The Polyvagal Theory gave us “freeze.” But what if your body is doing something far smarter than playing dead?
For a long time, the problem was not having answers. Knowing something is wrong despite your doctor telling you your labs are “normal”, with symptoms accumulating without explanation and countless protocols all doing the same thing (nothing). Then, eventually, the answers arrived. A book, a conversation, functional testing that pinpointed relevant obstacles in your case, a practitioner that actually built a map of what is needed to give your system a fair chance.
It finally made sense. So you began. You ate more. You backed off the relentless output. You added the supplements that were indicated…
but…
…you don’t feel better. You feel worse. More tired than ever. Less capable. Moody. Unable to focus. That gravity is suddenly acting at 3x the usual force. If the answers were right, shouldn’t you feel better?
That question doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from a model of healing we have all absorbed — one that treats recovery like a transaction. Present with symptoms à receive diagnosis à administer the right combinations of pills à feel better. The idea is embedded into Western medicine: effective treatment produces immediate relief.
It is a model so culturally dominant that it has quietly overwritten something older and, arguably, wiser: the understanding, preserved in almost every traditional healing system, that recovery moves through stages. That feeling worse before you feel better is not a sign of error but a sign of progress. That the body, when finally given the conditions it needs, does not leap into wellness — it descends into repair. And that repair requires resources. Repair is exhausting. Repair can feel indistinguishable from the illness itself.
This is not a failure of the answers you found. It is simply a classic case of confusing healing with the disease.
Further confusion can be expected if individuals should measure their Heart Rate Variability, the Oura app congratulates them on the recent increase in readings. Their HRV figures are higher than before, and the daily readout tells them they are in great shape.
This doesn’t make sense. And, for most people, it doesn’t get explained.
The only answer that tends to emerge — from the more obscure corners of the internet that go into depth on nervous system issues, or from practitioners familiar with the Polyvagal Theory — is that they are in a ‘freeze’ state. But this rarely meshes with their experience. They don’t feel ‘frozen’. Worn out and tired, maybe. Difficulty focusing, sure. But not frozen. The label of ‘freeze’ — with all its connotations of shutdown and immobility — doesn’t quite fit.
The reason for this confusion is worth unpacking. Because this discussion reveals something important about how the nervous system actually works.
Nervous System States and the Oversimplification We’ve Inherited
Although grounded in very useful principles, the Polyvagal Theory has taken a bit of a battering in recent years. It was developed by Stephen Porges and, to over-summarize, identifies three primary states of the autonomic nervous system. The first is the parasympathetic ‘rest-and-digest’ state, in which the vagus nerve actively supports relaxation, repair and investment in long-term health. The second is the sympathetic ‘fight-and-flight’ state, in which the nervous system mobilises energy resources to meet a perceived threat or demand. The third is the parasympathetic ‘freeze’ state — a shutdown response, mediated by the dorsal vagal complex, in which the system effectively plays dead.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) provides us with a measurable window into these states. High HRV is associated with parasympathetic dominance; low HRV with sympathetic activation. This is why individuals in a freeze state (despite feeling anything but well) will often record unusually high HRV figures.
There is a common perception that has grown up around these three states. ‘Rest-and-digest’ is considered good: we are not mobilising our resources because there is no need, because there is more than enough. ‘Fight-and-flight’ is considered bad: we are mobilising our resources because there is not enough to meet demand. And ‘freeze’ is considered really, really bad: we are once again not mobilising our resources, but this time because the gap between what we have and what we need cannot be bridged.
This is not entirely wrong. As I touched on above, it is based on sound principles. It is simply an over-simplification — one that assumes that all parasympathetic stress is ‘freeze’. And this is not the case. Parasympathetic stress can actually be healthy.
To understand why, let’s take a look at the freeze response itself, at the broader principles of parasympathetic stress, and then at what a healthy deployment of this response actually looks like.
‘Freeze’ Response and Playing Dead: Emergency-Driven Parasympathetic Stress
The freeze response is the emergency deployment of parasympathetic stress. It is what happens when the brain stem determines that the demands placed on the system are so far beyond available resources that there is no longer any point in mobilising. It is, in the most literal sense, comparable to playing dead.
This response is mediated by the ventrolateral periaqueductal grey (vPAG), a region of the brain stem that orchestrates the shutdown of arousal and defensive reflexes. In line with the description of playing dead, individuals in this state will often identify with it viscerally — describing themselves as feeling ‘like death warmed up’, or ‘like I’m dying’. The language is not dramatic. It is accurate.
The freeze response can occur immediately after an immensely stressful event — a car accident, an assault, a sudden bereavement. But it can also emerge more gradually, as the result of unprocessed trauma that is surfacing. In these cases, the Pavlovian associations held in the system — most commonly operating through the Default Mode Network, which acts as a background scanner — have determined that there is an incoming threat to cellular function (and therefore life), and one that would require resources far beyond the capacity of the human cardiovascular system to meet. The result is the same: shutdown.
