No one talks much about the freeze response.

It isn’t loud. It isn’t messy. It doesn’t turn heads in a crowded room.

It looks like someone still going to work.

Still replying to messages.

Still smiling at the right moments.

But inside? Numb. Disconnected. Dissociated.

Your body’s here, but you’re not.

The world applauds it because it looks like “resilience.”

Yet it isn’t resilience. It’s shutdown, wrapped in the disguise of stability.

For me, it was more than just survival — it was merely existing.

Going through the motions, breathing but not living, functioning but not flourishing.

And many are still there, caught in that silent undertow, feeling unseen in their struggle.

I was “high-functioning” on the outside, paralysed on the inside.

I called it coping.

In truth, it was a slow fading of my own soul and merely existing in that limbo has a way of becoming your whole identity until one day, it can’t hold you anymore.

It took hitting rock-bottom for me to finally admit it.

And it was there, in the rubble of all my self-sufficiency, that the Lord began to restore me.

He didn’t rush me or shame me.

He simply breathed life into the places I had shut down,

gently coaxing my heart out of hiding.

If you’ve been praised for your “strength” when you were actually breaking inside, you’re not alone.

God sees through the performance to the pain. He knows where you’ve gone quiet. He knows the rooms in your heart you’ve locked. And He has the keys.

💡Reflection:

Where in your life are you “getting by” rather than truly living?

Write down one area you’ve been simply enduring. Then prayerfully ask the Lord,

“What would this part of my life look like fully alive in You?”

Sit in stillness and listen for His answer.

🙌Prayer:

Lord, I bring You the parts of me that have gone numb from pain and exhaustion.

Restore my soul where I have shut down.

Breathe Your life into the places that feel lifeless.

Teach me to live from Your presence, not from survival or mere existence.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.