Imagine this scene: You’re crossing the street when you hear the loud screech of car tires behind you.
In less than a second, your body kicks into action. Your heart rate spikes, your adrenaline surges, and you whip around to see if the car is coming toward you.
All of this happens entirely outside your awareness. Your body responds before you have time to think—and this is for good reason. The extra time it would have taken to ask yourself what to do could’ve been the difference between life and death.
This is the stress response, also known as fight-flight-freeze. These are the three ways we instinctively respond when our brains sense danger.
In our video Fight, Flight, Freeze: Understanding the stress response, Woody Schuldt, LMHC, describes the stress response and explains why it’s relevant to everyday life. He also provides guidance on how it can be controlled using “the power of the pause,” a technique for turning off the autopilot reactions that tend to follow the stress response.
Many people struggle to understand why they respond to stress in the way they do. They might feel guilty or ashamed of their reactions, such as yelling or dissociating. Better understanding fight-flight-freeze can help normalize it, leaving people less burdened by their reactions and better able to manage them.
