High Functioning at Work, Numb at Home: Hyderabadis Grapple with ‘Functional Freeze’

Hyderabad:People across Hyderabad are describing a strange contradiction where they go to work, answer messages, and meet deadlines. However, inside, they feel blank, slowed, unable to begin the simplest task. Psychiatrists say the term circulating online for this state is “functional freeze” a stress response that can look like competence from the outside and shutdown within.

Jayasree noticed it most in the evenings. “I come back home and cannot do anything,” she said. “I find it difficult to even watch something on Netflix, which was my escape earlier. Now all I do is doom scroll.” Social plans feel distant and conversations feel effortful. “Almost feel numb as a human being. Ordering and doom scrolling is all I can do.”

Ravi S. remembers when the stall began. He had just been promoted and was the youngest person in his position. “Right after promotion things got so overwhelming I couldn’t keep up,” he said. “I couldn’t even work at one point.”

Colleagues saw a high performer. He saw his output fall for the first time. “If you give your 110 per cent at work, that is considered your normal, which is not my normal. I think I set the expectation too high with overworking.” He took a month-long break and began setting boundaries. “I am doing better now.”

Placing their experiences within a familiar stress response was Prof. Dr Vishal Akula, a national direct council member of the Indian Psychiatric Society. “Functional freeze is a stress response in which a person feels mentally stuck or emotionally shut down,” he said. “When the brain senses threat, it activates the fight–flight–freeze system. Fight means confronting the problem, flight means avoiding it, and freeze means becoming still or shutting down.”

The stillness can be misleading. “In a freeze state, a person may look calm on the outside, but internally they may feel numb, blank, overwhelmed, or unable to start tasks,” he says. Anxiety feels restless and loud. Depression carries persistent sadness. “Freeze feels slow, heavy, and disconnected.”

The phrase itself does not appear in psychiatric manuals. “No, ‘functional freeze’ is not an official medical diagnosis in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11,” Dr Akula said. Symptoms that people group under the label often belong to stress reactions, trauma-related conditions, adjustment problems, burnout, depression or dissociation.

“Academic competition, workplace targets, fear of failure, constant comparison through social media, financial pressure such as EMIs, lack of sleep, and limited emotional support,” Dr Akula lists when asked about common triggers. Stress today is less about physical danger and more about sustained pressure.

When a threat feels inescapable, the brain can change from alarm to shutdown, heart rate and breathing slow. Limbs feel heavy. People describe watching themselves from a distance. Research on trauma has documented a similar reaction known as tonic immobility. Dr Akula noted that prolonged stress can move a person from anxious overdrive into collapse. “A person may start procrastinating heavily, feel emotionally detached, become less productive, and feel tired even after rest.”

No formal prevalence studies exist for functional freeze. Many experts suspect underreporting and stigma play a part in that gap. People who feel numb are often told to snap out of it or accused of laziness. High achievers, Dr Akula said, may feel ashamed to admit emptiness after success.

Small interventions can interrupt the freeze. Slow breathing, light movement, breaking tasks into smaller steps. Longer-term change may involve sleep, exercise, routine and therapy. Professional care becomes important when the shutdown lasts for weeks, disrupts work or study, strains relationships, or includes hopelessness or suicidal thoughts.