You’re crushing work deadlines and leading Zoom meetings with ease, but when it comes time to decide on dinner, you freeze. Or maybe you can easily make it through a jam-packed work trip, but as soon as you have a weekend to yourself, you scroll TikTok or rewatch Schitt’s Creek for the third time instead of completing the art project you’ve put off for months.
If any of the above resonates, you may be experiencing functional freeze, a state where you have a “high-functioning” lifestyle but feel numb or shut down internally. Here, Thriveworks explores what happens during a functional freeze and ways to feel better without adding even more to your to-do list.
Functional freeze is a mental state where a person continues daily activities—such as going to work, answering emails, fitting in a workout, and showing up at social events—yet feels emotionally numb or disconnected. Functional freeze typically occurs as a response to intense or ongoing stress and overstimulation.
“It’s not a complete shutdown, but rather a kind of survival mode where a person operates on autopilot,” says Supatra Tovar, PsyD, RD, a nutritional psychologist in Pasadena. “They’re doing just enough to function, but emotionally, mentally, or physically, they feel stuck.”
The reason for feeling stuck stems back to how our brain and nervous system operate. When we receive a stressful or dangerous cue from the world around us, our amygdala (the fear center of the brain) sends a message to the hypothalamus, which controls the nervous system. Our nervous system then reacts to the cue with what’s known as the fight-or-flight response. This response is ancient, as in it helped our ancestors decide whether to fight or run away from lions in order to survive.
Today, most of us aren’t on the run from lions, but we do navigate situations that cause ongoing stress, like a demanding job or caregiving for an aging family member and kids at the same time. In either scenario, your mind knows it can’t run or fight.
What does it do instead? Enter: functional freeze.
“When your nervous system perceives danger and neither fight nor flight is available or safe, it hits the freeze button,” says Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC, a licensed therapist specializing in anxiety. “Not the ‘play dead’ kind you might picture, but a functional freeze—one that keeps you moving while emotionally shut off.”
If experiencing functional freeze, there may be a tiny voice in the back of your head urging you to actually do something. It could tell you to make dinner instead of scrolling TikTok for hours or to advocate for less stress at work instead of taking on another project, but your mind just won’t seem to listen. Instead of acting, it freezes.
The reason your brain chooses freeze mode comes down to how your nervous system works: It’s constantly scanning both your environment and your inner world for signs of safety or danger. This means it’s not just your thoughts that matter. Your body is also picking up on physical signals all around you. These “external cues” can include things like a tense tone of voice in a conversation, the sudden slam of a door, a cluttered or chaotic workspace, or even bright, flickering lights. Even if you tell yourself everything is fine, your nervous system might still react to subtle signals, keeping you on edge.
Think of it this way: Changing your thoughts without addressing the physical signals around you is like trying to recharge your laptop with the wrong cord—it just doesn’t work.
This frustrating freeze mode can be described by a theory from neuroscience: the Polyvagal Theory. Groskopf explains, “Polyvagal Theory explains how our nervous system reacts to safety and threat, and why we respond the way we do, even when we don’t want to.”
The theory offers three main states we move through:
Groskopf adds, “Understanding this helps people stop blaming themselves for ‘shutting down’ and start seeing it as their body’s way of trying to protect them.”
Anyone can experience functional freeze, but certain patterns increase the risk. “People who tend to be high-achieving, perfectionistic, or overly responsible are especially prone to functional freeze,” Tovar says. “These individuals often ignore their own needs and override signs of stress or overwhelm.”
That doesn’t mean all high achievers will experience functional freeze. Usually there’s a direct cause that sets off freeze mode. Common triggers of functional freeze include:
“Unlike the ‘fight or flight’ response, functional freeze doesn’t look dramatic from the outside, which is why it’s often overlooked, even by the person experiencing it,” Tovar says. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t functional freeze symptoms to look out for.
Warning signs of functional freeze include:
“Functional freeze is a hardwired protective mechanism in our bodies,” Hoerr says. “So ultimately, thawing is letting your body ‘come up to temp’ slowly so it knows it is safe from overwhelm.”
Once up to temp, it’s easier to feel like you’re truly living, not going through the motions. Thawing lets us take control of our emotional health, relationships, and career goals instead of living on autopilot.
If any of this resonates, your next question is probably how to get out of functional freeze—without taking on a highly impractical wellness routine. The good news: Thawing comes from small steps, not a drastic change.
“You don’t want to try to force yourself to feel everything at once; that would be overwhelming and counterproductive,” Hoerr says. “Instead, we want to do small things to tune into the present moment.” Start here.
“Repetitive, rhythmic movements such as walking, gentle yoga, or dance can help bring the body out of freeze and into a more regulated state,” Tovar explains. “These types of movement are especially powerful because they don’t overwhelm the nervous system—they meet it where it is and gradually create a sense of internal safety.”
A 2024 study published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal suggests that when we draw or create something by hand, such as pottery or a bracelet, our body and mind build resilience and are better able to respond to stressors, not freeze. This could be as simple as buying an adult coloring book and setting a timer for 20 minutes.
“From a nutritional standpoint, fiber is often overlooked but critically important for thawing. It feeds the beneficial bacteria in our gut, which produce short-chain fatty acids and neurotransmitters like serotonin that directly influence mood and emotional regulation,” Tovar explains.
Women should aim for 25 grams or more of fiber per day. For men, aim closer to 30 grams per day. Some good sources of fiber include:
“Disconnecting from screens helps with functional freezing because it allows a person’s brain to actively register more stimulus from the outside world,” says Hoerr, adding that more time away from screens lets us feel more present.
For those of us who find it hard to log off, Hoerr recommends starting with small adjustments:
The next time you’re listening to music, try humming along. Humming calms the nervous system, making space for you to thaw. In fact, a 2023 study published in the Cureus journal found that daily humming for 15 minutes or longer was more effective than exercise or sleep for lowering certain stress indicators.
Despite the irony, an ice bath or running an ice roller over your face may help you “thaw.” A 2022 study published in Scientific Reports found that applying a cold substance to the face, such as an ice cube or ice roller, for five to 35 seconds lowered cortisol levels and calmed the nervous system.
When in functional freeze, we focus on what we need, not what we want. “Giving ourselves permission to want something can be a signal to our body that we are thawing out,” Groskopf says.
She adds that wanting something small, like an iced coffee from your favorite cafe, or something big, such as quitting an unfulfilling job, will work. And this tip doesn’t mean you have to act right now. Thawing happens when we allow ourselves to feel the desire. “It’s not about doing more, but feeling more,” Groskopf adds.
“People should seek professional help for functional freezing when it starts to impact their ability to take care of themselves or function in their daily lives,” Hoerr says. If there are large chunks of time where you cannot remember what happened or you regularly feel like you’re going through the motions, speaking to a therapist can help you thaw and tune back into life.
Since functional freeze isn’t an official medical condition, there’s no specific training or therapy style to treat it. The most important thing is to find a provider you feel comfortable with, which may take some trial and error.
This story was produced by Thriveworks and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
