The freeze response.

When your system decides that it can neither fight nor flee, it can shift into immobility. Researchers describe related states such as tonic immobility. Your body becomes heavy, your mind foggy, and simple tasks feel impossible.

Many people live in what is often called functional freeze: they keep going through the motions, work, chores, conversations, while feeling numb and disconnected inside.

Freeze often appears after long periods of stress, or in people who could not escape a difficult situation. Because it looks like inaction, it is the response people blame themselves for the most, and shame keeps it in place.

None of the four stress responses is a flaw. Each one kept someone alive at some point. The goal is not to remove them, it is to stop getting stuck in them.

• Start with tiny movements: wiggle your toes, press your feet into the floor, turn your head slowly.
• Use gentle warmth or cool water on your face and hands to bring sensation back.
• Shrink the next step until it is almost ridiculous: open the laptop, nothing more.
• Hum or sing softly; vibration and longer exhales help your system come back online.
• Reach out to one safe person. Connection thaws freeze.
• Be kind to yourself afterwards. Shame deepens the freeze.

Fight, flight, freeze and fawn are the four survival responses most often described today. Most people use a blend, and the dominant one can change depending on the situation and the person in front of them.

Read about the others: fight response, flight response, fawn response.