You freeze and shut down when stressed

This freezing is worth understanding, because the shame around it makes it worse. First, freezing is a protection, not a failure of will — one of the oldest responses, a system so overwhelmed it drops into stillness the way a creature freezes before a threat, so you are not choosing to fail; your system is doing something automatic under too much load. Second, lower the load to come out of the freeze — you cannot force your way out with more effort, which deepens it, so reduce the stakes, narrow to one small thing, give the system less until the overwhelm drops below the threshold and movement returns. Third, use the body to signal safety — gentle movement, a slow exhale, the feet on the ground — since the body leads the mind out of a whole-body freeze one small motion at a time. The freeze is not you giving up. What tends to tip you into it?