Understanding the Freeze Response and Why You Shut Down During Intimacy
- Brainz Magazine
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
Written by Kellie Sheldon, Trauma and Sex Counsellor
Kellie Sheldon specialises in helping clients overcome childhood and complex trauma, as well as sexual difficulties, to find their voices. Using human connection and evidence-based frameworks like EMDR, she boldly addresses the shame and stigma around trauma and sex, promoting healing and empowerment in her practice.
You’re with someone you care about. You trust them. You feel safe in their company, and maybe you even look forward to the intimacy, until your body suddenly says no. You go quiet. You freeze. You feel yourself pull away from the moment, as if something in you shuts off.
You’re not exactly saying no, but you’re definitely not saying yes either. And once it’s over, you’re left wondering what happened. You start to question yourself. Why did I check out? What’s wrong with me?
There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken. You’re not cold. You’re not disconnected on purpose. What you’re experiencing is something called the freeze response, and it’s one of the most misunderstood trauma reactions that shows up in intimate relationships. It’s not weakness or dysfunction. It’s a protective pattern, often developed early in life, that your body still uses when things feel overwhelming.
What the freeze response actually is
Most people are familiar with “fight or flight” when it comes to trauma. But there’s another survival state we rarely talk about: freeze.
Freeze is what happens when your body decides that movement, protest, or escape aren’t safe options. It shuts everything down to keep you safe. This can look like going still, zoning out, losing your voice, or agreeing to something while feeling completely disconnected inside.
It’s not something you choose. It’s not weakness. It’s your nervous system doing the only thing it knows to keep you safe, even when the danger is long gone.
For many survivors of childhood trauma, freeze was the safest available option. And years later, it still shows up, often without warning.
Why it shows up during sex
Intimacy asks you to be present in your body. It invites closeness, touch, sensation, and trust. For someone who has spent a lifetime learning to leave their body in order to survive, this can feel terrifying, even when the relationship is loving, even when there’s no threat.
Your brain might tell you everything’s fine, but your body doesn’t respond to logic. It responds to sensation and memory. If closeness once felt unsafe or unpredictable, your nervous system may interpret that same closeness now, even when it’s safe, as something to brace against.
So you go still. You go silent. You disconnect from yourself. Not because you don’t want a connection, but because your body doesn’t know how to stay when it starts to feel too much.
A story that might sound familiar
I once worked with someone who said, “I thought I just didn’t like sex.” She wasn’t panicked. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even sure what was wrong. But she told me that every time things became physical, something in her switched off.
She would go along with it, not because she wanted to, but because it felt easier to endure than to explain. Over time, she stopped initiating anything. She avoided affection. And she carried a quiet belief that something was broken inside her.
She had never heard of the freeze response before. Once we named it, she cried. Not out of fear, but relief. Finally, something made sense. Her body hadn’t betrayed her. It had been doing its job all along.
How freeze becomes the default
The freeze response is usually built in childhood. It comes from experiences where your voice wasn’t allowed, your boundaries weren’t respected, or you were forced to stay in situations that felt wrong but couldn’t be escaped.
Sometimes it’s overt trauma, like abuse or violence. Other times, it’s the kind of invisible trauma that comes from being told to smile when you feel scared, or to hug someone you didn’t want to, or to be polite instead of honest.
Over time, your nervous system learns that the safest thing to do is to shut down and disappear. That pattern doesn’t vanish when you grow up. In fact, it can show up even more clearly in your adult relationships, especially the ones that ask you to be seen and touched.
What actually helps
You don’t unlearn freeze by pushing through it. You don’t overcome it by trying harder or pretending it’s not there.
What helps is learning to notice it. To recognise when it happens. To stay with yourself instead of judging the shutdown. This might mean pausing in the moment and checking in with your body. It might mean slowing down intimacy until you can sense whether you’re truly present or just performing.
Sometimes this healing work happens in therapy. Sometimes in your relationship. And sometimes in small, quiet choices you make alone. The goal isn’t to stop freezing. It’s to stay in connection with yourself, even when your body wants to leave.
You’re not alone, and you’re not too late
Freeze doesn’t look dramatic. It doesn’t come with sirens. That’s why so many people miss it or mislabel it as disinterest or dysfunction.
But it’s one of the most common trauma responses in people who’ve lived through childhood trauma. Especially for those who never felt in control of their own body, or who learned early on that staying quiet was safer than saying no.
This is your body’s wisdom. It just needs time to learn that things are different now, and that you get to choose what happens next.
If this feels familiar
You’re not broken. You’re not unlovable. You don’t need fixing.
What you need is safety, choice, space, time, and support from people who understand that survival responses don’t disappear overnight. They can soften, shift, and eventually let go.
If you’re ready to explore this, know that you don’t have to get it all right today. Just noticing that you freeze and choosing to stay with yourself is enough. That’s the start. And it’s a powerful one.
Further reading
If this feels familiar, or you want to explore the freeze response more deeply, you might find these helpful:
Learn more about how trauma trains your nervous system to protect you, and how you can gently reclaim your connection with yourself.
Read more from Kellie Sheldon
Kellie Sheldon, Trauma and Sex Counsellor
Kellie Sheldon specilises in helping her clients move through childhood, complex trauma, and sexual difficulties to find their voices. She uses psychodynamic (exploration of childhood), the body, emotions, and memories to remove the shame and stigma that is often found around complex trauma and sexualities.
Her university education, as well as practice-based evidence, has led Kellie on a mission to working with client in a unique way that empowers her clients to find their lost voices and build a life of joy and resilience. Her bold methods of working attract those who are tired of living in the shadows.
