Our aim in understanding and honoring these automatic protective responses is to get to know them on their terms, honor how they have protected us, and through somatic processes, free up the contractions and withheld energy so that these survival responses are not “over-applied.”

This process is often talked about in terms such as “reptile brain,” where a sense of severe danger or duress effectively turns off our ability to properly think and instead turns us into instinct-driven animals that might snarl, snap, or freeze without thought.

muscles and energy around her. One person beeped on her threat-detection radar as unstable: flight patterns. Take survival action. One was indicating unstable: aggressive -fight. Take survival action. One indicated as very unstable: absent- frozen - shut down for most of the time - but occasionally also fight. Take significant survival action.