Parasympathetic Stress, Simplified
To understand why not all parasympathetic stress is freeze, it helps to understand what parasympathetic stress actually is.
At its most basic, parasympathetic stress is a nervous system state that prioritises the conservation and replenishment of cellular energy resources over optimal metabolic activity — whether that means tending to threats or supporting long-term health. It is, in principle, a healthy and adaptive response. The nervous system deploys it whenever it determines that topping up energy reserves is the most appropriate use of available resources.
However, there is an important exception. The system will not enter this state if determines that tending to an ongoing emergency is the priority. What is an ‘energy emergency’? Put simply, where there is insufficient energy to meet current demands, ie. a perception of immediate danger that requires more energy than is currently available. In these circumstances, the drive to mobilise overrides the drive to rest and replenish.
This is where Pavlovian associations become particularly relevant. The Default Mode Network — operating beneath the level of conscious awareness — continuously scans both the internal and external environment for inputs that it has previously associated with threat. If it identifies such inputs, it can override the ‘central’ desire to drop into a parasympathetic state, keeping the system in a state of readiness even when no genuine threat is present. However, if the perceived challenge is so overwhelming that the cardiovascular/cellar demands of meeting it would outweigh human capacity, then the priority shifts towards protecting the cells from metabolic catastrophe. This is where the central desire to protect energy reserves is prioritized over the need to meet demands. It shuts down entirely. That is freeze.
This is where individuals are ‘playing dead’. And while this can be the case when HRV figures are high in people who feel awful, there are plenty of times will see high figures and the nervous system is not in freeze. It is in something quite different.
Post-Marathon Mode: The Healthy Face of Parasympathetic Stress
Consider what happens to the body after a marathon. The race is over. The emergency — the sustained, extreme demand on the cardiovascular system — has passed. The body now needs to replenish. And so the nervous system does exactly what it has evolved to do: it drops into a state of deep rest, prioritising recovery and the topping up of depleted energy reserves. This is not pathology. This is intelligence.
This ‘post-marathon mode’ is actually healthy. It is normal. And it is a universal feature of any genuine health journey — specifically, whenever we have resolved what might be called an ‘energy emergency’: a situation in which there has been a perceived need for high energy availability to handle a threat, but insufficient supply of energy to meet it. Once that emergency is resolved, the nervous system will enter this state (unless something prevents it from doing so).
This means that, if energy resources have been depleted, the nervous system will enter this post-marathon mode as a matter of course — unless there is an ongoing emergency that keeps it mobilised. This is why it appears so reliably at key turning points in health recovery. It is not a setback. It is a sign that the system is finally doing what it has been trying to do all along.
It can, however, feel challenging. This is especially true for anyone who has not previously spent time in a non-emergency state, or whose schedule demands that they remain maximally alert and productive around the clock. It can also be distressing for those who have habitually restricted calories, who now discover a furious hunger and naturally become concerned about weight gain — a temporary feature, but a common one nonetheless.
The most common questions and concerns I get here? “Is it normal to feel this tired?” “Surely it can’t be healthy to be this hungry?” “Once I stop for dinner I am done for the day”. “I cannot find the motivation to do even simple tasks”.
Fortunately, this is where I can always offer some good news. First, that this is all totally healthy. When our bodies have had their resources plundered for years, we should feel tired (and it is only excessive output of adrenaline that would stop up from doing so). Equally, that this is not ‘how it is now’. This is a temporary stage.
All we need to do is listen to our body’s requirements (no longer blocked by a flood of stress hormones). Then act on them. Then provide out body with it the food it wants and the rest it desires.
Of course, this is simple advice and not always easy in real life. But, if we do so, our energy stores will reach a key threshold and there is no longer a need to prioritize restocking over performance and general vitality. The parasympathetic stress response is withdrawn.
The Cyclic Nature of Recovery (and Mobilization)
This speaks to an important caveat, which relates to what happens next. We do not enter a state of parasympathetic stress because there are no stressors. We enter it because the stressors present are not considered sufficiently dangerous to delay the process of topping up energy supply.
As we touched on above, it’s about priorities. The nervous system has evolved to cycle into this post-marathon mode whenever replenishment is determined to be the priority. And this cycling is important — because once cellular energy stocks are sufficiently topped up, the system will mobilise again (this means re-entering a sympathetic stress state). No-one goes from parasympathetic stress into parasympathetic rest-and-digest; it is inevitable that, at the point we end any acute emergency, our energy stores will have been depleted during this episode.
