Canari
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Yes and no... In a way yes but it is reductive, because some people stay in stress and do not freeze or dissociate. If you say INTENSITY, this is already nearer to the truth. And we each have a threashold for dissociation.
Then it is necessary to understand that freeze is good because protective, but tiring if it holds a lot of charge. Also there are mild forms, because day dreaming is a sort of dissociation when you dissociate from your senses and connect to inner images.
When you enter a shop of perfume and it smells strong, and then after a while you smell nothing, this is a freeze response too! And deep states of meditation also come from the dorsal vagal stimulation!
The ventral vagus is what creates social engagement, and this is why we all feel better when we get support in mere form of a presence near us. You can stand more intensity when somebody is giving you some support. So it stops the freeze response.
Apart from intensity, there is cumulation if you have stress plus period plus virus attack plus Lyme... your inner warriors cannot face all at once.
The real point is to see that those states are not permanent and that the point is to get better at pendulation, which mean to be able to go from a state of activation/stress to relaxing without dissociating. With cumulative stresses we tend to not go down the waves, because we feel that is will be too tiring to go up again. Or we can have non adapted sensations, like heat and cold or heart beats irregularity or fear and anxiety when we are actually safe.
This is dysregulation or desynchronisation of the branches of the nervous system.
