Setting Boundaries With Someone In A Fight Response

When someone close to us enters a fight response, yelling, ranting, or spewing anger, it can feel threatening, exhausting, and deeply familiar. In this inquiry, we explore how to regulate ourselves in the heat of the moment, recognize our survival responses, and skillfully set boundaries that protect both our nervous system and relationships.

Through storytelling, visualization, and somatic techniques, you'll be guided to reflect on your patterns and practice gentle, embodied ways to respond differently. This is part four of a larger series on anger and the fight-or-flight survival response.

Transcript

What we're talking about today is how do we set boundaries so that when we're angry,

We can stay present and then we can notice,

What could I do now?

So the very first thing that we can all do is regulate our nervous system,

Which means we come back into awareness.

I'm perceiving a threat.

Right now in this moment,

There is no threat,

But I'm angry.

It's really helpful to not shame ourselves for that.

This is actually how all human beings work.

We all have a mind.

We all have a nervous system that's got a negativity bias.

We might have decades of trauma and of going into fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Or fawn.

How are we gonna work with that?

So I don't have something wrong with me.

That's just how I work.

Part of the problem is our nervous system is activated and part of it is other people's are as well.

If we're around a lot of people that are in a fight response,

For instance,

They are feeling more dangerous to us than if they were in a freeze or if they were calm,

If they were regulated.

But you know,

We have all of these reactions.

Instead of going into a fight response,

Even though I had some anger,

I'm also working with my nervous system.

So I'm recognizing there's something that's elevating a threat.

I can do a lot of different things,

But what I want to do is minimize the danger.

And I also wanted to not carry it in my own heart and in my own body.

I wanted to release it as much as I could.

I just continued on and then I just did some deep breathing and I let it release out of my system.

I tried to deescalate.

Somebody else who's in a fight response that we're in relationship with.

Sometimes people who are in a fight response feel like they could hurt me.

They're out of control.

They're saying things that are really nasty.

I need to have an immediate intervention here.

We might stand up and say,

I'm not gonna let you speak with me like that.

And we could leave.

There's all kinds of different things that we might do,

But oftentimes we're not really in a situation where we can do that much.

Or our nervous system has taken over and we are in a fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Or fawn response to them.

And we're not happy about that.

It could be that they're not really dangerous to us.

A fight response could also look like somebody who just goes ranting all the time.

When we get together with them,

We're connecting,

But they're really mad about something and they can't let it go.

It's really got a grip on them.

They're in a fight response.

And then how are we going to work with that?

Let's come to a situation where you're looking at something specific.

Pick a specific person perhaps.

Pick something that resonates for you.

It doesn't have to be a 10 out of 10.

Often with these somatic inquiries,

Something will come in that feels pretty powerful.

You could also just let that be an example as we're working with it that's not maybe so high stakes.

When we're not absolutely terrified,

We have more options.

If somebody is screaming and yelling and raging,

And it feels like physically or emotionally,

Socially,

We're in danger,

We're probably going to have to really work with coming into regulation ourselves so that we're not in a survival response.

But that's really difficult because somebody feels like a threat and then we're trying to work with that.

The thing about being in a fight,

Flight,

Freeze response is that we don't have access to our full wisdom.

We tend to not be as aware of what's going on,

Especially if we're in a freeze response.

We just kind of hunker down and we just hope that if we're really quiet and we don't say anything,

That they'll go away.

Sometimes it's effective to do that,

Sometimes it's not,

But we don't really have access to our full human capacity when we're in a survival response.

So the very first thing is always to try to come back into regulation where we're not in a survival response,

We're breathing,

We're looking around,

We can see what's going on.

And in this situation,

We're actually remembering when somebody else was in a fight response.

Feel into that in our body.

You've picked your example.

It might come in as an image,

It might come in as words,

The sound of somebody's voice.

It could be a family,

Partner,

Someone at work.

And this is usually something that happens many times.

Often if people have that tendency to go into a fight response,

Then we also have a tendency.

We either go into a fight or flight or we freeze.

Sometimes we go into a placating,

Kind of people-pleasing,

Trying to calm them down.

So we have both sides of this going on.

Part of it is we have their response,

Which is probably quite familiar to us.

And then we have our response,

Which is also familiar.

Feel that in your body.

You're doing a practice,

They're not here.

Do something like cyclic sighing.

Even three or four breaths can help us to kind of come back into the moment.

So one thing that's important to remember here is that we're not pretending that there's not a threat.

We're acknowledging that there is a threat.

How can I recognize the danger,

But still come out of a fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Want to come into a more of a emotionally regulated state?

But as you're working with whatever images have come up,

You're probably gonna have a lot of feelings about that.

