How To Turn Your Stress Response Into Healthy Habits

So in today's video,

I'm going to help you turn your stress response into a healthy habit by breaking down the hidden need that's underneath the fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

And fawn reaction.

Because when you know how to manage your stress,

Your mental health is going to get much better.

But if you're new,

My name is Michelle Ferris.

I'm a psychotherapist,

And I love helping people create relationships that work.

So you already probably know that when you're stressed out,

Your body has a physical reaction.

Cortisol,

The stress hormone,

Gets released.

Which makes it harder to think,

Your heart rate increases,

Your muscles get tense.

It's basically the worst time for you to have important conversations because you are no longer calm and thinking rationally.

If you come from a dysfunctional family where your needs were not met and you did not get heard or validated as a child,

This is going to be even harder to navigate,

But this video is going to help.

So the very first stress response is the fight mode.

And this most commonly happens when you're arguing with your partner.

That's when a lot of people have the courage and the intense need to advocate for themselves,

Especially if you've come from a dysfunctional family where your needs weren't heard or met.

That is going to make it much harder for you to walk away from your present conversation if you feel disrespected or harmed in any way.

Raising your voice because that intense need to advocate for yourself along with that stress response is going to make it much harder for you to communicate calmly and rationally in that conversation.

And you may justify your own behavior because darn it I have a right to be heard.

I have a right to get my needs met.

You might be saying things like that to yourself because based on your childhood you didn't get those needs met.

So those needs are going to be more intense in adulthood.

Which makes sense.

If you can relate to this,

Say me too in the comments.

I can't wait to help you.

You may also be thinking in fight mode,

I got to get them to listen to me.

If only I could explain this the right way.

You're not going to want to take a timeout or take a break.

You're much more interested in talking than listening and your listening skills are really at their lowest point because you don't have the mental capacity and the calm to stay engaged in what that other person is saying.

What's the healthy habit in the fight response?

The need you have to advocate for yourself.

This is an important habit for you to develop in relationship because if you don't advocate for yourself,

You're going to end up stuffing these feelings which is going to end up causing resentment later on and I don't want that for you.

So the key here is to find ways to calm down and go back to that conversation later,

Not in the heat of the moment when you're in that stress response,

Because that is the absolute worst time to try to negotiate something out.

So the next stress response is the flight mode.

This is where you want to run.

You want nothing to do with what's happening.

Instead of confronting the conflict,

You want to completely avoid it.

And people usually do this because they feel emotionally unsafe or ill-equipped to handle what's happening in the moment.

I see this a lot in my male clients where during an argument they want to flee,

Not because they don't care about what's being said,

It's because they don't have the tools to navigate conflict correctly and that's the healthy need when it comes to flight because if you're conflict avoidant that's largely because you don't have the skills but if you can learn some conflict resolution skills like listening,

Staying calm,

Not jumping into fear,

Using iMessages,

These are all skills that are going to boost your confidence when there's a difficult conversation and that's going to help you have healthier relationships.

What usually happens when you're in flight mode is that you tell yourself things like I've got to get out of here this isn't safe because again you simply don't have the tools but I want you to hear me this is not a judgment against you I think people who are conflict avoidant get judged a lot and that's not what I'm talking about this is simply a lack of skill and some fear that needs to be dealt with so the healthy habit in flight mode is learning conflict resolution skills learning how to stay calm say I messages listen and not take it personally.

Again,

These are really important skills because once you learn some of these simple skills,

You're going to feel more confident to stay in that difficult conversation a little bit longer.

And that's what I want for you.

So the next one is freeze mode.

This is when you are frozen in fear.

You can't think,

You can't do anything on your own behalf because you are completely frozen.

This is usually a trauma response that goes back to childhood.

That may require therapy,

But in the moment,

I want you to at least notice that that's what you're doing because your nervous system is telling you it's safer to shut off and go away emotionally and not be present because you're wanting to be in self-protective mode,

Which totally makes sense if you have a history of trauma or abuse.

I remember early in my recovery freezing a lot with a certain family member who was angry because I just couldn't take it.

Anger growing up that I just couldn't stay present in any conversation when they were upset.

The goal is to find some way to self-soothe.

That's the need that's underneath the freeze response that I want you to work on.

For instance,

Do you need to calm down and take deep breaths?

Do you need to create a positive mantra saying I can handle this?

This is not my responsibility.

This is not my fault.

I'm a good person.

What are some things you can do that are self-soothing?

Maybe you need to take a break completely and say,

You know what?

I'll be back in about an hour.

But right now I can't stay in this conversation.

That is totally okay.

And then there's the fawn reaction.

This is very common,

Especially if you have issues of codependency.

So when you're stressed,

You are trying to get the other person to calm down by acquiescing to whatever they need in the moment.

So if somebody's upset at you,

You'll say,

Okay,

Sure,

Sure,

Whatever you want,

I'll do it.

You're trying to appease them in the moment because you don't want them to get angry.

You want to avoid a conflict.

And that's where the codependent behaviors come in.

That's where the people pleasing comes in.

Denying your own needs.

Taking care of them first,

Even if it hurts you.

Because in fawn mode,

We're trying to keep the peace no matter what the cost,

Because we think that's how we're gonna stay safe.

The problem is,

Is it actually creates a lot of resentment on the back end,

Which I don't want for you.

So you end up saying yes when you mean no,

Committing to things or over committing to things,

And then wiping yourself out,

Or apologizing when you did nothing wrong.

Because the goal is to avoid the other person person's upset and there's usually a lot of negative assumptions like if they're mad,

They'll leave me or it'll be the end of the relationship or I won't be able to tolerate their anger.

There's a lot of negative assumptions here that we need to work through because if that person really loves you,

They're not going to leave you for one incident.

They're going to be able to hang in there with you and usually the fawning response starts in childhood where we learn to take care of others and neglect ourselves.

What's the healthy need in fawning?

The healthy need is to preserve the love you have in that relationship because that's why you're doing backflips.

That's why you're negating yourself for the other person because you think that's the only way to preserve that love but that's an unhealthy habit and we don't want that.

The healthy habit is yes,

You want to preserve the love by letting your needs count as well and by making sure you're being treated with respect because when we're not,

Really hard to want to stay in a relationship that doesn't truly honor us.

So how do you begin to handle these emotions because they come up so fast?

The first thing I want you to do is I want you to catch yourself in that fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Or fawn reaction because your body is going to be majorly reacting.

That's when you may need to either take a break,

Remove yourself,

And do some form of self-soothing.

This is not the time to stay connected to your partner or the person that you're arguing with because it's not going to go well.

When we're in that fight-flight-freeze-or-fawn reaction,

Physically we are not at our best.

We are not able to listen correctly.

We are more likely to take things personally and make negative assumptions about the outcome because we're not in our calm rational mind.

So it's normal to be upset when you're in a conflict,

But we don't want to be so activated that we can't stay reasonably calm enough to say what want to say without blame or shame because we don't want to shame ourselves and we don't want to blame the other person because both of those don't tend to work out well.

Thanks so much.