Are you Lazy or is this "Functional Freeze"?

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This is Crappy to Happy and I am your host, Cass Dunn.

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I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher and of course

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author of the Crappy to Happy Books.

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In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people

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who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help

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you feel less crappy and more happy.

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Are you really lazy or is it functional freeze?

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This is the kind of headline, catchy, title that you might have seen on articles or social

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media posts and you may have wondered yourself, or what is this, what is functional free?

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Maybe this is the explanation for what I'm experiencing.

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So I decided to devote an episode to this to help you to understand what exactly people

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are referring to when they talk about this state of functional freeze, like what does that

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mean?

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So to begin with what it describes in terms of the behaviour or the experience that you

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might be having, it describes a state of basically going through the motions, doing

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the things that you need to do, showing up to work, etc.

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But being emotionally disconnected, feeling numb, detached, maybe a little bit foggy, really

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flat in terms of your affect, not really experiencing your emotions fully, just really flat, detached,

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disconnected, low energy, low mood, but still doing the things that need to be done.

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So it's much more of an inner experience.

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But this is the challenge that people have with it is because on the outside you may look

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like you're doing fine, but on the inside you're having this very detached, disconnected

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experience where you're there, but you're not really there.

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So it can impact your relationships because you're not really present.

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It can impact you socially because you withdraw from activities you don't really want to participate

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in things.

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It may look like you go to work, you do the things that you have to do, but then you get

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home and you just lie flat on the couch and you have nothing left.

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You are completely spent and so then you just spend the rest of the night scrolling mindlessly

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through TikTok videos or streaming shows on Netflix or doing something that numbs you

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out, just eating the food, drinking the alcohol and really not having the capacity to just

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take care of your basic needs.

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So it's kind of being able to show up when you need to, but that's all you've got.

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That's kind of what it looks and feels like.

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So what is actually going on here?

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To understand that we have to talk about the nervous system and how it operates.

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So we've talked about that on this show before, but you probably have not heard anybody

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talk about functional freeze because it's not really a term that you will find in textbooks.

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It really is something that I think has been created on the internet.

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I certainly have a lot of books written by people who are very prominent in the field of

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somatic therapies and nervous system regulation and healing.

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And I have never seen somebody out there can tell me where it does exist in somebody's textbook

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or some official publication, but I certainly have never seen it written in that format.

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I don't know who came up with a term, but it has been picked up because it describes

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very well what people's experience is.

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And you will see it used by counsellors and therapists and various practitioners because

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it is a neat way of describing to somebody what is going on, what they're experiencing.

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But essentially what is happening?

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Quick recap of how the nervous system works.

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Your threat response, when it gets activated, you have the fight flight response, fight

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or flight, either fight or run.

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Fawn is one, which is only recently been added.

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So it's fight flight freeze, fawn and fawn is when you are appeasing your attacker, like

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going out of your way to accommodate the person who is the source of threat as a self-protective

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defense strategy.

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Freeze is that deer in the headlights.

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So it's when you are activated, all of your senses are activated.

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It is lying in bed at night and hearing a noise like somebody's in the house.

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A state of being very alert but kind of frozen in mobile.

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Heart rate might be racing, body not moving.

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Sensors engage, listening, tuned into every possible sound or movement, but body frozen.

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So that's the freeze response, fight flight freeze fawn.

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Now take that threat response and to keep this very simple, if you want to bring in newer

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research about how a nervous system operates.

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And all we understood in the day, when I was learning this stuff in psychology, was that

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we had two branches of our nervous system, sympathetic, parasympathetic.

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Sympathetic is the arousal state, activated, engaged state, parasympathetic was the calm,

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relaxed state.

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So if you're feeling anxious, if you're in the fight or flight, that sympathetic arousal,

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and if you were feeling calm and relaxed, that was parasympathetic.

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And we would just move between these two.

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And if you're feeling very stressed, for example, very anxious, then you would try to do

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things to bring online your parasympathetic nervous system, that calming response, calming

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things down, slow deep breathing, talking to a friend, listening to some calming music,

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all of the things to bring your energy and your arousal down.

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And it was just this dual kind of system.

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Sympathetic, parasympathetic.

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Basically, what we know now with newer information is that the parasympathetic nervous

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system actually has two branches.

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There is the rest digest, that rest, relaxation, connection, etc.

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And there is what is called dorsal vagal, be nice if there's a less clinical term for

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that, but it's basically the collapse or shutdown response.

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Now if you imagine this as a three branches instead of just the two, not just sympathetic,

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parasympathetic.

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So in this case, sympathetic would refer to being engaged and arousal response in your

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nervous system.

