The freeze nobody talks about

There's a list on my desk that hasn't moved in three weeks.

And I've been busy. Genuinely busy, full days, back to back, not a lot of space to breathe. So on the surface that's a reasonable explanation.

Except if I'm honest with myself, I've been busy with the easier stuff. The emails I could answer quickly. The tasks that felt productive without requiring much of me. The things that let me feel like I was moving without actually having to face the thing I was avoiding.

That's not firefighting. That's something different. That's frozen, just with better camouflage.

And the camouflage is the sneaky bit. Because busy looks fine from the outside. It looks like you're on it. It looks like you're moving. Nobody sees the thing that isn't happening. Sometimes you barely see it yourself, until you stop for a moment and notice that the list that actually matters hasn't shifted in weeks.

For me it's this. The content I keep not posting. The daring stuff I keep not doing. The marketing I hide from behind the work I already know how to do.

I'm not proud of it. But I recognise it. And I suspect some of you do too.

The thing nobody tells you about being a leader is that there's a version of overwhelm that doesn't look like running. It looks like stillness. Like the email you've opened four times and still haven't replied to. Like the conversation you've been meaning to have since January. Like the strategic plan that's been sitting in a half-finished document for two terms.

From the outside it looks like a choice. From the inside it feels like one too, which is the really uncomfortable bit. Because you know what needs doing. You can see it clearly. You're just not moving.

I came across some research recently that stopped me in my tracks a bit. A study looking at what actually happens when people hit overwhelm found something interesting, it's not just stress, it's a distinct state where your brain is simultaneously on high alert and completely exhausted. Heightened awareness of everything that needs doing, combined with an absence of any corresponding action. Not laziness. Not avoidance. A specific kind of freeze that the brain defaults to when demands have outrun available resources.

The brain, it turns out, can't really tell the difference between a genuine threat and an overflowing inbox. It just knows there's too much. And sometimes its answer to too much is nothing.

That's worth sitting with. Because most of the leaders I work with, when they're in this place, aren't thinking "my brain is in a neurological freeze response." They're thinking "what is wrong with me."

Nothing is wrong with you. You've just hit the wall.

I know what I'm supposed to do, by the way.

When the freeze hits, you need to change your physical state. Break the pattern. Move. Do something different with your body and your brain follows. It's a real thing, not a wellness platitude, an actual neurological reset.

I do this. I get up from my desk. I end up in the kitchen, not purposefully, just... there. Staring blankly into the fridge. Nothing to see. Back to the desk.

Ten minutes later, lo and behold, I've eaten a cheese toastie I didn't need.

And then, because apparently I haven't learned anything, I'm back at the fridge. Then the crisp drawer. Then a low-level guilt about the toastie that is, if anything, making the frozen feeling worse rather than better.

None of this features in the neurological literature as a recommended intervention. Trust me, I checked.

I know this. I know the tool, I understand what's happening, I could explain it to you right now in some detail. And I'm still standing in the kitchen at 11am on a Tuesday, cheese in hand, list untouched on my desk.

That's not a failure of knowledge. It's just being human. And it's also, if I'm honest, a big part of why I think coaching actually works. Not because a coach tells you things you don't know. Most of the time you already know. It's because having someone alongside you who asks the right question at the right moment is sometimes the only thing that moves you from knowing to doing. And sometime's it's giving air to those thoughts, the things you wouldn;t say to anyone else.

If any of this sounds familiar, I'd love to hear what's happening for you. The toastie can wait.

ruth.marie.thornton@gmail.com