When faced with extreme and overwhelming situations we do whatever we can to survive. Typically this involves one of four responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

If this approach to stress works, we survive. Good in the moment, but often that survival comes at a cost. Unless we are able to appropriately process the event, both mentally, spiritually, physically, and socially, we may begin to generalize our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn response into a way to approach all aspects of life.

This is not ideal because these survival mechanisms are not always appropriate for what is arising in the moment. But because it worked in the past, because it kept us alive, we default into using them again and again and again, even when they are now clearly maladaptive and causing more harm than good…