Freeze Response: Symptoms, Causes & Recovery
When you’re in danger or under threat, your body triggers your fight-or-flight response, where you either face the threat head-on or flee from it.
But contrary to popular belief, “fight” and “flight” aren’t the only ways for your body to respond to danger. Some people also freeze completely when under threat. They shut down entirely or are unable to respond or defend themselves.
If you feel this way when under stress or threat, your body might be responding to danger with a freeze response.
On this page, we’ll cover:
- What the freeze response is.
- Signs of the freeze response.
- Causes of this type of response.
- Treatment and support that can help.
What Is the Freeze Response?
Freeze is your body’s natural response to situations where you feel stressed or in danger but can neither fight nor get away from it.
Fight and flight both require energy and a way out of a situation, so when neither is available, freeze is what’s left. It’s an older survival system that involves reacting faster than you can think. This is why freezing can make you feel like a “deer in headlights.”
Your body causes you to:[1]
- Shut down.
- Become immobilized.
- Feel emotionally disconnected.
What Are the Types of Freeze Response?
Everyone responds differently, but there are two main ways you may experience freeze:
1. Functional Freeze
At its mildest, freeze may only last for a few seconds or minutes. For instance, if you’re presenting in a meeting and suddenly lose your train of thought, your body may freeze in response to your panic at not knowing what to say.
This is known as functional freeze, where your mind goes blank for a few minutes, but your body is still alert, aware of your surroundings, and coursing with adrenaline.
While functional freeze isn’t harmful in itself, it can make it difficult to express your viewpoint or interact with people effectively.
2. Dorsal Vagal Freeze
If there is a perception that the situation you’re in is so dangerous that there’s no possibility of escape or survival, there can be a more complete shutdown.
This is called dorsal vagal freeze. It can feel like a complete collapse of your emotions and energy, where you may feel like you’re outside your body, watching things from the outside in.
You may also:
- Faint.
- Feel your chest tighten and become heavy (as your heart rate drops).
- Lose all situational awareness, where you feel nothing, and everything slips by you.
This complete shutdown is initiated by your dorsal vagal nerve, the oldest branch of your nervous system. It’s your body’s last resort for dealing with incredibly dangerous situations.
If you’re often exposed to traumatic experiences, you’re more likely to develop dorsal freeze. This means you can move through life, but your ability to feel and pay attention to situations gets dulled or suppressed.[2]
Signs of Freeze Response
Functional freeze and dorsal vagal freeze can have similar symptoms, with effects varying by the intensity of your nervous system’s response.
The main difference is that functional freeze is high energy, where you have a racing heart, tension, or hypervigilance, and dorsal freeze is zero energy, with numbness, heaviness, or physical collapse.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Functional Freeze
A functional freeze usually lasts between a few seconds and a few minutes. You may experience:
- Your mind going blank.
- Inability to find words, where you know the answer but just can’t say it.
- Racing, panicked thoughts, with your brain stuck in a panic loop.
- Tunnel vision, where you can only see what’s in front of you, nothing else.
- Your shoulders, jaw, and neck locking up tight.
- Rapid, shallow breathing.
- Heart palpitations.
- Jitters, buzzing, or hot flushes due to adrenaline.
- Fidgeting, tapping, or chair gripping.
- Dry mouth or sudden clamminess.
- Wanting to move or speak but feeling physically blocked or “stuck.”
- Frustration at yourself for freezing.
- Hypervigilance, where you’re very aware of how everybody’s watching you.
- Desperate urge to escape or hide but being unable to.
Dorsal Vagal Freeze
When your nervous system perceives that there’s no way out of your current situation, you may experience:
- Your mind emptying of all thoughts.
- Dissociation from your body and voice.
- Minutes feeling like seconds, or time seeming to stop entirely.
- Hearing sounds but being unable to understand what they mean.
- Limbs that feel heavy, like they’re filled with lead or sand.
- Dizziness, lightheadedness, or fainting.
- Chest tightness, where you feel like your chest is gripped in a vise.
- Sinking feeling in your gut.
- Nausea or a vomiting sensation.
- Suddenly feeling ice-cold, even in a warm room.
- Vision darkening at the edges or everything becoming blurry.
- Loosening grip, causing you to drop objects or slump forward.
- Complete emotional numbness, where you feel nothing at all.
- Shame, embarrassment, and humiliation because of your “weakness” after the response is over.
- Apathy, where you genuinely don’t care what happens anymore.
- Speechlessness, where you can’t utter a single word.
- Collapsed posture, such as your head dropping, shoulders caving in, or physically sinking in your chair or to the floor.
- Floating sensation, where you feel like you’re observing the scene from outside your body.
- No energy to do anything but watch without feeling anything.
Who Is More Likely to Experience the Freeze Response?
While anyone can experience functional and dorsal freeze responses during times of stress or danger, certain people are more likely to experience them. This includes people who:
- Experience a large amount of fear.
- Feel routinely unsafe.
- Often feel unprotected by their family or guardians.
- Have experienced traumatic life events.
- Have very stressful jobs or careers.
