Freezing/pausing everything BUT the player.

So what would be the best way of doing this? I'm rather new at everything Unity and C#. Would the best way be to use Time.timeScale and then implementing a way for the player to bypass it, or is another approach the way to go? I've tried and failed at the first way to do it, but I'm sure it's just my lack of experience. If possible, I was hoping to make a small bubble around the player go by a different timeScale. Note, this is all for 2D.