The Freeze and the Fear of Performance

There’s a deep, subtle freeze that many of us carry—one that surfaces around being seen, offering something, showing up. For some, it comes in the context of work, for others in relationships, or even in creative expression. And often, it’s rooted in a very old survival pattern: “I have to perform to be safe.”

That feeling of freezing isn’t laziness or lack of will. It’s the body’s way of saying: “Something about this feels threatening.” Not always in a dramatic way, but in that slow, invisible drip of tension that keeps us braced, exhausted, and disconnected from our own natural expression.

What makes it harder is that we often judge the freeze. We try to push through, perform harder, do better. But the freeze doesn’t respond to pressure. It softens in presence. It melts in safety.

Sometimes the most courageous thing isn’t pushing through the fear—it’s allowing the freeze to be felt. Not trying to fix it. Not trying to overcome it. Just being with it, even if that means feeling completely frozen and incapable. That’s the moment the nervous system learns: “I don’t have to perform to be okay.”

And slowly, over time, what was frozen begins to thaw. Not because we force it, but because we stopped trying to be someone.

You don’t have to have it all together. You don’t have to be inspiring all the time. You don’t have to give more than what’s real for you. Simply being (even in the freeze) is enough.

Personally, this has been a theme running through so much of my life—the fear of not being enough, of not having something to offer. And when the freeze hits, it’s so easy to feel paralyzed or lost. But what I’m learning is that even the freeze is held in something larger. That presence doesn’t need me to perform—it just welcomes me as I am.