Causes of Freeze Response
Since the freeze response can affect everybody, it can have many triggers. However, here are some of the most common contributors:
Trauma
Childhood trauma or exposure to threatening situations at any time in your life can cause you to experience the freeze response.
For instance, children with parents who get very angry may often find themselves freezing when spoken to.[3]
Similarly, adults may experience the freeze response after a traumatic event, like losing someone close to them. Sexual, verbal, or physical abuse are also common causes.
Sudden, Inescapable Danger
You may experience a complete shutdown of your system when faced with what seems to be inescapable danger.
For example, if you’re being verbally abused or have words thrown at you that are based on lies, your body may protect you by disconnecting you from your emotions.
Other dangerous situations can include:
- Being trapped somewhere without any exit.
- A serious accident.
- Physical assault or threat of one.
- Medical emergencies like blood loss, stroke, or high fever.
- Suffocation or drowning.
- Prolonged emotional abuse, gaslighting, or character assassination, especially when you know you can’t change the other person’s mind.
- Being screamed at, cornered, or interrogated by someone in a position of power.
- Witnessing extreme violence or cruelty done to a loved one, where you are helpless to intervene.
- Betrayal that shatters your sense of reality, like infidelity.
- Being publicly humiliated or shamed in front of a large group.
- Hearing a terrifying, life-altering diagnosis when you are unable to process it.
- Severe panic attacks that cause your body to shut down.
- Any current situation that mirrors a childhood trauma, such as a caregiver’s tone or a slammed door.
- Extreme noise or cold.
In all these cases, your dorsal vagal nerve steps in to protect you from a situation that seems hopeless. It shuts you down in the hope that you can save your energy and get through the situation.[4]
Chronic Stress and Burnout
A high-stress job, a demanding course at school or university, or frequent exposure to situations you don’t want to be a part of can all lead to high levels of stress.
Chronic stress can cause your nervous system to stay in a constant fight-or-flight mode, where you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop.[5]
This can take a toll on your body’s ability to respond to things that make you feel unsafe and can cause you to freeze even in situations where you do have a way out.
Conditioning Over Time
Conditioning happens when you’re repeatedly exposed to traumatic or stressful situations, and you develop the same habits of coping each time.
For instance, if you froze every time your parents or loved ones shamed or humiliated you when you didn’t do well enough at school, you might carry that response into your adult life.
But conditioning doesn’t have to start during childhood. You can develop a freeze response habit at any age, as long as you keep reacting to stressful situations in the same way.
Lack of Safe Emotional Outlets
If you didn’t have people to discuss your feelings with, or if you did but they never listened or always responded negatively, you may internalize that your feelings don’t matter.
So as an adult, when you’re exposed to stressful situations, it may trigger the same freeze and dissociation response. This is because of the internalized belief that nobody’s going to care, so there is no point in paying attention.
Mission Connection is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
How to Overcome and Recover From the Freeze Response
Recovery techniques for the freeze response usually depend on the intensity of your reactions. There isn’t one single fix that works for everyone, and what helps one person might do nothing for someone else.
For instance, if you’re unable to process verbal communication when you’re in a freeze, some techniques may not be useful for you, and you may need professional help. But that may not be the case for someone who isn’t completely locked out of their body during a freeze.
Here are some strategies that may be helpful.
Learn the Pattern
Before you can start changing anything, you need to know how it works. The same goes for the freeze response.
You need to learn:
- How each freeze cycle starts.
- What you’re feeling (something or nothing at all).
- What you’re experiencing.
Write everything down and start to track responses and experiences that remain consistent, like emotional numbness or hypervigilance.
Treat Yourself with Compassion
Remember that the freeze response is not a personality or character flaw. It is a natural response from your body in times of danger.
If you freeze during a public speech or when in a dangerous situation, give yourself some grace. You are not less for being unable to respond or speak in stressful situations.
Get Freeze Response Therapy
Your brain’s prefrontal cortex, which processes information, is usually offline during a freeze, so affirmations and words alone may not help you overcome the response.
This is why freeze response therapy often starts with a bottom-up approach. A therapist will understand when and how to prompt you during a freeze.
Once you can respond a little, they may ask you to perform breathing exercises or full-body movement if possible to reassure your nervous system that you’re safe.
Learn to Move Out of the Freeze State with Mission Connection
If you’re struggling with a freeze response in your daily life, your nervous system is only doing what it learned to do to keep you safe. But what your brain has learned, it can also unlearn.
At Mission Connection, we help people unfreeze from shutdowns by treating the actual causes of their response. We use evidence-based therapies like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to calm your nervous system and process the emotional stress causing your freeze.
Our outpatient programs combine individual, group, and family support therapy that helps treat all of you, not just your symptoms. We tailor treatment to your individual needs.
In addition to standard outpatient care at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, we also offer more intensive levels of care, such as a partial hospitalization program (PHP) or an intensive outpatient program (IOP). We treat a variety of mental health conditions and are in-network with most major insurance providers.
To find out more about our in-person, virtual telehealth, or hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care, call us at 866-833-1822. You can also get started online. Your feelings matter, and you deserve to feel safe in your body again.
