When you couldn't fight or flee: Understanding the Freeze response

One of the most painful parts of surviving an assault is the question that follows:

“Why didn’t I fight back?” or “Why didn’t I run?” Many survivors turn that question inward, layering shame and self-blame on top of an already unbearable experience. But the truth is that your body wasn’t failing you — it was protecting you.

The Science Behind Freeze:

When a person is threatened, the nervous system instantly scans for the safest and most effective way to survive. This happens far below conscious thought. Most people know about fight and flight — the body’s ways of mobilizing to face or escape danger. But there’s another survival pathway that activates when the brain perceives that fighting or running would make things worse or are simply impossible: freeze.

The freeze response is driven by the dorsal vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system — part of what’s often called our “ancient survival wiring.” When danger feels inescapable, this branch steps in to slow everything down, to numb sensation, and to shut the body down just enough to reduce pain or draw less attention from the threat. It’s not a choice — it’s a reflex that evolved to keep us alive in moments of overwhelming terror/ injury. Freeze may come on during a car accident to slow blood flow, reduce pain, etc. so you don't bleed out and die. Freeze is a way your body conserves energy. Would you judge someone for this response when they had a car accident?

What Freeze Looks and Feels Like:

Freeze can look like:

    •    Feeling paralyzed or unable to move

    •    Numbness, dissociation, or going “out of body”

    •    Loss of speech or inability to cry out

    •    A sense of watching yourself from outside

Inside, your nervous system is flooded with competing signals — high sympathetic arousal (adrenaline, readiness to fight or flee) paired with a sudden parasympathetic brake that immobilizes you. This combination creates a kind of “biological lock,” where you are both highly activated and unable to act.

Why Your Body Did That

From a neurobiological survival standpoint, your body made a calculation:

“Fighting or running will increase the risk of injury or death. Staying still may increase the chance of surviving.”

That isn’t weakness. It’s intelligence — a primal, embodied intelligence that chose the safest available option in a moment you could not control.

Researchers like Dr. Stephen Porges (Polyvagal Theory) and Dr. Kozlowska and colleagues (Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 2015) have shown that the freeze response is a deeply wired part of our defence system. It’s not psychological failure — it’s physiology doing exactly what it’s designed to do when threat overwhelms choice.

Healing from the Aftermath

The hardest part of freeze often comes later: the shame, the self-blame, and the mind’s attempts to make sense of what happened. Understanding that you didn’t choose to freeze is one of the first steps toward healing. Your body did what it needed to survive.

Therapy that works with the body as well as the mind — such as somatic or felt-sense-based approaches — can help survivors reconnect safely to sensations, discharge stuck survival energy, and reclaim a sense of agency.

You are not weak. You were never broken. Your body protected you in the only way it could.

Reach out if you want to start healing from the aftermath.