I was sitting on the couch after Thanksgiving trying to figure out what I wanted to write about this month. It was a blessed holiday for me, and I wanted to offer something useful. Something people could take into their everyday lives.

A lot of clinicians talk about how people regress around their families during the holidays. I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to talk about those moments when someone says something slick, a pressure hits your chest, or a situation pushes you to the edge and you feel yourself ready to react fast and hard. Those moments when you want to snap, clap back, or even smack somebody, but you also sense that this person, moment, or experience has triggered something deeper inside you.

That reaction wasn’t just about the recent comment. It began in your nervous system, in the survival patterns you learned long before this moment.  You are probably in freeze, fawn, flight, or fight mode. 

How Trauma Responses Show Up in Real Life

Most people think trauma responses only happen in extreme situations. A car speeding towards a deer is a prime example of a trauma response. A deer stands motionless in the middle of the road. The classic freeze response comes into play.

But freeze, fawn, flight, and fight unfold quietly in daily life. They show up at work, in relationships, with money stress, under pressure, and in moments of racism, bias, or disrespect. Trauma responses live in the nervous system.  The body reacts when something in the present feels even slightly similar to unresolved pain from the past.

Here is how each response shows up:

Freeze
Freeze appears when being seen feels dangerous. You want to speak up in a meeting or say, “Please do not talk to me like that,” but suddenly your voice disappears. Your mind goes blank. Your body pauses. Freezing does not happen because you are weak. It is your nervous system trying to keep you safe.

Fawn
Fawn is the over-accommodator. Fawn is the person who smoothes things over, maintains peace, takes responsibility for what is not theirs, and apologizes even when they have done nothing wrong. Fawn feels like kindness, but it is really the body trying to avoid harm. Many people who chronically exhibit fawning behavior grew up under the supervision of an adult bully who took away their ability to say “no.”

Flight
Flight looks like avoidance. Leaving the room. Dodging a coworker. Wanting to quit. Shutting down emotionally. Flight is the body searching for safety through distance. Many people run because they fear their own aggression. They do not trust themselves to be assertive without becoming aggressive, so they leave. I often think of people who rely heavily on flight as a defense as the “it is not worth it” crew, and I don’t mind saying I am a highly qualified member of this crew.

Fight
Fight is often misunderstood. It does not always look like yelling or physical conflict. Sometimes it is heat rising in the chest, a tightening jaw, or a strong internal voice saying, “I am not tolerating this.” Fight can show up as firm boundaries or as irritability when the nervous system feels threatened. It can also look like pushing yourself past your limits to feel in control. And yes, sometimes it looks like opening a ten-gallon drum of whoop-ass.

These responses are not conscious choices. They are reflexes your nervous system learned to keep you alive.

Why Trauma Responses Show Up in Day-to-Day Stress

High-pressure environments often reward trauma responses. Freeze looks like keeping your head down. Fawn looks like being the dependable team player. Flight looks like staying quiet and staying out of the way. Fight looks like being intense or perfectionistic.

People who grow up with chaos, racism, instability, or hardship don’t achieve from a place of ease. They achieve survival. Success becomes safety. Perfection becomes a way to stay ahead of harm. So when pressure rises, their nervous system isn’t just responding to the present moment. It’s responding to every moment, especially the ones from childhood when they were powerless, with the instinctive efficiency of a body trying to survive.

As a Black woman, I cannot talk about survival responses without naming the cultural layers. In many Black families, survival meant shrinking yourself to stay safe: staying quiet in white spaces, working twice as hard with half the margin for error, swallowing frustration, reading danger in the room before you spoke, or pretending your needs were not urgent. These were not personality traits. They were survival strategies shaped by generations of racism and constant vigilance. And even when the environment changes, the body holds on to those strategies because at one time they were the difference between safety and harm.

Is It the Adult Self or the Younger Self Responding

So now you know what is actually happening, but you still want to smack a B.  What to do?! 

One of the most important questions is this: Who is reacting right now? The adult or the child self.

Adult reactions feel grounded and connected to the present. Child self-reactions feel urgent, overwhelming, or bigger than the situation calls for.

When pain is unresolved, the nervous system has trouble separating a current boundary violation from a childhood moment of powerlessness. This is why small moments can feel huge. It is memory stored in the body, not a personal flaw.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

Healing is not about eliminating your trauma responses. They are wired into the body. Healing is about recognizing them so you can choose how to respond instead of reacting automatically.

Here is what that looks like in real time:

When you feel thrown off and ready to crash out, pause. If you are not in imminent danger, your strong emotional response is likely disproportionate to the situation. Even if you cannot name which trauma response you are having, I’m just going to tell you, “You are having one.” In those moments, the reasoning part of your brain is not fully online.

Just stop. Not freeze, but stop. Take a breath and be still in your mind. Call on God, the universe, your ancestors, or whatever steadies you. This pause helps your rational brain return.

When your thoughts settle, ask yourself: What does this feeling or situation remind me of, and how is this familiar? Do not respond until you can see the connection. Trauma gets stored in us in fragments of smell, sound, tone, and sensation. Those fragments trigger a trauma reaction and are the reason your body may react to a small moment as if it were a big one.

When you identify the connection, share it with someone grounded. A therapist, a pastor, or a no-nonsense friend. This helps you separate the past from the present so your adult self can create a response that fits the moment, not the memory.  Yep I know what I just said. This means that you don’t get to necessarily respond to what has just happened in the moment.  Awww Dammmnnn!  (Put your Vaseline away…)   Adults don’t have to snap back.  They can set things right in time, rationally using their adult power, guided by their adult brains. 

Closing

Freeze, fawn, flight, and fight are not flaws. They are the body’s way of protecting you. Understanding them gives you the power to stay aligned with yourself, even in stressful moments.

When you learn to recognize your trauma responses, you move from surviving the moment to choosing how you want to show up in it. That is where real change begins.