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It's active, it's engaged, it can be fight or flight, but also your sympathetic nervous

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system is also engaged when you're at a party, when you're having fun, when you're energized,

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when you're playing sport.

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So it's the combination of the branch of your nervous system that is activated combined

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with your perception of safety or danger.

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So the sympathetic nervous system, when there is a sense of threat, that is when you go

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into anxiety stress, what we call hyper arousal, overly activated stress response because

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you're perceiving threat in whatever shape or form that might take, physical threat, social

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threat, just too much on your plate overwhelmed.

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That's the threat response activated.

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So then when we think about the parasympathetic branch, we are either relaxed, connected, socially

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connected, feeling engaged with our surroundings, feeling calm, emotionally regulated, perception,

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quiet open, can consider possibilities, can think, access our prefrontal cortex, can think

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clearly, etc.

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When we have experienced a trauma or when we have experienced too much stress for too long

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without a break, without any reprieve, without completing that stress cycle, having the opportunity

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to rest and restore and regulate back, again, so it could be chronic toxic stress at work,

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relationship, financial stress, all sorts of situations in life that can cause to a chronic

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unrelenting stress with no reprieve, which could also be particularly exacerbated if you

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have had early trauma and therefore your tolerance for stress is lower, you've got a narrower

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window of tolerance.

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Then what can happen is that you get completely overwhelmed and you end up in the collapse

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or shutdown response.

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Now this collapse or shutdown response is different from freeze.

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So freeze is during the headlights.

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I'm alert, what's going on, where's the threat?

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What do I need to do next?

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It's kind of pause before an action.

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I'm hyper alert, but my body's frozen.

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Now compared to a collapse response, which is I am depleted.

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The energy has drained from me.

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I've got nothing left.

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I'm completely burnt out.

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I am emotionally disconnected.

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NUM, brain fog, low energy, low interest, low motivation.

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I'm describing that in an extreme scenario, right?

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The truth of the matter is we all go in the course of our day to day to day.

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We go up and down through these different states, I guess, throughout our day.

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I can be sitting in a meeting and somebody says, I'm going to get you to deliver that report

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that we talked about and I suddenly have the thought I haven't done the report.

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They're going to ask me if I can go into a freeze response.

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I can be sitting in a social scenario and I'm happy and engaged.

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Then I hear somebody talking about a party or an event that I wasn't invited to and I go

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into, oh my God, I've been excluded, rejected.

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What does this mean?

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I can go into a withdrawal into a disconnected or must have dissociated state momentarily

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and then come back again.

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These aren't always extreme situations.

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I come chronically up there in that hyper-rousal state.

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I'm chronically just lying on the couch and I can't move for a week.

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We are cycling in and out of these different phases all the time.

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I think that's really important to understand.

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You can momentarily just blank out because your nervous system just does that.

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That's its response and then you can come back.

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What you're aiming for, what we're all aiming for is not to never go outside of a window

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of tolerance, not to never go into fight or flight or collapse or shutdown.

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It's how we recover, how quickly and effectively do we get back to regulated?

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That's all we're aiming for in terms of our growth and our healing and our working on

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resetting our nervous system if we know that we are a bit dysregulated because of our past

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experiences, past dramas, early upbringing, genetics, etc.

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All we're looking to be able to do is to have more awareness of what's happening with

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our nervous system and to have some strategies to come back more quickly to know what's happening

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to identify and to have tools that we can get regulated more quickly.

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It's not to never get dysregulated again.

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I just described freeze and I described collapse, which as I said, are two different things.

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You go on the internet and read stuff and people will blend these things together.

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I think it's also really important to understand.

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I've done some training with some people who are really well studied in this field and

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there is still debate among them about, is it freeze?

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Is it collapse?

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I was first trained, fight, flight, freeze or appease.

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That's an appease, your attacker.

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Then I started hearing everybody say fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

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I thought I was just using that word because it's an F and that's neat.

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Their discussion about is faunting different from appeasing.

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Are these two different things?

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There's all of this development and research going on about all of these states and terms

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that we use and what's actually happening in our body during each of them.

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None of that is actually rock solid set in stone.

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It's unfolding, right?

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I share that just to say I can't claim to be the expert.

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That is my best understanding of the distinction between freeze and collapse and if you read something

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different somewhere else on the internet.

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Well, different people have got different information and some of it is still being figured

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out.

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Therefore, let's get back to the topic, which is functional freeze.

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So again, my best understanding is what this is describing is not a freeze during the

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headlight, it's kind of a freeze, but the collapse kind of freeze.

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The shutdown, it's the shutdown withdrawal, it's the emotional disconnection, disconnection

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between your mind and your body, like feeling numb, not really feeling what's happening in

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your body, being kind of numb to your own emotional experience, very flat.

