Conflict – Fight, Flight or Freeze

Today I want to talk to you about conflict and how it impacts your brain.

I am a relationship coach and clinical social worker.  What we know is that when we feel threatened and conflict can often make us feel like we are being threatened.    We can get into this primitive response to either fight, flight or freeze.

Now how do we choose which one we are going to do – well that starts really early on in life.

It depends on how you interacted with your primary carer (the person who took care of you most of the time) when you were very small – between the ages of 0 and 3.   Depending on how they were raised themselves and how they learned to deal with the perception of danger.

I am guessing that right now you could tell me what you do when you are in conflict – do you fight – argue get upset take off the gloves? Maybe you move to flight – out the door as quickly as possible or perhaps you freeze – where you get quiet – still and really small?

We choose these behaviours because it really feels like a threat – it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a threat.  But it means that when we learned early in life that something felt threatening we knew how to manage that.

Some of these responses are great – if you are really in danger some of those strategies are amazing and will help you to survive.

But I’m sure that you can also understand that if there is conflict in your relationship getting into fight might not be helpful.  Getting into flight may also not be helpful and freezing can at times be a really good option in some relationships.

If you are in a tricky relationship where someone is hurting, you – then you bet freezing can absolutely be a way of managing that.  Fortunately, most of us are not in abusive relationships most of us are in healthy relationships.

To stop the activation (the strong feelings that come up when we in conflict) we need to actually get our minds to kick in and to remember that we are not actually in danger.

One of the things that you can do to help you stop you getting really agitated and move to that fight flight or freeze response, is breathing.  Good old breathing – you can do it any time any place anywhere it’s the most amazing thing for calming us down.

Breathing in a specific kind of way can be really helpful.  Try square breathing – which is breathing in for the count of 4 holding for the count of 4 – breathing out for the count of 4 and hold your breath again for the count of 4 before starting the cycle again.   Here is a YouTube clip that demonstrates the technique  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzhKW08bMQ

Alternatively you could do yoga breathing which is a bit more tricky – place your tongue above your front teeth – breathing in for 4 hold for 7 and blow your breathe out for 8 – it’s quiet a technical way of breathing.  Here is a Youtube clip that demonstrates the technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz4G31LGyog

It really is very good for you to practice every day – and especially good if you can move to fight quickly.  You should only do this breathing cycle four times at any given time.

This style of breathing can be really beneficial if you become activated (getting into flight, fight or freeze).

So remember if you start to heighten to fight – flight or freeze its time to slow things down and do some deep breathing.

If you would like any help with dealing with conflict in your relationship, please contact me at https://debbicarberry.com.au/work-with-me/

Debbi

Debbi Carberry is a clinical social worker in private practice in Brisbane, Australia where she specialises in relationship transformation. She has helped hundreds of women and couples who were struggling in their various relationships. If you feel that you would like some additional support in your relationship click here to find out about Debbi’s ground-breaking online course, “Rewire your Brain for Better Relationships”.