Fight, Flight or Freeze

Most people have heard of the fight or flight response. In a nutshell, this is a response that protects us in times of danger. The body reacts to a situation that seems harmful to activate us to move. The adrenaline and cortisol pumped out by the adrenal glands get our muscles ready to fight back, defend ourselves, or run away. But there is a third response that occurs to many people in crisis situations, and that is to freeze.

Freezing is when you literally become paralyzed in the face of a frightening situation. Your brain quickly decides it is your best option, you are unlikely to outrun your opponent or you just won’t survive fighting back. This is especially true for children, who decide just to remain small or shrink even more to avert negative attention.

As I mentioned previously, these responses are helpful in a momentary panic but can unintentionally become our default mode. And when that happens, we can become “stuck”, responding one way to many life stressors, when we are supposed to be flexible, depending on the situation. But if that’s how we survived previously, it might take some psychological work to deprogram our brains to adjust and react appropriately, given each specific circumstance, and not just survive adversity, but learn to thrive and… live life untangled.