Functional freeze is why you feel nothing, and nobody asks if you're okay.

This week's Mental Health Awareness Month question: what should we be talking about that we're not talking about?

81% of Americans now recognise the importance of mental health, and yet access to services actually dropped this year. We are more aware than ever and more stuck than ever. For millions of people, the struggle does not look like a breakdown. It looks like a completely ordinary day. You go to work. You answer emails. You show up. And you feel nothing. It is called functional freeze, and it is your nervous system's way of protecting you from an overload it cannot process. It keeps the function running but shuts down the feeling.

This is the second episode in a May series exploring the conversations we need to be having. If you have been functioning on autopilot and wondering why you cannot access the tools you already have, this episode names what is happening and offers one neuroscience-backed step to start coming back to yourself.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• What functional freeze actually is and why it is not laziness, not burnout, and not a lack of motivation
• Why 81% of people are aware of mental health but more than half have not accessed any support, and what that gap really means
• What functional freeze looks like in everyday life, and why it is invisible to the people around you
• The connection between functional freeze and self-abandonment, and why your body shuts down feeling to keep you functioning
• Why experts are calling this moment a polycrisis, and what happens when your nervous system never gets the signal that it is safe to rest
• Why you cannot think your way out of a body state, and what neuroscience says about the way back
• One simple sensory practice backed by polyvagal theory that takes 30 seconds and gives your nervous system the signal to come back online

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Dr. Stephen Porges, Polyvagal Theory

Rula, 2026 State of Mental Health Report

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please send this episode to people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Self-advocacy is a mental health conversation we need to be having. We have more awareness than ever, and yet more than half of adults experiencing a mental health condition are still not getting help.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, instead of repeating what everyone already knows, I am asking a different question: what should we be talking about that we are not talking about? The answer this week is self-advocacy, the active practice of being on your own team, not just in a doctor's office but in your relationships, in your inner dialogue, and in the moments where you already have the tools but forget to reach for them.

This is the first episode in a May series exploring the conversations we need to be having. If you have ever had the tools and the knowledge but needed a bridge between knowing and doing, this episode is that bridge.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER:

• Why awareness alone has not closed the treatment gap, and what it takes to close the distance between knowing something needs to change and actually taking action
• The difference between self-abandonment and self-advocacy, and why they are two sides of the same coin
• What self-advocacy looked like in my own healthcare journey, including the advocacy that happened before IV ketamine assisted therapy became an option
• Why advocating for yourself in a doctor's office or therapist's room is an act of Self-Love, not an act of defiance
• What self-advocacy sounds like in your closest relationships, especially when keeping the peace has become more important than telling the truth
• What happens when you start examining your own thinking, and what to do when your mind builds stories and presents them as facts
• One question you can ask yourself in any moment to interrupt the pattern and start being on your own side

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And subscribe while you are here 💛

Overthinking doesn't always start with a bad thought. Sometimes it starts with silence, and your mind filling that silence with stories so convincing you forget they are stories. If you have ever spiralled over an unanswered message, an unreturned call, or a silence you could not explain, you will want to be a part of this conversation.

We all do it. A text goes unanswered. A WhatsApp message sits unread. A call doesn't get returned. And instead of staying with what we actually know, we start to believe things we have no evidence for.

In this episode I share a tool I learned from Dr. Susan David's work on emotional agility, the practice of separating facts from feelings, and what happened when I finally used it in a moment I really needed it.

This episode is about the space between learning a tool and remembering to reach for it when your chest is tight and your mind won't stop spinning.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• Why overthinking escalates, how small stories become elaborate certainties over days and why your mind builds them so convincingly
• The real reason silence is so unbearable, your brain would rather have a painful answer than no answer at all
• Dr. Susan David's Facts vs Feelings practice and how to use it in the moment without a journal, an app, or perfect conditions
• What I found when I separated the facts from the feelings, and why the disproportion between the two columns changed everything
• Why forgetting your tools in the middle of the spiral is not failure, it is being human
• How the distance between the spiral starting and you remembering you have something to reach for gets shorter over time
• Why "no response is a response" might be true but attaching a story to what no response means is where the damage can happen
• What it looks like to not abandon yourself in real time, not through a big gesture, but through choosing what is actually true over what your mind has built

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