The Freeze and Flop Trauma Response and What’s Really Happening in Your Nervous System

Functional freeze is not laziness. It is a learned survival strategy that lets you function on the outside while feeling numb or shut down on the inside. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace unpack freeze, tonic immobility, and flop, and show how functional freeze can look like “getting by” while feeling numb inside. They map the differences between freeze and burnout, explain why interoception goes offline, and share gentle, minimum-effective-dose practices to thaw safely and rebuild capacity. You will learn how chronic stress blunts interoception, why your voice disappears in hard conversations, how shame loops keep the pattern in place, and why high performers often miss freeze because it hides behind perfectionism and people pleasing.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:
The freeze spectrum, acute freeze, tonic immobility, flop
Functional freeze vs burnout
Interoception and emotional numbness
Relationship patterns, shutdown, flat affect, rupture and repair
Language masking, shame loops, lost voice
High performers, people pleasing, perfectionism, hidden freeze
Whole system view, not only the vagus nerve
Minimum effective dose, breath, voice, tiny mobilizations
Resourcing and capacity building before big emotional work
From dissociation to embodiment and agency

🔗Resources mentioned:
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