Why You Always Feel So Stuck Even Though Everyone Else Sees You As Successful

If you’re someone who:

• Can’t motivate yourself to do the things that genuinely interest you

• Feels stuck in life even though you are outwardly very successful

• Feels chronically “tired, but wired.”

...you may be stuck in functional freeze. In this blog post, I’m going to talk about what functional freeze is, what causes it, and how to get out of it.

What is Functional Freeze?

Functional freeze is a nervous system stress response where you may feel stuck or numb on the inside, while outwardly continuing to handle basic daily responsibilities. Although to others it may look like you’re doing alright, on the inside, you likely feel unable to experience joy, you may feel brain fog, or consistently exhausted. 

More Symptoms of Functional Freeze

• Overthinking

• Feeling detached

• Constant fatigue

• Difficulty making decisions

• Feeling empty inside

• Feeling like a robot

• Withdrawal from loved ones

• Brain fog

• Dissociation or zoning out

• Feeling heavy, sluggish, weighed down, or tight

• Shallow breathing or holding your breath

• Difficulty stopping habits like doom-scrolling or binge-watching TV

• Procrastinating on important tasks

• Digestive issues

• Perfectionism

• Autoimmune issues

• Difficulty slowing down or relaxing, constant need to move or stay busy

• Medical tests coming back normal

What Causes Functional Freeze?

Functional freeze is generally caused by an overwhelmed nervous system. This could be the result of prolonged stress without breaks, or unresolved trauma that is causing your nervous system to feel stuck in a state of stress.

Functional freeze, while often inconvenient, is actually your body’s attempt to adapt to feeling overwhelmed. In many of the clients I work with, I find that functional freeze is the result of inner tension, of different parts of yourself who have different ideas about how to overcome the distress inside. 

While one part feels the impulse to keep going with normal life, another part feels it’s important to slow down. In nervous system terms, it happens when your body runs two conflicting programs at a time: survival shutdown (like the brakes of a car) and a performance drive (like the gas pedal).

In another analogy, functional freeze is like trying to get two people through a single narrow doorway at the same time, but getting stuck in the process.

How To Get Out of Functional Freeze

Getting unstuck from functional freeze requires intentionality. In your everyday life, that could look like lowering the demands so that your nervous system can actually rest, as well as developing more somatic resources that will help you feel grounded and safe, such as:

• Shaking out tension from your body

• Trying progressive muscle relaxation recordings

• Orienting to your surroundings using your 5 senses

• Breathing exercises like box breathing

You can also shift functional freeze by engaging in social connection, which stimulates the ventral vagal pathway – the part of your nervous system that finds safety through connection.

Many clients experiencing functional freeze come to me having tried nervous system regulation exercises on their own, only to continue feeling stuck, and struggling to actually find connection fulfilling or relaxing.

How Somatic Therapy Can Help

Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy

In somatic therapy sessions, part of what we do is develop a dialogue with your body to start to understand what feels important or safe to your body about staying stuck in freeze. 

During sessions, I use modalities such as somatic parts work, or somatic internal family systems therapy, to open the doorway for dialogue. This involves a series of questions and visualizations that will help you build a relationship with your inner system, create understanding, express gratitude, and discuss what is needed to feel safe enough to shift your experience.

I will also teach you how to sense what you and your parts are:

• Thinking,

• Feeling emotionally

• Feeling sensation-wise

• Seeing in your minds eye (images)

• And what your body is motivated to do (move, be still, engage in certain behaviors).

This process helps to build your interoceptive awareness and metacognition. Interoception is essentially the capability to notice what is happening inside your body and metacognition is the capability to not just think, but noticing what you are thinking, and the quality of those thoughts.

As we flesh this information out, we are essentially creating an understanding of the different parts of you – the different neural networks that have been created through different experiences.

Parts often have different jobs – whether to manage certain feelings or situations, put out fires when things get overwhelming, or suppress emotions that you have learned were too much for other people.

Helping Your Nervous System Heal

Building these skills is foundational to increasing the capacity of your nervous system. With greater capacity, you will be able to tolerate uncertainty with more ease, slow down, and – to reference my earlier analogy – let one part walk through the doorway at a time.

While nervous system regulation is a very popular Instagram psychology concept, regulation strategies don’t always work, because, as I mentioned above, functional freeze can feel adaptive and important for survival for your nervous system. Building capacity is what will help your nervous system resolve the functional freeze more organically, instead of forcing it.

Think of this as the difference between pouring water out of an overflowing glass, and selecting a larger glass that can hold more water.

Here’s a video of me speaking about this analogy for an old program I used to run 

(Note: this program is no longer running, so ignore my bit at the end about the program called Attune).

In some cases, resolving functional freeze also involves a process called memory reconsolidation. This involves addressing outdated beliefs that different parts hold around what is true about who you are and how the world is. For instance, if you have a part who strives for perfection, memory reconsolidation might involve looking for contradictory experiences in your life, times when perfection wasn’t needed, or when you let go of perfectionism and things turned out ok.

Healing on a Relational Level

Finally, if you’re someone who struggles to relax around other people, or receive support when it’s offered, we can use more relational somatic strategies such as co-regulation, eye contact, and NeuroAffective Touch to address the ways that connection may feel scary.

How We Can Work Together

There are two ways to work with me:

1. We meet on an ongoing basis (usually weekly, though every-other-week can be considered depending on your needs and finances) until your goals are met or you feel complete. We generally will meet for 60 minutes, but occasionally folks prefer 75 or 90-minute sessions.

2. We work together in a therapy intensive. That usually involves an initial one-hour session, followed by additional sessions that are 2-4 hours in length (we can work out the exact number of those sessions together). 

My rate is $220/hour. I do not accept insurance but can provide you with a fancy receipt called a superbill that will have everything you need on it to submit to your insurance company for reimbursement, if they cover out-of-network treatment. I offer a limited number of sliding scale spots.

If you are interested in working together, we can start with a free 20-minute consultation to make sure it’s a good fit. I look forward to meeting you!