The fight-or-flight response is your body’s acute stress response — a survival mechanism hardwired into your autonomic nervous system (specifically, the sympathetic branch). It evolved to protect you from immediate physical threats by preparing your body to either confront danger (fight) or escape it (flight).
It involves:
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Release of adrenaline and cortisol
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Increased heart rate and blood pressure
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Dilated pupils
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Rapid breathing
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Muscles tensing
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Blood flow diverted away from digestion to major muscles
This response was critical when we were facing hungry lions.
When Is It Triggered Today?
Today, we rarely encounter true survival threats... yet we react in ways that indicate absolute danger. It's because the nervous system can’t always tell the difference between a lion and:
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A passive-aggressive email from your boss
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Your partner not texting you back
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Running late in traffic
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Fear of public speaking
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Getting ghosted
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Money stress
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A bad comment on social media
In all of these, your mind may intellecutally understand that you won't die, but your brain (different from the mind) and body may respond differently because of the wiring.
Is It True That 99% of the Time Fight-or-Flight Is Misfiring?
Yes — in essence, 99% of the time, our stress response is activated when we are not in actual physical danger.
Here’s why:
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Your amygdala (the brain’s fear center) doesn’t reason — it reacts.
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Your body remembers past trauma, rejection, or pain, and responds based on that memory.
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Your nervous system is conditioned by past experience and chronic stress to see certain situations as unsafe, even when they aren’t.
This results in:
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Overreactions
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Anxiety and panic attacks
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Chronic tension and pain
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Emotional dysregulation
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Burnout
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Difficulty accessing logic or presence
What’s the Solution?
We need to retrain the nervous system to recognize what is actually safe — and to build the capacity to stay present through discomfort.
This is exactly what somatic work, breathwork, and cold immersion help with:
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Rewire patterns of overactivation
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Recalibrate the brain-body connection
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Expand your window of tolerance (so you’re not easily thrown into fight-or-flight)
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Build emotional resilience without numbing