There are 4 trauma (aka survival) responses of the nervous system: fight, flight, fawn and freeze.
Today, we’ll focus on how to support and rest for the fight and flight response.
The fight response seeks safety through tensioning the body (stiff muscles), control seeking tendencies (i.e. controlling their exercise, body, or schedules) and through emotional reactivity (i.e. defensiveness, quick to anger, attacking language).
One of the best ways you destress your nervous system when in this fight response is by going out on a power walk while listening to music with beats that sync with your movements (sometimes I refer to these as “rage walks”).
This forward momentum can help move the frustration, anger, and activation out and through your body. In many cases, when we’re in a fight response it can be challenging to “relax” and/or “calm down” when we are so activated. We first need to mobilize and move this energy before we can more successfully transition into relaxation.
The flight response involves fleeing your current stressful emotional or physical environment in pursuit of safety (aka becoming a busy body and always multi-tasking).
Flighters will feel really supported by rhythmic movements like dance or even organizing, decluttering and cleaning. When we can focus this energy and transfer it into movement we can safely transition into a more restful state.
As you can see, movement is a very supportive tool to lean into when we are triggered. However, each trauma response will require a specific style of movement (i.e. fight – rage walks vs. flight – rhythmic movements).
So in conclusion, first I encourage you to practice developing more awareness when you are triggered or activated.
- Where does it live in your body?
- How can you tell your activated/triggered?
- What are your biggest triggers?
Then reference the supportive recommendations for fight and flight responses to help mobilize and process this stressed energy (and even experiment on your own with movements that help meet you in this activated state. Some of my clients feel supported by being in nature for this power walks, while others prefer to engage in a sport like surfing).
Once we learn how to meet our nervous system in this activated state with the support she’s craving can we then successfully rest, recover and heal.
If you’re interested in learning more about how you can unapologetically step into rest as a pathway to heal the body, please feel free to visit www.coachalysschang.com/better-expert to join my waitlist for Better Expert.
Inside Better Expert, we recognize how essential and unique rest and recovery is to heal the body and teach you how to better understand your unique needs to step into rest.
I look forward to seeing you there!
