What if the illness wasn’t random… but rehearsed?

For many women, chronic symptoms are not failures of the body—but echoes of old survival.
The fawn response—smiling through overwhelm, softening to stay safe.
The freeze response—numbing out, collapsing inward when life felt too much.

These are not personality traits.
They are nervous system patterns.
And over time, they shape not just how we feel—but how we function.

This blog explores the quiet biology of survival.
How chronic fawning and freezing can shape immune health, fatigue, pain, and neurological sensitivity—
and how healing begins by naming what your body has never forgotten.

Functional Neurological Disorder isn’t a mystery diagnosis—it’s the nervous system’s attempt to protect what never felt safe to express.

Many women with FND spent years in high-functioning freeze. They smiled through panic. Worked through pain. Stayed calm to avoid conflict. The cost of that survival? It lives in the body now.

FND can look like tremors, speech loss, movement disruption, or shutdown. But beneath every symptom is a story of adaptation. Of strength mistaken for health. Of silence mistaken for stability.

In this blog, I explore how FND arises from chronic fawn and freeze responses, why it’s so common in women, and how somatic therapy begins to unravel what the body never forgot.