step as possible and add flexibility within the goals.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So have some sort of range. I think that's incredibly important for anyone, but especially those of us who are neurodivergent, with shifting energy levels, those of us with chronic illnesses, we need a lot of flexibility. Even those of us that like thrive in structure. I love structure. We still need flexibility.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So. Break it down into the smallest possible step and then give yourself a range in terms [00:16:00] of your goal of what you're going to get done when you're breaking down these small steps. So that's step number two. Step number three is about building and maintaining momentum. And I recommend doing this by connecting with others.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Later this month, I'm going to have a guest, Dr. Oyan Poon, who is going to be talking about the topic of affirmative action, graduate admissions, and how to support first gen BIPOC students in our current political climate.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It's a really, really great conversation. And one of the things that she talked about and addresses the importance of community care. So that's going to keep coming up a lot. It's going to keep coming up. Throughout the year in my podcast episodes and conversations, it's really important for us to tap into our community and to build that community if it doesn't exist.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And what I really, really loved [00:17:00] that this guest shared is that she had a really strong tight knit community when she herself was a grad student, and that was already built into their department and their program. That's not necessarily true everywhere. That wasn't necessarily true of my program, and so it It did mean that I had to make more of an effort to build community and build connections with others.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: But please keep in mind that this can help you to overcome freeze mode, is to set up a writing group or work with an accountability buddy, or ask your advisor if they can meet with you more regularly or join. networks or support groups or any other type of events that'll help to keep you accountable.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: That's actually what I leaned on a lot. I had a writing group for women of color that I was part [00:18:00] of and we were mostly all in the humanities when I was a grad student. I also was part of a Mother Scholar Collective, well actually two of them, the Mothers of Color in Academia, de UCLA group, and the Chicana Motherwork Collective, and all of them provided me with ways to build momentum and sustain momentum in different ways.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Some of them actually with coworking and getting feedback on my writing and others with helping me to advocate for the things that I needed to help me to carve out space to do my writing. So, in any case, figure out how you're going to connect with others so that you can build momentum. On that note, I am going to mention some of the ways that I am working to build and carve out a sense of community for folks who want to work with me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: One of the things that I'm doing this year is because I'm at capacity with one on one [00:19:00] clients, I am opening up spots for hybrid coaching. Hybrid coaching is a blend of one on one and group coaching. So instead of meeting with me, my typical one on one coaching program is six one on one sessions with me over a three month period.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Instead, you're going to get three one on one sessions with me and then three group coaching and consulting sessions with me where you're in a small group with other folks, like minded folks, and we work on anything that's coming up for you, any obstacles. So you get both coaching and consulting in that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And it's consulting too, because you can ask any questions and I will answer them or I will teach any systems, strategies, etc. that could be useful to you. So that's one offering that I have going on right now. Another thing that I'm building right now as we speak, that's brand new. I haven't even built the site [00:20:00] to sign up yet.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: It's, it's, it's an idea, but I'm committed to executing it this year. It's a series of workshops that I'm going to call Get Your Shit Together Workshops. And it'll be a series of at least six workshops that I host publicly for folks to come in and learn different ways to set up systems and get organized and kind of figure your stuff out so that you can simplify things so you can streamline things so that you just can.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Have a sigh of relief. That's like one less thing to worry about. So with those workshops, I'm going to be covering a wide range of different topics from, , coming up with a life assessment to kind of , figure out what areas of your life need more tending to, to then from.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Identifying the areas of your life that you want to prioritize more this year. A session on goal [00:21:00] setting, how to realistically goal set and hold yourself accountable to getting it done, no matter what happens, even when life happens, which is going to keep happening more and more in our unprecedented time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So we're going to cover goal setting. We're also going to talk about task management because that comes up a lot. Time and energy management, managing your inbox, how to stop procrastinating and maintain focus and follow through. So these are all the different areas that I'm going to cover in my public workshops.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And it'll be a great place for you to meet some new folks. And maybe even from those folks that you meet there, contact them, set up your own little mini groups for accountability or for co working. That's just kind of a preview of what's to come. Keep an eye out because I, I'm just now getting started. I am low on spoons, so I don't have a signup sheet yet, but if [00:22:00] you're interested, shoot me an email and I'm happy to add you to my waitlist so that you can sign up as soon as it's available.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: So those are, yeah, those are my ways that I'm working towards sustainably building community. So that way I can still support my family while also supporting my community while also helping people to reach their goals. And then of course, if you don't have the financial capacity to sign up for my offerings, , keep listening to this episode because all the things that I.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Share in my workshops. I will also find ways to share it on the podcast. But of course, if you want more direct support, more implementation and accountability, consider my offerings if you can. All right. That is the episode for today. So just as a reminder, the three different ways for you to get out of freeze mode.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Very, very small, simple steps are one, [00:23:00] find five to 10 minutes to ground yourself and complete any grounding activity that is accessible to you. Step two, start with the tiniest of actions, even if it's five to 10 minutes of tackling the smallest step that's going to move the needle forward in terms of the things that you have been avoiding or have been stuck on.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And then step three, don't forget to build and sustain momentum through connection, through community. So find your people, work with them. If you need check ins, if you need co working, if you need accountability, or if you need a coach, I mean, I'm here whatever you need to do, make sure you connect with folks to get the support you need.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Okay. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as always, I will talk to you all [00:24:00] next time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Thanks so much for listening. If you liked what you heard, here are three ways you can support the show. The first is to make sure you're subscribed and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. The second way is to get your copy of my free resource kit linked in my show notes. This kit includes tools, worksheets, and podcast playlists on all things grad school, productivity, and personal development.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: The third way to support my show is to follow me on social media. You can find me on Instagram with the handle at gradschoolfemtoring and on LinkedIn by searching my name. Thanks again for listening. And until next time.