Some of the feelings might be anger.

There's certainly fear when we feel that there's a threat.

There could be disappointment or feeling betrayed.

There's all kinds of feelings that could be there.

You might pause with each of those.

And in this situation,

What are some of the emotions that I have?

Give ourselves the opportunity to feel that.

Notice,

What is the emotion that's here?

You've got whatever's activating you,

Sound or an image or a memory of something.

Probably a specific person.

And we're breathing.

We might be holding our hands or putting our hand on our heart.

We're reassuring ourselves.

We're coming into this moment so we know,

Right now I'm working with an emotion,

A memory.

I'm not actually in this situation.

And I could come back into a state of calm where I'm not numbed out,

But I'm not in fight or flight.

Let yourself feel that in your body.

What are the sensations,

The energies in your body?

When we are facing some kind of injustice,

That's often how we feel.

Like it shouldn't be this way.

Or we might be really angry at the people who we see are causing that.

But right now coming back into,

What are some people in your personal life?

If you have someone like that who tends to go into that fight response and then you go into whatever response you go into.

Pay attention to that for a moment.

One of the things we can do to come back into regulation is to tap on our forehead or make circles on our forehead.

We're trying to take our attention away.

We're breaking the trance of thoughts in the mind.

Something like that can help us to come back.

Tapping on the forehead tends to be more effective,

I find,

With sound.

So I had a boss.

We used to like to just harangue everybody with political stuff and religious stuff.

And nobody really felt like we could say anything.

It wasn't a dialogue.

He was just kind of ranting on about it.

As I just thought of that,

So I have an image of all of us sitting around and him standing in the doorway and just kind of going on and on.

So whatever that is for you,

Look at it like a picture.

Put yourself in the picture if you can.

If you're looking at it out of your own eyes,

It feels a lot more real.

If you look at it and see yourself in the picture,

It's more clear to the brain that we're looking at a memory.

And once you have it over there on the wall,

Put a frame around it,

And then take your eyes around the empty space outside of the frame.

And that helps to disconnect the immediacy of the image.

Our brain recognizes that it's an image we're looking at.

If you're back into a regulated state where you're not in a real fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Or freeze,

Fall,

And state,

Then what might you do that would help you to feel,

I'm not betraying myself here.

I'm not giving myself away.

I'm not gonna yell at them.

I don't wanna do that.

I don't wanna be screaming at them.

And that's not what I wanna do.

I do want to do something though,

Because I'm really sick of this and it makes me angry and I don't want to do that.

One of the things that happened in that particular instance that had been going on for months,

And one of the women finally said,

You know what,

I'm not gonna listen to this.

It's not fair for you as our boss to come in here and talk about this.

I would like for us to have nobody talk about politics or religion at work.

Are you willing to do that?

I remember I was just blown away.

Wow,

She has a lot of courage.

And her voice was steady,

She was calm.

If you were to set a boundary with this person,

It might be something like,

I appreciate that you're feeling angry about this.

This isn't really the best time for me or can we talk about this?

If you want to let some steam off,

I'm willing to do that for two or three minutes,

But then I want us to come back down,

Lower tone of voice.

Maybe you could go for a walk for half an hour and blow some steam off another way,

I'm not willing to do that.

What might you say?

And then as you're doing that,

Notice your body as well.

It's scary,

It can be,

To set a boundary with somebody,

Especially if they're feeling out of control.

Many times when we have these situations with people,

We have a lot of history with them.

If we say,

Stop yelling,

I'm not gonna listen to you do that.

Or when your voice gets really loud,

I get worried,

I would like you to lower your tone of voice.

When we do that,

We have some experience with them and we have a prediction.

Well,

They're not gonna take that very well,

They're just gonna yell louder.

We wanna honor what our nervous system predicts will happen,

But we also don't wanna just stay stuck in the situation.

Breathe,

Notice your body,

Let your shoulders relax.

And then imagine yourself,

And you could stand up if you wanted to have kind of a power body position.

Imagine yourself saying that.

They come in,

They're doing what they're doing,

We're feeling how we're feeling.

We take a few breaths,

We get centered.

If you're in a situation where you could say it out loud,

Just say it out loud.

Stop,

I'm not gonna listen if you're gonna use that tone of voice or that kind of language.

What would it feel like to say that?

Whatever it is you'd like to say.

Try it out,

Notice what's happening in your body,

Is there fear?

If you're getting really into the justification of it,

See if you can let that move to the background.

We don't have to justify ourselves.

We don't wanna be around someone who's ranting or spewing anger or in a fight response,

We don't have to be around them.

There might be consequences,

Depending on the power dynamic,

But nobody has the right to do that to us.

We don't have to convince ourselves that we have the right to stand up for ourselves or to set a boundary.

