There’s a version of you that remembers how to feel alive — not just functioning, but feeling. You used to wake with energy, hold conversations without drifting off in your mind, and actually taste your coffee instead of just drinking it on autopilot.
That version might feel distant now.
Not gone but certainly dulled.
You still get the bills paid, you reply to enough messages to keep people from asking questions. You smile when you need to, but inside, you’re holding your breath, and you don’t even notice that your shoulders spend a lot of time up around your ears.
There were weeks I thought I was doing the right things. I pulled back from people, blamed it on being busy. I tried new supplements, rearranged the house, told myself that if I could just get organised, I’d feel more in control. Some days started better than others — I’d get out of bed on time, make a plan, tick a few boxes — and for a moment it felt like maybe I was on my way back. But then it would fade again.
The fog would return and I could feel the nothingness. That quiet, steady sense that I was showing up to my life like a stand-in. Everything I tried felt like it only skimmed the surface, like I was reaching for myself through glass.
You wouldn’t call it burnout, and it doesn’t really feel like depression either. You still get up and function, but something in you has stopped moving.
This is the Freeze State
Freeze doesn’t always look like collapse — more often, it’s a long, silent drift into detachment. You’re there, but you’re not. You’re reacting, but not really responding, and you go through the motions because they’re familiar, not because you’re connected to them.
You probably find yourself rereading the same message three times before replying. Canceling plans you wanted to go to, with a sense of relief but numbness. You realise you've stopped listening to music and making the food you like. You can't remember the last time you felt joy, just the sense that you are slowly checking out and you can’t seem to check back in. And all those decisions you need to make, it's not happening anytime soon.And because nothing looks urgent from the outside, no one reaches in.
You’re not alone in it with thousands quietly slipping into it every day. And if you’ve caught it and named it then you’ve already done the bravest part.
There is a way through.
Not a return to the old you, but a movement toward something wiser and clearer and stronger. Freeze, when met properly, becomes a spring clean of everything that put you there. It invites a total re-evaluation. And while it might feel like you’re breaking down, what’s really happening is the slow unwinding of what no longer fits.
Think of it as shedding rather than being stuck.
What is the Freeze State?
When your nervous system is exposed to more than it can safely process over time — grief, illness, trauma, responsibility, uncertainty, basically life — it moves out of the familiar fight-or-flight response and into something quieter, but just as consuming: freeze.
Freeze isn’t a resting. It’s the third trauma response, one that biology designed for safety in the face of overwhelm. In this state, the system shuts down to conserve energy and protect against further input.
Physically, freeze can affect digestion, hormones, immune function, sleep, and your body's ability to repair itself. You might feel flat-lined one day, wired the next. Weight fluctuates, and inflammation kicks up. Your whole body loses rhythm.
Mentally, things fog, you second-guess, become indecisive.
Tasks pile up because your brain won't sequence them. Emotionally, everything feels blunted — not empty so much as just out of reach. And spiritually, you lose your sense of direction. You stop dreaming and your instincts fade. Your connection to something greater — whether that’s nature, creativity, or your own knowing goes very quiet.
Freeze is not human failure. It’s your system doing its best to keep you safe when it can't keep fighting to protect you. But it’s also a state we can gently come out of once we learn how.
Freeze isn't usually one big dramatic shutdown - it shows up in degrees. Sometimes its just a few symptoms at first, easy to brush off, but the longer it hangs around the deeper it settles, pulling more of you into it.
Common Symptoms — Across Four Levels
You may experience some, all, or completely different symptoms — freeze doesn’t follow a rule book.
These are just the ones we see most often:
Mentally
– Foggy thinking
– Difficulty making decisions
– Trouble sequencing tasks
– Losing words or forgetting mid-sentence
– Racing thoughts paired with zero action
Emotionally
– Flattened or delayed emotional responses
– Anxiety, hopelessness, or unexplained dread
– Emotional detachment from things that used to matter
– That low hum of powerlessness underneath everything
Physically
– Sleep disruptions (can’t fall asleep or can’t stay awake)
– Digestive issues, hormone shifts, inflammation
– Weight changes with no obvious cause
– Chronic tension, numbness, or jitteriness
Spiritually
– Disconnection from your own intuition or knowing
– Lack of meaning, direction, or purpose
– Creative shutdown
– Feeling cut off from whatever source used to comfort you
Why I created Freeze to Fire
As a practitioner who has worked with over 9,000 clients, I thought I understood the human nervous system inside out. But I built this because even with all that experience, I missed the signs in myself that I was seeing in others. I got busy — too busy — until one day I realised I wasn’t just tired, I was trapped in a kind of stillness that felt like nothingness. I had fallen into freeze.
For a while, I called it overwhelm. Then I called it burnout. But nothing fit, because nothing fully explained the strange disconnection — from joy, from desire, from direction. It wasn’t until I started looking at the energy of the state that it made sense. And when I did, I began to see just how many people were quietly living the same nightmare.
The solutions out there were fragmented. Medical professionals offered diagnoses and prescriptions that didn’t address the root. Vagus nerve regulation was talked about as a magic switch — but I could see, in myself and others, that this beast doesn’t respond to single-solution thinking.
To truly come out of freeze, we have to attend to the whole system — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Anything less won’t hold. This isn’t about bouncing back, it has to be about rising better.
The Freeze to Fire 14-Day Programme
This is not a course about pushing through, overriding your body, giving yourself a pep talk or telling you to think positively. It’s a guided return to yourself, done gently, through the four needed core pathways: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Because healing freeze means restoring flow in all directions.
Over 14 days, you’ll receive structured, doable, honest daily support via email plus a few quiet bonuses when you need them— the kind that doesn’t overwhelm you, but walks with you. The programme is designed to build steadily across the two weeks, layering simple practices, clear explanations, and real-world applications to help restore energy, reconnection, and clarity across all four levels.
Each day builds on the last — these aren’t disconnected tips. This is a mapped process that slowly brings the system back online. Every message is crafted to be a small doorway back to yourself, no matter how unreachable that might feel right now.
You won’t have to "keep up” or perform. You just need to show up in whatever capacity you can.
This was made for the days when even opening an email feels like a stretch.
Because I know what it’s like to keep going when nothing in you is moving.
And I know how to help thaw the freeze, layer by layer, breath by breath, until the warmth comes back and life doesn’t feel like something you’re faking.
You don’t need to figure this out alone.
You don’t even need to explain it to anyone else just yet.
You just need one moment of willingness to click in and begin.
The Freeze to Fire Programme
© Penny Green 2025