Trauma Rewired: "The Freeze and Flop Trauma Responses and What’s Really Happening in Your Nervous System"

Hosts: Jennifer Wallace & Elisabeth Kristof
Date: September 8, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the freeze and flop trauma responses, illuminating what’s happening in the nervous system during these states, how they differ from burnout, and what it means for emotional experience, regulation, and daily life. Hosts Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof dissect the nuances of acute freeze, tonic immobility, flop, functional freeze, and burnout, exploring the implications for relationships, work, and well-being. They also offer practical advice on gently thawing out of these survival modes, emphasizing self-attunement and nervous system safety.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Functional Freeze?

• Functional freeze is a chronic survival state, learned and reinforced by ongoing or unresolved stress or trauma.
• Externally, a person appears functional; internally, they feel numb, frozen, have disrupted cognition and emotional disconnect.
• "Functional freeze is a survival strategy. It's learned and it's reinforced by chronic stress. And it interferes with really our ability to feel and live a fully connected life." – Elisabeth [00:00]

2. Functional Freeze vs. Burnout

• Functional freeze: About shutdown as protection; the nervous system perceives threat, leading to internal disconnect, numbness, and doing only the bare minimum.
• Burnout: About depletion due to overuse, overworking, and chronic stress, leading to exhaustion (“running on fumes”); often in caregiving and demanding jobs.
• "Burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by chronic unmanaged stress. The root cause is overuse into depletion, into collapse." – Jennifer [00:10]
• "Burnout as about, like, capacity and that idea of, like, burning the candle at both ends. You are doing a lot. And freeze is more that ongoing threat response." – Elisabeth [25:40]

3. How Freeze Becomes Patterned

• Freeze responses develop in chaotic or chronically stressful environments, especially where self-expression is unsafe.
• Experiences that can create freeze: Emotional neglect, parental rage, abuse, household chaos, unsafe or misattuned caregiving.
• We internalize freeze as a personality trait, masking underlying trauma.
• "We think that's who we are and we begin to identify that way. But that's not true at all." – Jennifer [04:56]
• Behaviors include low energy, dissociation, avoidance, emotional numbness, and overconsumption (media, food, substances).

4. Freeze and Relationships

• Chronic freeze profoundly impairs the ability to connect and communicate—losing your voice, avoiding eye contact, flat affect, checking out mid-conversation.
• This can be misunderstood by others and misattributed to apathy or indifference.
• “It's about the body saying like this, this is too much... Vulnerability becomes dangerous.” – Jennifer [09:41]
• Creates layers of shame for not being able to show up authentically despite desiring connection.
• "There’s a real resistance to feeling vulnerable... and that's not because you don't care. It's because your body predicts threat or danger in being seen." – Elisabeth [06:54]

5. Nuances: Freeze, Tonic Immobility, and Flop

• Freeze (Acute): Momentary immobility; “deer in headlights” while the nervous system assesses danger. Quickly transitions to another response (fight, flight, or further shutdown). [13:15]
• Tonic Immobility: Last-resort response when escape is impossible (e.g. during abuse, violence); rigid paralysis, vocal inhibition, dissociation; can last minutes to hours and often followed by shame. [15:25]
• Flop: Collapse of system post-tonic immobility; limp, rubbery, heavy, fatigued; high dissociation—adaptive as a “play dead” response. [17:23]
• Elisabeth’s story of encountering wild boars illustrates the progression: acute freeze → flight → recovery, or to tonic immobility and flop if escape isn’t possible. [19:21]

6. Functional Freeze in Everyday Life & High Performers

• Functional freeze often presents as “going through the motions”—numbing out at work, canceling plans, self-neglect, inability to care for tasks/emotions.
• Particularly masked in high performers: outward success, inward numbness and lack of joy or connection.
• “It's there in a lot of high performers... It can be masked by over functioning, perfectionism, and people pleasing.” – Elisabeth [42:32]
• “You can build a successful business from a freeze state. It's that functional freeze: you're in high gear, but it's survival mode energy.” – Jennifer [43:59]

7. Emotional Blunting, Numbness, and Apathy

• Emotional processing is dulled; it feels confusing and shameful.
• Numbness: Blocked ability to feel/emote—“the system is too shut down to feel them or to express them.”
• Apathy: Loss of motivation and meaning due to resource depletion; related to burnout and dopaminergic dysfunction.
• “Apathy is the absence of interest, motivation, or concern... rooted in neurological exhaustion, burnout and depression.” – Jennifer [33:17]
• “With numbness, it’s a protective response... With apathy, it's a loss of motivation, meaning or energy.” – Elisabeth [36:01]
• They often coexist, compounding the challenge of restoration.

