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 💛

Nervous system regulation, co-regulation, polyvagal theory, somatic practices, vagal tone, sympathetic activation, parasympathetic activation, window of tolerance, neuroception. The wellness world is drowning us in terminology. But is the language actually helping you, or is it giving you one more thing to feel like you are not doing correctly?

The science is real. The science is valid. That is not what this episode questions. What this episode asks is where we are putting our focus. Because the clinical vocabulary has become the thing instead of the experience being the thing. Whether you are reading articles, listening to podcasts, or watching videos about your nervous system, there is a point where the information stops helping and starts producing the very anxiety it claims to solve.

These practices have always existed long before we had the language for them. Your body has been communicating with you your entire life. The question has never been whether you know the right words. The question has always been whether you are listening.

In this episode you will discover:

• Why wellness terminology might be creating the anxiety it claims to solve
• The important distinction between the science being real and the terminology becoming the focus
• What your body has always known how to do long before the internet named it
• Why we outsource our own knowing when we get too deep into clinical language
• The difference between studying the map and walking the path
• Why you do not need a single clinical term to validate the inner work you are already doing
• A tiny practice for the moment the information starts making you more anxious than calm

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here. From my heart to yours. 💛

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.essey

The Self-Love and Mental Fitness lie that you can't love anyone else until you love yourself is hurting people who are already loving beautifully. If you have ever doubted the love you give because you believe you have not yet learned to love yourself, you have been told something that is not true.

This line is one of the most repeated in the Self-Love and personal development space. It sounds wise. It gets quoted as truth. And I believe it is doing quiet, real damage to people who deserve to know that the love they are giving every single day is real.

In this episode I open with a recent client moment that lays bare the cost of this idea. Then I take the line apart. I look at what it gets wrong, why it can be cruel, and what is actually true underneath it. I also speak openly about my own decades of self-hatred and the love I held for my mother, my siblings, my nieces and my nephews during all of that time. Both were true. At the same time. For years.

Self-Love is a daily practice. It is not a qualification you earn before you are allowed to love or be loved.

This is the third in a recent thread on removing barriers on the path to Self-Love. Episode 73: You Don't Have to Like Yourself to Start Loving Yourself. Episode 74: Self-Abandonment: Why You Keep Doing It and What It's Costing You.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER:

• Why this line gets repeated so often we have stopped questioning it

• The recent client moment that lit the fuse for this episode

• The observable truth about how struggling humans love beautifully every single day

• What the line was reaching for and where it went wrong

• The difference between friction in loving and not being able to love

• My own story of decades of self-hatred and deep, profound love at the same time

• Why connection is often where the healing happens, not the waiting room before it

• The permission you do not need to wait for

This is an inside job. Thank you for being here. Please share this episode and follow my show. From my heart to yours.

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.essey

Self-abandonment is why Self-Love does not stick. If you keep saying yes when you mean no, staying quiet when you have something to say, or pushing through when your body is begging you to stop, this episode names exactly what that pattern is, where it comes from, and what it is costing you.

Self-abandonment disguises itself as kindness, humility, and being low-maintenance. Most of us never question it because it looks so much like virtue from the outside. In this episode I break down what self-abandonment actually is, why it is a learned survival response and not a character weakness, what it does to your body and your relationship with yourself over time, and the 5-word practice that can interrupt the pattern starting today.

Self-Love is not a destination. It is built in the accumulation of small choices to stay with yourself. This episode is where that starts.

In this episode you will discover:

• What self-abandonment actually is and why it disguises itself as being a good person
• The quiet, ordinary moments where you abandon yourself without realising it
• Why this pattern started, why it once served you, and why it no longer belongs in your life
• What self-abandonment does to your body, your energy, and your relationship with yourself over time
• Why Self-Love cannot be built on a foundation of leaving yourself behind
• The 5-word practice that interrupts the pattern in the exact moment it is happening
• Why one small choice to stay with yourself is not just enough. It is the beginning.

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.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this with the ones you love. From my heart to yours.

How to love yourself when you don't like who you are - and why you don't have to like yourself to start. If self-love messaging has ever felt impossible from where you are standing, this episode is for you.

This is probably one of the most honest conversations about Self-Love. Because there is a place a lot of us know but rarely talk about and is where being told to love yourself doesn't feel like a lifeline. It feels like one more thing you are failing at.

In this episode I explore what Viktor Frankl's work reveals about the space where self-love actually begins, why affirmations can deepen the wound for some people rather than heal it, and how the journey between knowing yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself is never linear and why that is not regression. That is humanity.

The goal is not to love yourself by tomorrow morning. The goal is to take one tiny step toward yourself today.

In this episode you will discover:

• Why you do not have to like yourself to begin loving yourself - and what the difference between liking and loving actually is
• What Viktor Frankl's insight about the space between stimulus and response means for your self-love journey
• Why affirmations can make things worse when you are in a place of deep self-dislike and self-loathing - and what to do instead
• The three internal states on the journey to self-love - knowing yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself - and why moving between them is not failure, it is being human
• The neuroscience of self-criticism and why for your brain the leap to self-love is neurologically impossible without small steps first
• Why the overnight transformation fantasy is one of the most damaging ideas in personal development - and what to replace it with

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.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people in your life who could benefit from hearing this message. From my heart to yours.

How to stop waiting for the perfect moment - and show up anyway. Mental fitness, self-love, and what imperfect action actually looks like in real life.

I just got back from Japan. I have the flu. My luggage - including my microphone and my concealer - is somewhere between Tokyo and my front door. This is not the episode I planned to make.

Last week's three-part ketamine series brought in new listeners and I had been so ready to show up and deliver something extraordinary for them. And then JFK happened. And Manila happened. And the flu happened. And I lay in bed catastrophizing - while being completely aware of the irony. The woman who teaches you to embrace imperfect action, lying in bed, devastated about not being able to be perfect.

Very funny. In hindsight.

This episode is about the gap between knowing something and actually doing it. That gap is where the real work lives. It's about what it looks like to practice imperfect action when you're the one who has to do it - not as a concept, but as a real choice, on a hard day, with no equipment, full of flu.

It's also about wabi-sabi - a Japanese philosophy I kept thinking about in Japan. The beauty of imperfect, impermanent, incomplete things in everyday life. Not beauty despite the imperfection. Beauty because of it.

In this episode you'll discover:

• Why showing up imperfectly is still showing up - and why it sometimes matters more

• What the E in the LOVE Framework actually looks like when you’re the one who has to do it

• The difference between panicking and failing

• Wabi-sabi - the Japanese philosophy of finding beauty in imperfect, impermanent, incomplete things

• The question I’d like you to sit with this week

This is an inside job. It always is.

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.essey