Mentopolis and the Freeze Response. A short analysis

I watched Mentopolis a while ago so I'm not 100% certain that I remember everything right, but I feel like Brennan missed something when writing Mayor Logic/Frank Freeze.

Frank Freeze seems to be portrayed as a kind of anxious overthinking, where a person freezes mostly by accident. By overthinking and hesitating so much that a person comes to inaction. Which is a bit of a shame since when they're executing their really nice moral of the story "every part of the mind has an important purpose" the job Frank Freeze gets is something along the lines of locking the limbs of the body up to brace for impact.

Mentopolis has a pretty good handle on 3 of the 4 F responses.

Fight is when you decide to solve a problem by fighting. Like three of the F responses it's active. It's doing something. You do it when you think you can confront a problem by resisting.

Flight is when you decide to neutralize a problem by escaping it. It doesn't often solve a problem, especially on its own, but sometimes it's neccessary. Running out of a burning building doesn't stop your house from burning, but it does save your life. You do it when you think you can't solve a problem but you can escape it.

Fawn is when you decide to reduce the consequences by doing whatever they want. Sometimes in complex, long-term situations Fight and Flight are not options. It's probably kind of self-destructive, but it's better than doing nothing, right? Maybe.

Freeze is doing nothing. But it isn't inaction. It's deciding to do nothing. I can really only think of one example that's easy to explain, but imagine you're a small child, and an adult is yelling at you. This adult doesn't care about your feelings, and they're asking you to do something that's impossible. Just do better. Be less of a burden. Don't get distracted. Don't seek attention. Do what I want, not what you need.

You can't stop them by fighting. That will just escalate things. They're an adult and you're a kid. You'll lose. You can't flee. They'll catch up to you or worse, they're your caretaker and you can't survive without them. You can't fawn. They're asking you to do things you can't or won't do no matter how hard you try or how much you tell yourself you want to.

You have to do nothing. You have to wait. You have to let it blow over. This is the best and only option you have at your disposal when every other choice would make things worse.

That's Freezing. And that's the interpretation I think Mentopolis missed with Mayor Logical and Frank Freeze.