Five minutes of maximal alertness, readiness and effort – as in escaping from a predator – will deplete our resources. Three decades of living in this sympathetic state will leave these resources wiped out. This makes restocking these energy reserves vital and we have evolved to prioritize this as soon as the emergency is over.
This is what the parasympathetic stress response does: it initiates physiological changes in order to prioritize the restocking and protection of cellular energy resources. And all we are good for during these phases is rest. If it’s not an emergency, then the parasympathetic stress response will ensure that we have zero motivation to act.
This is not an evolutionary flaw. This is very deliberate. It is central to the very purpose of the parasympathetic stress response.
Of course, many people struggle with this and become frustrated at their inability to get jobs done during this window of ‘post-marathon mode’. However, just we’d expect it would take a few days to feel ‘normal’ after a 4-5 hour endurance challenge, we expect at least several weeks before individuals feel ‘normal again’ if their system has been running on fumes for several decades. It is the same principles and play and the same cellular responses being deployed, only we’re starting from a more profound state of depletion.
Most individuals are surprised by exactly how tired they are.
But there is good news. There is a threshold that we hit when cellular resources have been replenished enough to the point that cellular breakdown is no longer a critical concern. We can now handle the challenges we face without risk of metabolic catastrophe as a result of doing so (recall that it is not the case that our system perceives no challenges, instead that the cellular breakdown is considered a more immediate threat to life than ‘external’ dangers). At this point, our systems once again mobilize our resources to meet the expected challenge. This uses the sympathetic stress response (the ‘default’ stress response that we deploy to shuttle resources to where they need to be). This is ‘mobilization’ – something I’ve discussed in this article** – and it comes alongside more alive and more alert, with more stamina and better performance. It can also switch on circuitry in a way that will drive some hypervigilance and some physical tension in many.
An important note here: This mobilization also comes with a measurable drop in HRV figures, another common source of confusion for individuals whose HRV apps now blast them with summaries asking ‘are you OK?’ and reminding them that ‘rest is key’ at a time they have finally started to feel more alive!
This is a case of a different stage, same issue. Once again, this is because these summaries are based on the black-and-white idea that ‘low HRV is bad, high HRV is good’, which is hopelessly oversimplified interpretation (and bears no relationship with the cyclical patterns that we see in humans).
These interpretations do not account for the reality that humans must move through various states during a recovery process, and that our primary concerns are to whether this state is appropriate for their needs at that moment in time and that they continue to progress through the stages in question.
Summary
The body is intelligent. It chooses the appropriate response based on incoming stimuli and the meaning assigned to those stimuli — a meaning determined by Pavlovian associations built up over a lifetime of experience.
Energy shortage (whether due to metabolic issues, insufficient caloric intake, or mitochondrial dysfunction) or high energy demands (driven by overwork or the perception of an incoming threat), can drive a reflexive emergency response that blocks the system from entering an appropriate state of parasympathetic stress. And it is this appropriate state — the post-marathon mode, the healthy deployment of parasympathetic stress — that is ideal for topping up our resources and supporting genuine recovery.
There are two takeaways here:
1. That FEELING more tired is an inevitable (and healthy) pattern when transitioning out of a state of high adrenaline (a powerful chemical that has evolved to block fatigue and maintain output, while suspending all healing to better channel resources towards navigating the emergency). That feeling more tired is a universal response when we finally drop into a parasympathetic state.
2. Freeze is not the only face of parasympathetic stress. It is the emergency face. And recognising the difference between the two is not merely an academic exercise. For anyone navigating a complex health journey, it may be the most clarifying distinction they encounter and allows them to understand (and therefore embrace) the “post-marathon mode” that they need to move through for true healing to occur.
Next Steps
If this resonates with your experience, the next step is identifying if any obstacles yet remain to get the deep rest your system is demanding (and, as a result, to smoothly move through this phase and begin reaping the rewards of the recovery process).
1. Get an Organic Acids Test and work on the results with your existing practitioner. My newly-launched Lucid Labs project offers a range of functional tests, including the Organic Acids Test (ideal to determine if there are any blockages/burdens limiting the rate at which you can replenish cellular reserves). The test includes a personalised interpretation in the list price. This is a urinary test that you take at home and measures over 50 markers across different zones of the metabolism, which include the mitochondrial energy pathways. Find it for the US here and the UK here.
2. Work with me. I work with a limited number of clients one-on-one to:
- Identify your where you are at in the “Post-Marathon Mode” (and if you are stuck in a half-way house of lower adrenaline but not yet getting the ‘deep’ rest) and any obstacles that may slow your transition through this stage
- Create a personalized protocol that works with the nervous system and metabolic machinery to permit both cellular health AND optimal performance
- Guide you through what is normal and healthy during this stage, and what indicates a need for further support
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start with a clear roadmap based on your actual physiology, book a 15-minute call here to see if this approach is right for you.