8. The Interoceptive System and Freeze

• Trauma and freeze disrupt the ability to sense internal signals (hunger, thirst, emotional states) – “the dial is actually being turned down.”
• Can manifest as loss of appetite, not noticing thirst, inability to feel pleasure or presence (even in intimacy).
• “Interoception... includes our emotional states because emotions are physiological events... And this can be really distorted with trauma.” – Elisabeth [37:52]

9. How to Begin Thawing Out of Freeze

• Slow, minimum effective dose: Gentle, gradual exposure to bodily sensation, not diving into overwhelming emotions.
• Nervous system regulation tools: gentle breathwork, small movements, vocalizations, self-attunement.
• “The first goal isn't action; it's about safety. We start by teaching the body that it's okay to feel again.” – Jennifer [46:00]
• “Movement is really the key because you can't feel or express when the system is immobilized.” – Jennifer [47:44]
• Progress comes from self-attunement, building capacity, and creating safety to feel and express.
• “You can't process what you can't access.” – Jennifer [41:41]
• “We don't want to dive into the deep end... we want to allow the emotion to surface enough to teach the system this is safe and I can start to feel this and move it without drowning...” – Elisabeth [48:20]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Our nervous system learns that we can't look for help through running. Fighting isn't safe, crying is dangerous, and we will go quiet and often go numb.” – Jennifer [05:36]
• “It’s not about caring. It’s about what the body is saying: ‘this is too much’.” – Jennifer [09:41]
• “Sometimes we can even know things, but it's not enough to know it. We really have to work in our bodies.” – Jennifer [10:43]
• “Early childhood abuse or living in a state of chronic stress… is like, I live in the house with the wild boars, and so I start to go more into freeze and flop because there's not an escape route.” – Elisabeth [21:33]
• “Thawing out a freeze isn’t about doing less—it’s about feeling more.” – Elisabeth [44:56]
• “If you’ve been living in freeze or emotional numbness… you are running on your survival patterns, and your body made the smartest choice that it could. In an overwhelming moment, it paused to protect you.” – Elisabeth [53:09]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00] – Defining functional freeze and burnout
• [03:51] – How freeze gets patterned in, environmental roots
• [06:54] – Impact on relationships, behavioral and emotional consequences
• [13:15] – Acute freeze vs tonic immobility vs flop: neurophysiology and lived experience
• [19:21] – Real-life stress/trauma analogy: “wild boars” story
• [22:11] – Functional freeze in daily life, overlapping with burnout
• [29:48] – The neurobiology of shutdown and emotional toll
• [33:17] – The difference between numbness and apathy
• [37:52] – Interoceptive system breakdown in freeze
• [41:41] – Freeze can look like “chill go-with-the-flow” (the fawn-freeze loop)
• [42:32] – Hidden freeze in high-achieving and high-functioning people
• [46:00] – Steps out of freeze: Gentle movement, breath, self-attunement
• [48:20] – Minimum effective dose and gentle approach
• [53:09] – Reassurance: “Your body made the smartest choice it could.”

Tone & Language

The hosts blend neuroscience, somatics, vulnerability, and personal stories with empathy and a conversational, supportive tone. They deconstruct myths about trauma response, invite self-compassion, and encourage listeners not to rush their healing journey.

Summary Takeaway

The freeze and flop trauma responses are intelligent nervous system adaptations to chronic or overwhelming threat, often misunderstood and misattributed as personality flaws or apathy—especially in high-functioning individuals. True healing requires gentle, incremental somatic awareness and nervous system regulation, building capacity safely, and recognizing that your body is not the enemy but a survivor protecting you the best way it can.

If this resonated, the hosts encourage you to share the episode, subscribe for more on trauma and emotional healing, and join their online neuro reset community for guided support.