You’re probably aware of the freeze response. Like the fight-and-fight response, it’s another way humans deal with stressful and traumatic events. Freezing in the face of fear allows mammals to avoid detection from a predator. It also gives an organism time to process the threat and decide a course of action. This response is usually short-lived and ceases when the danger is gone.
Functional freeze response, in contrast, is when the freeze response lasts longer. While the traditional freeze response may result in complete physical and mental immobility (playing dead), the functional freeze response results in partial immobility. Your mind and body slow down, but not completely.1Schmidt, N. B., Richey, J. A., Zvolensky, M. J., & Maner, J. K. (2008). Exploring human freeze responses to a threat stressor. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 39(3), 292-304.
Functional freeze is readily detectable in a person’s facial expressions and body language. They have blank facial expressions, and their body movement is restricted. They are outwardly functional and do the daily tasks and activities but are physically and mentally frozen.
What triggers functional freeze?
In ancestral times, when there was a threat from predators, it didn’t last very long. You either got eaten, or you survived with the help of fight, flight, and freeze. The stressors of modern life tend to be never-ending.
Like the freeze response, functional freeze gets triggered when you experience a threat, but fighting or avoiding the danger is not an option. If you hate your job and haven’t made any plans to escape it, you might find that you’re going through the motions of the job in a partially frozen mental and physical state. You drag your feet to work and are disconnected from your surroundings.
Similarly, relationship problems can also throw you into this state. You feel like your world has stopped, and you can’t concentrate and make critical decisions. Studies have shown that even looking at angry faces can trigger this primal response.2Roelofs, K., Hagenaars, M. A., & Stins, J. (2010). Facing freeze: social threat induces bodily freeze in humans. Psychological science, 21(11), 1575-1581.
Functional freeze may also get triggered by perceived threats, not just actual threats. This happens to traumatized individuals because they become hypersensitive to threats.
Effects
Many symptoms of functional freeze overlap with those of PTSD and depression. Occasional stress and freezing, followed by immediate unfreezing, is normal. Getting stuck in chronic stress and freezing can lead to all sorts of physical and mental problems.
About this test
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