Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): A Somatic Approach to Chronic Symptoms
“When the Body Says ‘No More’: A Somatic Look at FND”
FND
She didn’t imagine it. And she wasn’t exaggerating.
The tremors. The weakness. The shutdown. The surges of sensation that came without warning.
Test after test said, “Everything looks normal.”
But her body was telling a different story.
This is the quiet, often unseen reality for many women living with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)—a condition that disrupts the communication between brain and body, often following years of high-functioning, high-holding, and high-survival.
Understanding FND
FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) describes a condition where the body experiences real neurological symptoms—such as tremors, paralysis, weakness, fainting, non-epileptic seizures, or speech changes—without identifiable structural damage to the brain or nerves.
It is not imagined.
It is not made up.
It is the nervous system in a prolonged state of confusion, overwhelm, or protection.
From a somatic lens, FND is what can happen when the body has adapted for too long—shutting down, disconnecting, or misfiring to protect what never had space to be felt.
The Survival Response Beneath the Symptoms
When the nervous system is under threat, it responds.
Freeze is the deepest form of shutdown.
Stillness without peace. Numbness without safety. A full-body retreat.
Fawn is the quiet surrender.
Soften. Please. Adapt. Smile when your insides tremble.
These responses are not conscious.
They are somatic.
They arise when expression isn’t safe, conflict is dangerous, or emotion must be hidden.
Over time, these responses become patterned into the body.
And eventually, they may be expressed through functional symptoms—not as dysfunction, but as communication.
What’s Happening in the Body?
FND is often associated with:
Chronic dorsal vagal dominance (collapse, shut down, numbness)
Disorganized neuroception (the body misreads safety and threat)
Emotional inhibition (the absence of safe expression)
Sensory mismatch (confusion between interoception and motor output)
The result:
Movement that doesn’t move smoothly
Speech that disappears in moments of overwhelm
A body that temporarily disconnects in the absence of an anchor
This is the nervous system protecting itself from what feels too much.
Where FND Lives in the Body
Functional Neurological Disorder doesn’t just affect one area of function.
It impacts the entire sensory-motor-emotional loop—where action, perception, and protection meet.
The regions and systems most often involved include:
Motor planning and control
(Movement becomes effortful, delayed, or disrupted)Emotional processing
(Overwhelm accumulates without completion)Interoception
(The ability to feel internal states—hunger, pain, temperature, heartbeat—becomes disrupted or numbed)Agency
(The sense of “I can move,” “I can speak,” “I choose” may dissolve under chronic fawn or freeze)Each of these systems reflects a different kind of survival—a different kind of silence the body has had to hold.
What Research Is Beginning to Show
New and recent scientific based evidence confirms FND is the result of these survival injuries. This was something I intuitively felt in my own recovery of FND. Take the time to read the studies here:
Van der Feltz-Cornelis et al. (2023)
Childhood trauma and emotional neglect were reported in over 70% of FND patients.
Read the studyKozlowska et al., 2021 found consistent links between disrupted emotion processing and FND symptoms—suggesting that the body is not misfiring, but responding to what has been held inside.
Kanaan et al. (2024)
FND symptoms are associated with altered limbic–motor connections, showing that emotional signals interfere with motor function.
Read the studyPick et al. (2023)
FND patients showed heightened autonomic arousal under social stress but decreased interoceptive awareness—feeling everything, but disconnected from the source.
Read the studyThe research points to one thing: FND is not a mystery. It is the expression of stored survival.
Why It Commonly Presents in Women
Many women have been conditioned to remain composed before they were ever allowed to be fully felt.
Emotional attunement was often rewarded only when it served others.
Sensitivity was misread as weakness.
Compliance was praised as maturity.
And asking for what was needed often felt unsafe, unwelcome, or ignored.
In these conditions, the nervous system adapts.
It learns to suppress activation, silence impulse, and preserve relational stability—even at a cost to the body.
Over time, many women appear outwardly regulated—
high-achieving, dependable, emotionally contained.
But underneath that surface, the system may be carrying layers of unresolved activation and invisible survival.
When the Body Carries the Unspoken
For individuals living in prolonged fawn or freeze states, the body often becomes the final voice for what has never been allowed to emerge.
What may appear as dysregulation or dysfunction is, in many cases, the nervous system attempting to complete a protective cycle that was interrupted long ago.
Functional Neurological Disorder can be understood not as a failure of the body, but as a neurobiological expression of endurance—a survival intelligence held in the tissues, the reflexes, and the silence.
It may be the body’s way of saying:
“I’ve protected you for so long.
Now I need you to listen.”
How My Work Supports Healing from Within
In my courses and somatic psychotherapy work, we don’t try to override these symptoms.
We meet them gently.
From the inside out.
We begin by listening:
What’s the body saying through stillness?
Where does your voice fade?
What have you been holding in for years?
Through soft movement, nervous system repair, emotional unfreezing, and sensory reconnection, we create the conditions for your system to do what it was never given time to do before:
complete the cycle, reclaim agency, and reinhabit the body with safety.
Begin With the Roles That Protected Us
So many women I work with aren’t just experiencing symptoms—they’re carrying identities they had to take on to survive.
You might recognise yourself in:
The Strong One who kept going, no matter what
The Pleaser who put everyone else first
The Peacekeeper who stayed silent to avoid conflict
The Invisible One who slowly disappeared
These aren’t flaws. They were forms of protection.
But living inside them for too long comes at a cost to the body.
🌿 That’s why I created The Roles That Protected Us, my free somatic course to help you begin gently.
Inside, we explore:
The survival roles you’ve been unconsciously playing
How each one shapes your nervous system, your body, and your sense of self
Somatic tools to begin thawing the freeze, softening the fawn, and reconnecting with your voice, your needs, your movement
A pathway forward—not into pressure, but into presence
References — Recent FND Research
van der Feltz‑Cornelis, C. M. et al. (2023)
Trauma and adverse childhood experiences in patients with functional neurological disorder
Over 70% of FND patients reported emotional neglect or early relational threat.
🔗 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399923002345Kanaan, R. A. et al. (2024)
Functional motor symptoms: disrupted limbic–motor connectivity
Demonstrated how emotional signal networks interfere with motor control in FND.
🔗 https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/6/2/fcad316/7566486Pick, S. et al. (2023)
Autonomic and interoceptive patterns in functional neurological disorder
Found FND patients experienced high autonomic arousal with decreased internal body awareness.
🔗 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.26293
Kozlowska K., et al. (2021). Functional neurological symptoms and emotion processing. Frontiers in Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2