Lydia heroically ran after a bear that I was sneaking up on with my bow from afar. By the time I had my axe drawn and got close enough to help she was down on one knee yelling about being defeated.

I destroyed the bear, but Lydia was still crouched on the ground dry-heaving. I waited a couple of minutes but she stayed down and didn't recover.
I tried walking away and she started crawling after me on her hands and knees, clutching her side and dragging her shield. It was rather depressing.

There was no way out of it, short of putting her out of her misery myself. I had to reload an earlier save.

The same thing happened to me with that nord you can brawl in whiteruns tavern, she cliped through a chair then was stuck doing that till i reloaded.

When my follower crawled around injured and refused to recover I fus ro dahed him with a full shout and it somehow fixed him lol.

use Healing Hands spell, see if that works?

If you can access her inventory give her some health potions

I tried giving her a health potion, didn't work. I don't have the healing hands spell on that character unfortunately.
The inventory works fine, she even made the same comment about carrying my burdens. Trying to make me feel bad, I think.

It's not a huge deal, because I'm only level 7 on that character, so I'm only losing a few hours at worst.
But I'd hate for this to happen and cause me to choose between a character with 100 hours or losing a great companion.

Hmm, maybe I should have tried the shout...

Had the same problem with another follower. You have to fast travel or enter another area to fix this. If you're in the middle of a dungeon it svcks of course.

I had the same problem with Lydia after a fight. She was crawling rather slowly behind me, and it was taking forever. I used 'Unrelenting Force' on her, and she stood up. It was odd.

Remove a piece of her armor then replace it. That works for me.

Thanks for the tips, should come in handy if it happens again. I've already reloaded an old game.

I'm gonna hunt down that bear.

Had this problem.... I just used unrelenting force to knock them across the room since healing hands did not seem to revive them. It worked perfectly.

I've had this happen with a few companions. It's funny seeing this one guy crawl all around Morthal. Just hit them with any sort of attack and they should stand up again.