What Is the Fight Response?
Did you ever stop to wonder why you feel like you need to solve every problem that might arise in the future? Do you ever find yourself replaying conversations and creating the perfect response hours later after they occurred? Do you debate every detail in meetings, even when it’s exhausting? Do you ponder all the potential catastrophes that will occur and believe you can prevent them all by just thinking hard enough? Your brain is in panic mode. What Is the Fight Reaction? We tend to think of the “fight” response in terms of yelling, grasping fists, or having a fight. But the body’s need to confront danger appears in forms far less subtle than we imagine. From the colleague who disputes every argument in meetings to relentless problem solved is our bodys effort at warding off moments in which we feel attacked. Our nervous system initiates one of our primary survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn), when it senses danger, real or perceived.
The fight response prepares us for battle by filling our system with stress chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline. These “battles” in our modern world, however, never involve actual combat. Instead, they appear as behavioral and psychological patterns that stress out our bodies, wear on our relationships, and drain our mental energy. The most significant insight is that our bodies can’t tell the difference between a tiger rushing towards us and an unpleasant email from the boss. Both trigger the same familiar alarm system, preparing us to fight for our lives. In a relationship
Have you ever noticed how a disagreement can escalate into a battle you absolutely have to win in a matter of moments? That’s not stubbornness or being difficult. That’s your fight response kicking in. In intense arguments, the fight response masquerades as principled debate or defending principles. But observe more closely at the physical signs: the rapid heartbeat, the tunnel vision, the frantic need to be right. These aren’t emotional responses but they’re survival responses.
Signs You’re in Fight Mode When You Argue
A person in fight mode during personal conflicts will tend to:
- Feel the need to have the last word
- Experience conflicts as win or lose situations (survival or death)
- End up fighting about inconsequential details instead of dealing with underlying issues
- Get energized instead of depleted from conflict
- Have difficulty really listening when other people are talking.
This has nothing to do with being a challenging person. It has to do with a nervous system that has learned to view dis-agreement as threat and reacts in this manner. The body is really saying, “I have to win this threat in order to survive(be respected, understood and loved.” This individual is perpetually in survival mode.
Constantly being in a state of threat can sometimes be a sign of unresolved complex trauma (not always). Complex Trauma happens when a series of small threats in the environment that have led to a chronic fight, flight or freeze response accumulates.
