One of the most common things I hear from clients is some version of: "I don't know why I reacted like that. It just happened and I wish it didn’t."
Their partner raised their voice and suddenly their mind went blank. Their child had a meltdown in the supermarket and they felt desperate to escape. They were trying to have a difficult conversation with a family member and found themselves snapping. In each case it’s not something they wanted to do ─ it felt like something else took over.
This isn't a character flaw. It's not necessarily a sign that you're failing at relationships or that you're somehow broken. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do … just at an inconvenient and unhelpful moment.
Tl;dr
Your nervous system is designed to protect you by reacting to perceived threats by looking scary (fight), escaping (flight), or playing dead (freeze). This system overrules pretty much everything else, including rational thought.
Unfortunately, the nervous system isn't good at telling the difference between a physical, existential threat (e.g. a tiger about to eat you) and a more diffuse, modern threat (e.g. having an argument with a loved one).
Fortunately, we can hack our nervous system using breath work and somatic techniques to shorten the impact of our fight, flight, or freeze response.
In this article:
The Two Rules of Your Nervous System
Your nervous system operates on two fundamental rules that have kept humans alive for millions of years:
Rule #1: Don’t die. This is about immediate survival — escaping predators, avoiding physical harm, staying alive in the next few seconds.. It’s biological, primordial and built into your brainstem and limbic system.
Rule #2: Stay alive. This is focused on longer-term survival needs like finding food, getting rest, maintaining social connections, and reproduction.
The crucial thing is that Rule #1: Don't Die always wins. When your system senses danger, it doesn't weigh up whether the threat is real, or whether this is a good moment to override your other needs. It just acts.
Your Two Operating Systems
These two rules are actually the responsibility of two opposing branches of our autonomic nervous systems.
The Sympathetic Nervous System is your emergency response team. When this is running the show, you’re in “don’t die” mode — fight, flight, or freeze. Heart rate up, breathing shallow, muscles tense, ready for action. It’s all about getting blood to the eyes and limbs. Complex thinking isn’t actually very helpful when you’re running for your life ─ you need to make quick survival decisions.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is your rest and repair crew. This handles “stay alive” functions — digestion, healing, connection, reflective thinking. Heart rate steady, breathing deep, muscles relaxed. Blood is distributed around our body more evenly (including the thinky part of our brain!).
You can't run both at full capacity at the same time. When the sympathetic system kicks in, the parasympathetic effectively goes offline. Which is why, in the middle of a heated argument, you suddenly can't think straight — your clear-thinking system is temporarily unavailable.
The Monkey and the Tiger
As my clients know all too well, I love a visual metaphor. I often use this one to help the concept click without too much overexplaining.
Imagine a monkey peacefully eating fruit when suddenly a tiger appears. That monkey needs to get up the nearest tree in about three seconds, or it becomes lunch.
To pull this off, the monkey's body immediately does several things: it floods the limbs with blood for speed and strength, narrows its vision to focus on the escape route, shuts down anything non-essential like digestion, and bypasses any complex decision-making entirely. No time to weigh options — just move.
This response is brilliant for escaping tigers. Less helpful when it comes to having difficult conversations or worrying about money. But your nervous system can’t tell the difference.
The Three Responses: What They Feel Like
Most people are surprised — and often a bit relieved — to recognise themselves in these descriptions. These responses are universal. We all have the same basic wiring, even if we tend to default to one more than the others.
Fight might feel like: jaw clenching, fists forming, heat rising in your chest or face, the urge to argue or defend, wanting to slam a door or say something cutting.
Flight might feel like: chest tightness, restless legs, an overwhelming urge to leave the room, mind racing with worst-case scenarios, stomach churning.
Freeze might feel like: mind going completely blank, feeling like you're watching yourself from outside your body, losing the ability to find words, feeling numb or stuck.
And they can mix — plenty of people feel furious and simultaneously desperate to run. I find this reassures people a lot; they're not reacting "wrong," they're just human.
There is actually a fourth response, fawn, that I’m not going to go into too much in this article. It’s a bit tricker because it seems so counterintuitive ─ why would an animal cosy up to something trying to attack it. Yet, in humans, it happens. And it can work in keeping you safe. It can be a key part of the reason people stay in abusive relationships. And that’s exactly why it needs a more nuanced article of its own.
Why Our Responses Hit Hardest in Relationships
You might think that, since close relationships are usually where we feel safest, that we wouldn’t go into fight and flight mode.
Yet, it’s in our closest relationships that we’re operating from our most vulnerable state. We've lowered our defences. We're looking for connection, safety, understanding. So when conflict arises in that context, it doesn't just feel like a disagreement — it can feel like an existential threat.
Unfortunately, our nervous systems don’t distinguish between “My partner is frustrated about the dishes” and “I’m being attacked and might die.” Both trigger the same emergency response.
What’s more, if one person gets angry when they’re activated and the other one gets angry, runs away, or freezes, the situation doesn’t resolve and both can feel under threat, disconnected, and misunderstood.
I realise that knowing all this doesn't necessarily make it easier in the moment, but it does change the story from "I'm someone who can't handle conflict" to "I'm a person with a nervous system doing its job."
Working With Your Responses
You can’t stop these responses from happening — they’re automatic and protective. But you can learn to work with them:
When You’re in Fight Mode:
- Lower your voice deliberately. This signals safety to both your nervous system and your partner’s.
- Move your body safely. Step outside, do jumping jacks, or squeeze and release your fists to burn off the activation.
- Use “I” statements. “I’m feeling defensive right now” rather than “You always…”
When You’re in Flight Mode:
- Ground yourself physically. Feel your feet on the floor, name five things you can see. This interrupts the escape urge.
- Breathe with longer exhales. In for four, out for six. This activates your parasympathetic system.
- Ask for a time-out. “I need ten minutes to calm down, then I want to come back to this.”
When You’re in Freeze Mode:
- Start with tiny movements. Wiggle your fingers, roll your shoulders. Small actions can help unfreeze you.
- Warm your body. Wrap yourself in a blanket or hold a warm cup. Freeze responses often come with feeling cold.
- Give yourself permission to take time. “I need a moment to think about this.”
Your Breath As A Reset
Whatever response you're in, your breath is the most direct tool you have. When you're activated, your breathing goes shallow and fast. When you deliberately slow it — especially lengthening the exhale — you're sending a clear signal: the tiger is gone, we're safe now.
Four counts in, six counts out. Just five of those can start to shift things noticeably. It won't always feel like enough in the moment, but it's doing more than it seems.
Need help to regulate in the moment? Try my Quick Exhale tool.
You’re Not Broken
These responses aren’t flaws to fix — they’re information about how threatened your system feels. This system has kept all of our ancestors alive for millions of years, so we’re not going to overwrite it any time soon. Rather than trying to get rid of it, we need to learn to work with it.
What I'd encourage is to try not to judge the response on top of everything else. Getting angry at yourself for freezing, or ashamed of snapping, just adds more activation to a system that's already running hot. When you can meet these moments with a bit of curiosity instead — "hm, I went into fight mode there, that's interesting" — they become easier to move through, and quicker to recover from.
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