Emerging from Functional Freeze

I never really knew something was wrong.

My body just kept breaking down in strange ways. I would injure myself doing the simplest things — yoga, stretching, even slow movements. My ligaments slipped, my muscles spasmed, and yet every test said I was fine.

I couldn’t digest food properly; my stomach was constantly heavy, my food intolerances increasing.

My applied kinesiologist became my best friend — the only one who seemed able to put my suffering body back together so I could move again.

But the world looked very small and frightening when I didn’t understand what was happening inside me, or why.

When doctors told me it was “all in my head,” I tried everything that was supposed to help — meditations, breathing practices, “life-changing” seminars.

Nothing worked.

I thought it was my fault.

So I pushed harder, tried to fix myself, but these practices often made me feel much worse.

A wave of too much — overwhelming sensations, panic, and emotions that felt like drowning.

Back then, I didn’t even have the vocabulary to name it as panic.

I felt incredible shame that the tools which helped everyone else didn’t work for me.

My old friends — shame, guilt, and self-judgment — threw a party in my head and body, dragging me even deeper into freeze.

Polyvagal Note:

Emotions like shame and guilt activate the body’s dorsal vagal response — the survival state of collapse and withdrawal. The body literally curls in, squeezes, and tries to disappear to stay safe.

Back then, nervous system work wasn’t popular.

After years of suffering, I found Irene Lyon’s work.

Finally something made sense — trauma, the body, the Polyvagal Theory.

I understood it logically, but I could barely feel anything in my body except anxiety (a word I didn’t even use yet).

Without a sense of internal navigation, I did what I had always done best — I pushed.

And then one day, I caught a glimpse of something else.

A spark of anger. A flicker of warmth.

A ventral moment.

But it was like finding a gem buried in years of coal. I couldn't name them, I couldn't know why those glimpses appeared, how I could have more? What do I do with them? But I knew I wanted more of this alivesness. 

When I started one-on-one somatic therapy, things began to shift more quickly.

After almost every session, a new wave of aliveness came through.

 Why?

My nervous system finally had someone to co-regulate with — to borrow safety from.

Her grounded presence gave my body permission to release — to soften, to cry, to breathe again.

It was still short, small moments, but it was like I would be learning to be alive again.

In a perfect world, as infants we learn co-regulation first — we borrow calm from our caregivers’ bodies before learning how to self-soothe.

But when our parents are overwhelmed, stressed, or never learned how to regulate themselves, we don’t get that lesson. We grow up trying to self-regulate without a model for what safety feels like.

Co-regulation feels like being gently held.

Your body softens. Your muscles let go. Emotions you didn’t know you had — tears, joy, anger — rise to the surface.

Self-regulation feels like your inner mother has come home.

She strokes your hair. You breathe more fully. You feel surrounded by warmth — your room, your space, your safe world — and you know:

you are safe enough to rest.

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  Polyvagal Insight:

In functional freeze, your body doesn’t feel safe enough to rest — yet it’s too exhausted to keep fighting or running.

The brakes and the gas are on at the same time.

Healing doesn’t happen through force or speed; it happens through slowness.

Through finding small moments of safety — little glimmers of warmth in the middle of the dark forest — and letting your body feel them, one breath at a time.