It’s Not Laziness. It’s Shutdown

You’ve probably seen it—or lived it.

Someone’s staring at a to-do list and doing nothing.
Or they’re lying on the sofa, phone in hand, completely still.
Or a child is told “Just try your best” and they suddenly freeze.

From the outside, it looks like laziness.

But inside?

It’s overload.
It’s collapse.
It’s the nervous system flipping the switch marked: “shut down until it’s safe again.”

When fight and flight aren’t options, the body chooses freeze

We talk a lot about the “fight or flight” response.
But there’s a third—and far more common—response, especially in trauma and anxiety:

Freeze.

That’s the moment the body goes limp, the mind goes foggy, and everything feels impossible.

And it’s not a choice.

It’s biology.

What shutdown actually feels like

• You want to move, but can’t.

• You know what to do, but can’t start.

• You’ve been thinking about the thing for hours, and still… nothing.

It’s not laziness.
It’s the body hitting the brakes because it thinks the accelerator is dangerous.

And when someone tells you to “try harder,” it usually makes things worse—because trying is exactly what the nervous system is blocking.

Why it matters for parents, teachers, and coaches

This misunderstanding shows up everywhere:

• A child who won’t get dressed (but actually can’t)

• A teen who won’t revise (but is paralysed by pressure)

• An adult who knows they need to sort things out, but sits in a kind of motionless fog

We label it procrastination.
But often, it’s protection.

The system isn’t lazy. It’s overwhelmed.

And telling someone to push through just confirms what their body already suspects:

“No one’s coming to help. I’m on my own again.”

What actually helps

Want to support someone in shutdown? Start here:

1. Lower the threat.
Avoid shaming, rushing, or “come on, it’s not that hard.”
Their system has frozen for a reason. Your job is to help them feel safe enough to thaw.

2. Offer anchoring, not instruction.
Try:

“I’m here with you.”
“You don’t need to do anything yet.”
“Want to start together?”

Co-regulation creates possibility. Instruction creates pressure.

3. Watch the body, not the behaviour.
Are they slumped, zoned out, flat-eyed?
That’s shutdown. You don’t push through shutdown. You build them a bridge back.

And if this is you?

If you freeze, shut down, or spiral into stillness—it’s not because you’re lazy.
It’s because your system was trained to keep you safe by disappearing.

You can unlearn that.

Not through motivation.
Through nervous system repair.

That’s what I teach in STILL Method coach training—how to work with anxiety by understanding the body’s logic, not fighting it.
👉 Train as a STILL Coach

And if you need someone to help you out of the loop you’re in, I work one-to-one with a small number of adults navigating shutdown, burnout and anxiety.
👉 1:1 sessions with Stuart

Because what looks like laziness is often just someone trying to survive a world that never gave them time to recover.