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Like I said, brain fog, not really able to concentrate, feeling kind of on the outside

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looking in at your life.

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But you can show up when you can do the things because that's what's expected of you,

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and internally there's this different thing going on, this disconnect.

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So I really think that this is a variation, a version of a collapse response, which happens

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after extended chronic stress, without any break or retrieve or opportunity to heal and

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regulate and get grounded again and get back into that window when there's, we're not

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designed.

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For that, our bodies and brains are not designed to be exposed to chronic unrelenting stress.

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Our whole threat response system is designed to get us out of danger, it's designed to be

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in a cute mechanism, get us out of danger, and then we can relax again.

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Animals in the world don't have PTSD, you know why?

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Because they get out of danger, they shake it off, they complete the stress cycle and

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they move on.

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We humans don't really have that in our modern world, where we are exposed to not just

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physical stresses, like I said, but all of these social threats, just the endless demands

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of work and bombardment with information and demands and people wanting us 24/7, just

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all of that, right?

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It creates this scenario where we never get a break from it.

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And then I should add, then you add when the alarm is coming from inside the house, when

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your stress is caused by your thoughts, your expectations, your negative self talk, your

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assuming what people are saying about you, what people are thinking about you, your assuming

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that you're going to get fired and that people hate you, etc.

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So remember that there's a whole lot of self talk, self evaluation, self judgment, self

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censoring, that is also contributing to your stress response.

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It's not just out there, it's not just the external demands and stress or some of it

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we create in our own mind.

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Again, for various reasons, that's not meant to be a judgment or a criticism because for

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various reasons we have internalized these narratives in this critical self talk as a

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survival strategy again.

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That's a whole different topic and a whole different path to healing.

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But it's relevant in this scenario because often when you have things to do and you know

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you have things to do, maybe you've gone to work all week, but then you can't get food

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on the table for your kids or you've done the things that you absolutely have to do because

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they're urgent but everything that's not is ignored and building up so you're getting

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behind and you're struggling or you get to the weekend and you say you're going to clean

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the house and see some friends but you haven't got it in you so you lie on the couch all weekend

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and just completely isolate.

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Then the most likely thing to happen is that you start beating yourself up.

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You start chastising yourself for not doing the things that you said that you were going

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to do.

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You start calling yourself hopeless and lazy and a bad mother and a bad this and all of

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the rest of it.

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When you're in that state, low in your mood and your sense of self worth and maybe you're

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not taking the best care of yourself and you're tired and you're fatigued, then those feelings

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also create thoughts.

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So your emotional state influences the way you perceive events.

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Remember I've told you a hundred times that when you're stressed, you perceive neutral facial

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expressions as hostile.

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That's such a great example because what it says is your state, the state that you're

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in influences how you perceive what is happening around you.

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You are not seeing the world as it is.

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You are seeing the world how you are.

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So it creates this awful cycle.

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You're feeling down on yourself.

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You're feeling badly about yourself.

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You're feeling negative.

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So whatever is happening in your outside world, you're probably perceiving it as being much

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worse than it actually is.

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Much more catastrophic than it actually is.

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You are attributing motivations to people's behaviour that probably isn't there, but then

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that also causes you to feel worse again.

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So it's really, once you get stuck in this state, it can be very difficult to get out of

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it.

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But what I want to say about this in terms of if you're there and if this feels familiar

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or if you recognise this in somebody else is that I just spent a whole lot of time talking

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about thoughts and feelings.

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But in actual fact, thoughts and feelings are very top down.

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When we talk about therapy and therapeutic responses and strategies and tools, looking at

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thoughts and feelings is very top down kind of approach.

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When you're in this kind of collapsed, disconnected, disengaged state, this requires bottom up strategies,

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not trying to think your way out of it, not trying to definitely not talking yourself,

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chastising yourself, judging yourself, telling yourself what an awful person you are.

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That is absolutely not going to help.

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This is a physiological response.

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This is a nervous system response.

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Your physiology doesn't respond to language, your physiology responds to physiology.

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So you change your physiology.

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You directly work with your body.

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So in this free state, when you are disconnected from your body, you're feeling like you're

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not yourself.

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You're emotionally, mentally, and you're just feeling this numb, disengagement.

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Then you've got to get back in your body.

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You've got to find some ways to get some activation happening.

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If you imagine collapse state is at the bottom of the ladder, you've got to start moving up

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the ladder, which means you have to actually get up into more of a sympathetic state.

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You actually have to activate some energy, but in a way that is soothing, in a way that

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is healing, not in a way that is pushing yourself, forcing yourself to do the things that

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you need to do, just because you feel threatened that if you don't do them something bad,

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it's going to happen.

