Rooted in Resilience: Decoding Fight or Flight (What Your Body Is Really Trying to Tell You?)

Understanding Fight or Flight and Reclaiming Safety in Uncertain Times

Whether you're healing from trauma, navigating a breakup, facing illness, living through a global crisis, or fighting for justice—you are not alone. When life feels overwhelming and uncertain, your nervous system goes into overdrive. You may feel anxious, on edge, or like you're treading water just trying to get through the day.

This blog series, Rooted in Resilience, is a guide for those moments. A companion for your healing. Each post will explore a different pillar of nervous system care and emotional self-regulation—from boundaries to mindfulness to surrender.

We begin here: understanding your body’s built-in survival response—and learning how to soften it.

What Is Fight or Flight?

The stress response your body uses to protect you—even when there’s no tiger chasing you.

When you experience stress, your body responds automatically with a protective survival mechanism: fight or flight. Your brain can’t always tell whether the threat is physical (a car speeding toward you) or emotional (reading the news, losing a job, navigating a breakup). To your nervous system, it all feels the same.

That means your body releases stress chemicals—adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine—designed to help you either fight the threat or flee from it.

The problem? In modern life, there’s often no “threat” to physically confront or escape. So all those chemicals build up in your body, leaving you with symptoms like:

• Racing thoughts

• Shortness of breath

• Muscle tension

• Trouble sleeping

• Mood swings

• Feeling detached or numb

• Hypervigilance (like jumping at sounds or feeling irritable without reason)

Personally, I noticed my fight-or-flight response showing up in ways I hadn’t expected—like being unable to enjoy music that once brought me joy. Everything felt overstimulating and agitating because my brain was misinterpreting safe signals as danger.

You Are Not Broken—Your Body Is Just Trying to Protect You

Here’s how to work with your nervous system instead of against it.

If you’ve been living in prolonged stress—whether from systemic oppression, trauma, grief, or the global pandemic—your body may feel stuck in survival mode. That doesn't mean you're broken. It means your system is doing what it was designed to do.

But here’s the empowering part: you can rewire your response. You can teach your body how to feel safe again. And with practice, you can move out of survival and into deeper connection with yourself and your world.

Over the next several posts in the Rooted in Resilience series, we’ll explore how to do exactly that—through:

• Awareness of your personal stress patterns

• Boundaries that protect your peace

• Mind-body connection practices that bring you back home to yourself

• Surrender and rest as sacred tools for recalibration

• Community and co-regulation as powerful medicine

• Mindfulness to anchor you in the now

This Is Personal—and It’s Possible

What I’ve learned about staying rooted when the world is spinning.

I’ve lived through my share of personal crises. I’ve navigated trauma, loss, and uncertainty. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and unsteady—and I also know that healing is possible.

The truth is: your nervous system can heal. Your body wants to come back into balance. And the more we understand the way we’re wired, the more compassion we can offer ourselves along the way.

A Resource I Recommend

If you’re curious to explore more, I highly recommend the book The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. It’s one of the most important books I’ve read for understanding the relationship between trauma, the nervous system, and healing.

Ready to Rewire Your Stress Response?

You don’t have to navigate this alone.

If you’re feeling stuck in fight-or-flight or overwhelmed by the stress in your life, I’d love to support you. My medicine work blends breathwork, somatic awareness, subconscious rewiring, and connecting to your intuitive guidance to help regulate your nervous system and return to a felt sense of safety and clarity.

✨ Click here to book a free discovery call and let’s talk about what you’re holding—and how I can help you shift it.

You're not too much. You're not too sensitive. You're not broken.
You’re a human with a brilliant survival system—and you’re learning how to make it feel safe again.