So you might be seeing them,

You might see yourself in the image.

The next time this happens,

This is what I'm gonna do.

And depending on the volatility of the person,

It might be that you stand up and say,

Sorry,

I have to go to the bathroom and you leave the room.

We don't always have to say something that would trigger a big reaction from them.

Sometimes we just need to get out of the situation.

And sometimes we're gonna be a lot more firm.

We've talked about this.

I'm not willing to be the receptacle for your raging.

I'm gonna get up and leave now or get off the phone or whatever that might be.

Let it play out a little bit.

What are they gonna do?

And what are you gonna do?

What's your response gonna be then?

Let yourself breathe.

It's very hard to go counter to our conditioning.

That's partly why we need to be kind to ourselves.

It's partly why we need to be smart about how we're gonna set a boundary.

If we're gonna go into a fawning or a freeze,

Maybe there's other ways we could set a boundary like avoiding them or not spending as much time around them.

The person that they're dealing with drinks,

Maybe they're only around them in the morning or before two in the afternoon or something because after that,

It gets out of control.

If we're not in a survivor response,

We could really think it through.

Maybe we could ask a few friends,

Like what would you do in that situation?

You know the person,

What's your sense of that?

For a long time with my ex-partner,

I just made a commitment to breathe.

So she'd be going off about something.

I didn't feel physically threatened by her.

So I would try to stay steady and breathe.

And that really helped to deescalate because then I wasn't also contributing.

But also then I felt more powerful.

I felt like I had some agency here.

Part of the problem when someone else is in a fight response is that we feel powerless,

Left to change it.

But in terms of the conditioning being so strong,

So we could be flexible with what kind of response we choose,

What kind of a boundary we choose.

We don't have to tell them about it.

If it's somebody who's scary or if it's a boss or something like that,

We can maneuver around it.

The biggest thing is to keep ourselves out of a fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Fawn response ourselves.

Give that another few minutes.

Practice that a little bit.

So the other part about conditioning is if we practice breathing and then saying the thing,

Whatever we choose to say,

That becomes part of our conditioning then.

And we're staying regulated.

We're breathing.

We're not in a fight response.

We're practicing what we might like to say.

So let it come up into your mind with the visuals,

Who's there,

And if you can say the words out loud,

Let yourself speak it out loud.

These are really complicated things and they have a lot of power.

So we don't wanna be shaming ourselves for whatever it is that's happening.

We're not making the person who is dysregulated the enemy.

And we're also not saying that it's okay.

A lot of times when people are really off kilter,

They're in a rage response or a fight response,

It's always because we can't handle what's going on.

So over time,

We can build our resilience.

We could do something every day to help your nervous system.

I have a ton of practices on here.

I do a bunch of lives.

I've got courses on this as well.

And there's a lot of really great resources on Insight Timer around the importance of being in our body,

Of working with the whole nervous system.

I really don't want to just be going along with my conditioning all the time.

It doesn't matter what our conditioning is.

It might be,

I don't wanna be raging all the time or I don't wanna be going into a freeze when my child yells or I don't wanna be disconnecting somehow.

What am I gonna do then?

Learning about the nervous system is part of it.

Being here is part of it.

Learning to remember right now,

I could look around the room.

I could ascertain the level of threat that's here right now and bring myself into the moment,

The present moment.

And then I could do some things that will help to calm it.

So one of the things that happens when we're with somebody who's going into a fight response,

We can get regulated ourselves.

We look at them,

We do the framing of the picture.

We have a lot of different tools that we can use.

We can hold our own hand.

We use our senses to come back.

And once we're out of our survival response,

Then that's when we can do something like a visualization.

The next time that person does this,

Then I am going to try this.

And it might be something very small,

Like I'm just gonna remember to watch my breath.

When I could do that,

Then I felt like I wasn't so trapped.

And I felt like I could make some changes,

Which I eventually did and left a relationship.

That's the key of this,

Is that we want to understand what's happening.

We wanna work very gently and kindly with ourselves.

It's really hard to be around someone who is in a fight response.

And it's hard if we're in the fight response too.

Oftentimes these are people who we love,

Like it might be your children or your partner or a parent who's sick and scared or a neighbor.

We really care about people.

And when we feel threatened,

We go into a survival response.

Part of this is to assess the situation,

Do what we can to build our resilience and then come into a more regulated response,

Build a more resilient nervous system.

And from there,

That's when we can actually put some of these practices into our life and into practice.

We can actually start to make a difference.

We can actually start to make a difference.

Reviews

So useful, as ever, to have these practical guides for how to regulate the nervous system, specifically here during conflict or with ‘scary’ people. Thank you Lynn