⚠️ Living Life on Autopilot: Understanding Functional Freeze

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Have you ever caught yourself living on autopilot—moving through your days without truly feeling present? You’re ticking off your tasks, attending meetings, replying to texts, yet a quiet numbness sits beneath it all. It’s as if your body is in the room, but your heart and mind are elsewhere. This subtle state of disconnection is what we call a functional freeze.

In a world filled with constant demands for our attention, emotional labour, and performance, it’s no wonder many of us feel completely drained both emotionally and physically. When life feels like it is too much, our nervous systems may seek survival states that allows us to “get through the day,” but at a terrible cost to our personhood.

What Is Functional Freeze?

Functional freeze is a way to describe how your nervous system feels when you're able to function in daily life, but internally you feel stuck, checked out, or numb. It's related to the freeze response which is one of the body’s survival responses alongside fight, flight, and fawn:

• 🥊 Fight: The "fight" response is a natural reaction to stress or threat where the body prepares to confront and overcome the danger.

• 🛩 Flight: The "flight" response is a survival instinct triggered by stress or danger, prompting the body to prepare for rapid escape.

• 🥶 Freeze: The "freeze" response is a physiological reaction to stress, where the body enters a state of immobility or reduced movement.

• 👀 Fawn: The "fawn" response is a social and psychological reaction to stress, characterized by a strong desire to please or appease others, often at the expense of one's own needs.

While freeze states traditionally refer to a state of immobility or shutdown, a functional freeze happens when this freeze state becomes chronic. We call it “functional” because its characterized by a capacity to continue on and function in your life, but you’ll likely still feel stressed, slow moving, disengaged and/or detached.

Logically you might know that you’re safe, but physiologically your body may continue to experience lingering effects around feeling unsafe. You may still be going through the motions of working, parenting, socializing, and so on, but with little engagement, pleasure or presence.

You might feel foggy, robotic, or emotionally flat. This can often be mistaken for depression, but it’s usually more rooted in how your body has adapted to prolonged or unresolved stress or trauma.

The Nervous System and Survival States

When our systems become overwhelmed, our body doesn’t ask for permission, it just acts automatically to protect us. According to somatic theories and body focused interventions, our autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates how we respond to perceived safety and danger. Over time, if our nervous system spends too long in a state of sympathetic arousal (fight/flight mode) without release, it may default to a freeze state.

This isn’t a failure. It’s adaptation.

In a functional freeze state:

• You may look calm on the outside but feel detached inside.

• You might be able to do tasks but feel little pleasure or presence while doing them.

• Your emotional responses may feel dampened or non-existent.

• You might feel invisible or like a “ghost” in your own life.

How Functional Freeze Differs From Depression

While depressive episodes and functional freeze states can overlap, being in functional freeze is more about disconnection from sensation (feelings in our body) and self (who we are and know ourselves to be). It may involve numbness, fogginess, or disembodiment rather than just low mood, lack of motivation or profound hopelessness.

• Functional Freeze is a physiological experience where your system has slowed down to conserve energy and minimize threat.

• Depression is a psychological experience that often revolves around themes of worthlessness, sadness, or despair.

Recognizing the difference helps you choose the right path for healing. Read on for our strategies for getting unstuck and back into connection, presence and grounding.

Gentle Strategies for Shifting Out of Functional Freeze

While it is helpful for our bodies to protect us, when it comes to functional freeze, it is okay to learn to move with more focus, ease, and engagement. The way out of freeze isn’t to push harder or “snap out of it.”It's to reconnect with your body, your environment, and your emotions. 

To get out of the functional freeze state, acknowledging this experience and training your body to get moving again is an important next step. Part of this process includes taking small steps every day and reminding yourself that it's okay (and very normal) to feel discomfort while establishing a sense of safety, trust and security in your body and mind.

Here are four tips you can start practicing today to support your focus and re-engagement in life when in a functional freeze state:

1. Move Your Body (Gently) 🧘🏾‍♀️

It’s not a secret that physical exercise is an important part of overall wellness. Movement is essential to completing the stress response cycle. According to Emily Nagoski (co-author of Burnout), physical movement tells your body, “The danger has passed. You’re safe now.” In somatic therapy, movement and movement based interventions are also used as a tool to restore and connect folks to a sense of personal agency, independence, and support the release of blocked defensive responses.

Slight movements to try:

• Walking slowly while paying attention to your steps

• Shaking out your limbs

• Dancing to music you loved as a teen

• Reaching movements (this can even help access early attachment repair)

Let it be intuitive. Remember that your body knows how to move toward safety.

2. Release Emotions (Even the Quiet Ones) 💗

Uncomfortable emotions can become pent up, blocked, and require some effort to release intentionally. You might be feeling numb or detached in a functional freeze state, so giving your emotions a kickstart can help you begin to feel, release and let go of stress in an adaptive way.

To start thawing emotional numbness:

• Put on a tear-jerker movie and let the waterworks begin

• Cry (even if it feels awkward at first)

• Journal without editing

• Listen to music that evokes a strong memory or feeling

• Use art or imagery to externalize your internal world

• Scream into a pillow

It doesn’t matter what emotion is induced with this practice at first. The key is to practice activating your feeling side and ultimately getting curious about what might be coming up that needs to be processed. The goal is not to be “emotional”, rather it is to create emotional access whereby you can start reconnecting to your feelings and body, slowly and safely.

3. Try the Safety Location Exercise 📍

This verbal grounding technique helps bring your nervous system back into the here-and-now. Dissociation thrives on feeling not here, so tethering yourself to your current location, time, and sensory environment is powerful.

Say these answers out loud:

• What day is it?

• What’s the full date?

• What time is it?

• Where are you right now?

• What do you see around you that feels comforting or safe?

Visualize or connect with something you can physically see in your environment that brings you joy or pleasant emotions and say the words “I am Safe.”

Even if you don’t fully believe it, repetition builds a bridge between your cognitive and sensory systems.

4. Notice Your Internal Shifts with Compassion 🫂

When you experience sudden mood changes, conflicting feelings, or inner tension (like craving rest yet also feeling guilty about it), know these aren’t personal shortcomings—they’re protective responses your mind uses to cope.

Gently pause and reflect:

• “What part of me feels stuck or frozen right now?”

• “What might this part of me be needing?”

• “How can I support or comfort this part of myself?”

This kind of caring reflection can help bring together and soothe parts of yourself that have become disconnected by stress or past experiences.

You’re Not Broken, You’re Protecting Yourself

Functional freeze is more common than we realize, especially for those of us constantly navigating unsafe or invalidating environments. It’s not laziness, and it’s not your fault. It's your body trying to help you survive. But survival is not the same as living. And survival mechanisms that were once adaptive may no longer be needed in the same way in your current context.

💘 You are allowed to move at your own pace.

⚡️ You are allowed to reawaken to joy, safety, and connection.

🌳 And most importantly, you are allowed to come back to yourself (slowly, gently, and with care).

More Resources 🤓

• (Book) Burnout: Secrets to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

• (Digital Download) Indicators of Dysregulation vs Defensive Responses (somatic resource) - via The Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute

• (Book) The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy by Deb Dana

• (Book) Trauma and the Body by Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton & Clare Pain

• (Article) How to Overcome the Freeze Response - National Institute for The Clinical Application of Behavioural Medicine (NICABM)

• (Book) The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté MD

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