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You've got to show up to your work, you're going to lose your job.

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You've got to pay that bill because it's going to cut the electricity off.

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That's pushing to do things.

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I'm talking about activating your physiology, but in a way that is safe and soothing and connected.

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Connecting with people is great.

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But going in nature, walking across, getting your feet on the ground, things like tapping

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your body, tapping, you can't see me, but crossing your hands across your chest and then

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just tapping your arms, tapping, tapping your thighs, tapping, tapping from the top

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of your head all the way down to your feet, activating some energy in your body, listening

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to music that changes your state, feeling how that feels in your body, putting your hands

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into play-doh, needing bread, you know, things that are kinesthetic, things that activate

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your senses, sniffing essential oils.

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Think about anything that stimulates your senses and gets you back in your body, gets you

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connected again with yourself.

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Your physiological self, because what's happened is you've disconnected.

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It's like the shutdown has disconnected your mind and your body, you know, so you can't

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feel detached from yourself.

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And what you want to do is get those things back together again.

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Mindfulness, obviously yoga, soothing yoga, things like that, you move your body in a way

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that feels safe and comfortable, but it's about feeling it, you know, like re-engaging

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your senses.

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But having said all of that, it's also about listening to your body.

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If your body is crying out for rest and telling you that it needs rest, then give it rest.

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Listening to your body connecting back with yourself involves trusting that your body's

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telling you what it needs.

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So it might be dimming the lights, lying under a weighted blanket, allowing your body to

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rest.

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And the thing that happens is we get so down on ourselves because we're so stuck in this

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kind of thinking that you've got to be doing something being productive or you're a waste

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of space, like everything's a waste of time if you're not being productive.

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We don't allow ourselves, we don't give ourselves permission to rest.

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That's what got you here in the first place, remember?

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Chronic unrelenting stress, never giving yourself the time to recover.

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So sometimes it is about being accepting of the fact that you might need to spend more

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time than usual just resting, allowing your body to heal, recover, repair.

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And what might happen is that you rest for long enough, you give yourself permission to

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rest for long enough and then you will naturally start to seek out some movement.

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You want to go outside, you want to get some sunshine, you want to nice cup of coffee

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or tea, you know, you listen to your body's cues if you have the capacity to do that.

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So it could be that you rest when you need to rest, instead of filling down on yourself

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like you're being lazy and unproductive, that actually you just accept that this is

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what your body needs as part of your healing.

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Truth is I can't give personal advice in a podcast episode like this, that's not the point.

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It is really just about helping you to understand what might be happening with your nervous system

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because when you have an understanding and when you recognize that what is happening is

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actually your whole body, your whole nervous system is just trying to protect you and keep

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you safe.

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And that these are physiological responses, this is not a personal failing or a weakness.

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This is a character flaw.

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And then you can reset your relationship with your body and your nervous system.

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What you want ultimately is to befriend your nervous system, to work with it, to listen

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to its cues, to get back to understanding what your nervous system is telling you.

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And usually if you're in this collapse response or you've been in a stress response, chronic

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stress for a long time, you've been ignoring all of your body's cues.

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You've become completely disconnected from what your body's been trying to tell you.

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But it's going to take some time to get there.

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I think the key thing is that this is not a quick fix.

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And I think the issue with the social media post and the TikTok videos and here's how to

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get out of a functional freeze, you know, some hack to wake up your senses or to activate

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you to do something is that that might help you in the moment.

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But that is not going to be a long term solution in terms of healing your nervous system

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and getting to the root cause of why this happened in the first place.

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And then building structures and routines in a life and a lifestyle that supports your

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nervous system and your health and your wellbeing ongoing.

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So it's not just about getting yourself through this day and through this week and through

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this, whatever's happening, it's about what are you doing to get to the root of the issue,

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why did this happen in the first place, what are the emotional issues, the old wounds,

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the old stories, understanding that, healing that.

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A lot of work to be done, much more than I can talk about this podcast episode.

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And then really in the long term, having that healthier life and lifestyle and relationship

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with yourself and getting back into being really connected with yourself and being able to

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trust yourself and to respond to your body's cues.

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I hope that is helpful.

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If you've heard the term functional freeze and you want to, sure, then I hope that helps

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you to have some understanding.

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And if you know somebody who might be experiencing something similar, then I hope that helps you

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to maybe be able to help them understand as well.

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Obviously, if you think this would be of interest to somebody that you know, please do share

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it.

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Love you to share the show with a friend because it does break my word of mouth.

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Get in touch with me.

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If there is anything else, if you have questions on this topic, meanwhile, I can't wait to catch

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you next week for another fabulous episode of Crab It A Happy.

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[Music]

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(upbeat music)