When I first started learning about the stress response decades ago, we talked about fight and flight. That was the language. That was the model. Your nervous system senses danger, and you either fight it or you run from it.
But that’s not what I see anymore.
More and more, I watch clients slip into freeze and flop. Not fighting, not fleeing. Just stuck. Shut down. Unable to move. And for a long time I thought about this purely through an emotional lens. What’s locked up. What hasn’t been released. What trauma is sitting underneath the stillness.
Then one morning it hit me differently.
Fight and flight take energy.
And so many of us simply don’t have it.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.