769 Overcoming the Silent Freeze: How to Stay Calm and Speak Up
The Terri Cole Show
Terri Cole
4.9 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever been in a meeting where someone suddenly calls your name and you freeze? Your mind goes completely blank, your body tenses, and even though you know the answer is in there somewhere, you cannot find the words. Or maybe you are in a heated conversation, someone accuses you of something unfair, and instead of speaking up you go silent. You just freeze.
If this has happened to you, you are not alone. Freezing in the moment is incredibly common. From CEOs to public speakers, from parents to teenagers, many of us have experienced the silent freeze. For some, it happens only occasionally. For others, it is almost chronic, showing up whenever they feel put on the spot.
In this episode of The Terri Cole Show, I am breaking down why we freeze, what it really means, and most importantly, what you can do to work with your body and mind to move through it. The good news is that there are many strategies you can practice to expand, regain your voice, and communicate more effectively.
Read the show notes for today's episode at terricole.com/769
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, hello there and welcome to this episode of the Terry Cole show. I want to start with a question. |
| 0:06.0 | Have you ever been in a meeting and someone unexpectedly calls your name to present or to say something? And suddenly, your brain goes completely blank. You have nothing to say. It's like your throat is frozen. You know that the answer is in there somewhere. You know the |
| 0:22.5 | answer. But instead of words coming out of your mouth, just nothing is there. Or you're having |
| 0:30.5 | sort of a heated conversation with someone or someone accuses you of something and suddenly you have |
| 0:35.4 | no words. You're just frozen. It's like your throat chakra, just ate an ice cube, right? Have you ever had that experience? We'll call this |
| 0:44.7 | the silent freeze. And that is exactly what I'm going to be covering in this episode of the |
| 0:50.4 | Terry Cole show. We're talking about why we shut down like that. What is that freeze all |
| 0:55.3 | about? And what are steps that you can take? There are proactive things you can do and things in the |
| 1:00.8 | moment. Two, freeze less and talk true more, right? It really is a whole nervous system thing. |
| 1:09.6 | So anyway, before we get into into it i want to just take a |
| 1:12.7 | moment to say why are you guys i'm still floating on this high of our 10 year the terry cole show |
| 1:19.9 | celebration that we did last month and just say thank you to you just i feel so grateful |
| 1:26.0 | to the ojs to the newbies, because I know some |
| 1:31.8 | of you have been listening in the whole entire time and thank you, thank you, thank you for that. |
| 1:35.6 | And I love all the new people too. So just thanks for being here because you being here |
| 1:40.4 | means the world to me and it means that you listening, I get to continue doing this. |
| 1:49.8 | Right? And this is what I love, love, love to do. And if you love the show or if you're new here |
| 1:54.5 | and you want to support the show, it helps me so much if you rate, review, and subscribe to Apple |
| 2:00.4 | podcasts. Because here's the thing. |
| 2:02.6 | Tons of people listen regularly, but are not subscribed. I don't know why. It's like some |
| 2:07.4 | statistic, like 70% of the people who listen every single week. And I put out two and sometimes |
| 2:13.6 | three episodes a week of this show. So please, if you're not subscribed, it's free. |
... |
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