Weight, Shame, and the Freeze State

June 29, 2025

When your body is low on energy and stuck in a freeze state, coping mechanisms often take over — and that can impact how you see yourself. Here's my honest reflection from the middle of that process.

One of the things I’ve been quietly struggling with is how difficult it is to manage my coping mechanisms when I’m in a low-energy state — and how that’s been affecting how I feel about my body.

I’ve put on quite a lot of weight recently.
And while I can hold it with some compassion, I won’t lie: it’s affected my self-esteem.

🧠 When the Body Can’t Recharge

I’ve been in a kind of chronic low-energy mode.
My nervous system is tired. My body battery rarely hits full.
And no matter how much space or autonomy I have, I can’t seem to recharge the way I hoped.

That’s when the cravings come in.
The need for quick comfort.
The old coping tools: food, distraction, soothing through consumption.

Not because I’m lazy.
But because I’m trying to survive — and sometimes, that’s the only thing my body knows how to reach for when I have nothing left to give.

🔄 It’s Not About the Food

This isn’t really about food or weight.
It’s about how hard it is to be with myself when my body doesn’t feel like mine.

It’s about how easy it is to spiral — from discomfort into shame, from shame into isolation, from isolation into more coping.

It’s about how even though I know the mechanisms,
and I know the roots (trauma, abandonment, nervous system overload) —
I still find myself reaching for something I don’t really want, but don’t yet know how to replace.

🧭 A Gentle Reframe

What I keep reminding myself is:

I am not failing — I am healing.
This isn’t regression — it’s a freeze state that’s asking for tenderness, not discipline.
My worth is not dictated by how my body looks during this phase.
I don’t need to shame myself into change — I need to stay beside myself through the process.

Because this part is hard.
And it would be so easy to give up on myself again.
But I won’t.

💬 If You’re Here Too

If your weight has changed.
If your self-esteem has dipped.
If you’re doing your best to hold it all together but feel like you’re falling apart quietly…

You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
You’re just in the middle —
and the middle isn’t meant to be pretty.
It’s meant to be real.