Understanding Your Nervous System: Why Fight, Flight or Freeze Happens (And What We Can Do About It)

Your partner raises their voice during an argument and suddenly your mind goes blank. Your child has a meltdown in the supermarket and you feel your chest tighten, desperate to escape. You’re trying to have a difficult conversation with a family member and find yourself snapping with unexpected anger.

Sound familiar? These aren’t character flaws or signs that you’re failing at relationships. They’re your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do – and it’s happening in the place where you most want to feel safe and connected.

Your Internal Rulebook: Don’t Die, Stay Alive

Your nervous system operates on two fundamental rules that have kept humans alive for millions of years:

Rule #1: Don’t die. This is primordial, built into your brainstem and limbic system. It’s about immediate survival – escaping predators, avoiding physical harm, staying alive in the next few seconds.

Rule #2: Stay alive. This covers longer-term survival needs like finding food, getting rest, maintaining social connections, and reproduction.

Here’s the crucial bit: Rule #1 always overrides Rule #2. Always. When your system detects danger, it doesn’t matter that you need to eat, sleep, or maintain your relationships. Survival comes first.

Your Two Operating Systems

Think of your nervous system as having two main operating systems:

The Sympathetic System: 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.

The Parasympathetic System: Your rest and repair crew. This handles “stay alive” functions – digestion, healing, connection, clear thinking. Heart rate steady, breathing deep, muscles relaxed.

You can’t run both systems at full capacity simultaneously. When your sympathetic system kicks in to handle a perceived threat, your parasympathetic system goes offline.

The Monkey and the Tiger

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 do this successfully, the monkey’s body needs to:

• Send blood rushing to its limbs for maximum strength and speed
• Focus its vision intensely on the tree ahead (tunnel vision)
• Stop all non-essential functions like digestion
• Bypass complex thinking entirely – there’s no time to weigh up options

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

When your “don’t die” system activates, you’ll experience one of three responses (or sometimes a mix). Here’s what each actually feels like in your body:

Fight Response:

• Jaw clenching or teeth grinding
• Hands forming fists
• Heat rising in your chest or face
• Urge to argue, defend, or attack
• Feeling like your blood is boiling
• Wanting to slam doors or throw things

Flight Response:

• Restless legs or twitchy hands
• Chest tightness or feeling like you can’t breathe properly
• Overwhelming urge to leave or escape
• Mind racing with worst-case scenarios
• Feeling trapped or claustrophobic
• Stomach churning or nausea

Freeze Response:

• Mind going completely blank
• Feeling like you’re observing from outside your body
• Inability to speak or find words
• Numbness or feeling disconnected
• Time seeming to slow down or speed up
• Feeling paralysed or stuck in place

Does any of this sound familiar? Most people are surprised by how precisely these descriptions match their experience. That’s because these responses are universal – we all have the same basic wiring. Most people tend towards one or two of these responses and sometimes they can blend, so we can get angry and want to run away.

Why This Happens in Relationships

In our closest relationships, we’re operating from our most vulnerable state. We’ve let our guard down, we’re seeking connection and safety, and we expect to be understood. When conflict arises, it hits harder because it threatens not just our physical safety, but our emotional and social survival too.

Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between “My partner is frustrated about the dishes” and “I’m being rejected by my tribe and might not survive.” Both trigger the same emergency response.

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.”

The Universal Reset: Your Breath

Regardless of which response you’re experiencing, your breath is your most direct line of communication with your nervous system. When you’re activated, your breathing becomes quick and shallow. When you deliberately slow and deepen it, you’re telling your system: “The tiger is gone. We’re safe now.”

Try this technique:

Breathe in for four counts, hold for two, breathe out for six counts. The longer exhale is crucial – it’s like pressing the brake pedal on your stress response. Do this five times and notice what shifts in your body.

Remember: 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 in the next 50 years. Rather than trying to get rid of it, we need to learn to work with it.

And that starts by not judging it. When we judge these responses – getting angry at ourselves for freezing up or snapping at loved ones – we just add more stress to an already activated system. Now we’re both angry and defensive, which makes the whole reaction last longer.

If we can get used to working with these responses rather than fighting them, they become easier and quicker to move past. When you understand what’s happening in your body, you can make conscious choices about how to respond rather than being completely hijacked by your automatic reactions.

Your nervous system has kept you alive this long. With understanding and practice, you can help it navigate the complexities of modern relationships with greater ease and connection.