Beyond Fight or Flight: How Your Nervous System Holds Onto Past Experiences (And How Therapy Can Help)

Have you ever noticed your body tensing up in situations that don't seem objectively threatening? Maybe you find yourself suddenly exhausted after a perfectly ordinary workday, or you realize you've been holding your breath during a routine conversation. Perhaps you experience unexplained anxiety before social events, or you notice yourself withdrawing from relationships even when you genuinely want connection.

These experiences might feel confusing or frustrating, especially if you're someone who appears successful and high-functioning on the outside. You're managing your career, maintaining relationships, and checking off your daily responsibilities, yet internally, something feels off. Your body seems to be responding to threats that your logical mind knows aren't there.

What you're experiencing isn't weakness, and it's not "all in your head." Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you based on patterns it learned from past experiences. The challenge is that sometimes our nervous systems hold onto protective responses long after they've served their purpose, creating patterns that no longer fit our current reality.

Your Nervous System Is More Complex Than You Think

Most of us grew up learning about the "fight or flight" response: the idea that when we encounter danger, our bodies prepare us to either confront the threat or run away from it. This understanding, while accurate, tells only part of the story. Modern neuroscience and trauma research have revealed that our nervous system's protective responses are far more nuanced and sophisticated than this binary model suggests.

Your autonomic nervous system, which regulates involuntary body functions like heart rate, digestion, and breathing, is constantly scanning your environment for cues of safety or danger. This process, called neuroception, happens beneath conscious awareness. Your nervous system is making split-second decisions about how to respond based not just on what's happening right now, but on what has happened to you in the past.

According to Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, we actually have three primary nervous system states, each serving a distinct protective function:

The Social Engagement System represents our optimal state of nervous system regulation. When we feel safe and connected, we can think clearly, engage authentically with others, and access our full range of emotional responses. Our faces are expressive, our voices have natural inflection, and we feel present in our bodies and relationships.

The Mobilization System is what most people recognize as the fight or flight response. When we perceive threat, our sympathetic nervous system activates, releasing stress hormones that increase heart rate, sharpen focus, and prepare our muscles for action. This response is designed to help us confront or escape danger. In modern life, this might show up as irritability, anxiety, racing thoughts, restlessness, or difficulty sitting still.

The Immobilization System is often the least understood but incredibly common response, particularly for those who have experienced trauma or ongoing stress. When fight or flight doesn't feel possible or safe, or when a threat feels overwhelming, our nervous system can shift into a shutdown state. This might manifest as numbness, dissociation, extreme fatigue, difficulty making decisions, or a sense of disconnection from yourself and others. Some people describe this as feeling like they're watching their life from behind glass.

The Responses We Don't Talk About Enough

Beyond these three primary states, trauma research has identified additional protective patterns that many high-functioning adults recognize in themselves:

The Fawn Response involves people-pleasing, over-accommodation, and difficulty setting boundaries. If past experiences taught you that keeping others happy was essential for your safety, your nervous system may have developed a pattern of immediately prioritizing others' needs over your own. You might find yourself saying yes when you mean no, struggling to express preferences, or feeling responsible for managing others' emotions.

The Freeze Response differs from full shutdown but involves a temporary paralysis or "deer in headlights" sensation. You might notice this when you blank during important conversations, struggle to speak up when you have something to say, or find yourself unable to make decisions in situations that feel high-stakes.

Many people don't experience these states in isolation but rather cycle through them or experience combinations. You might notice yourself swinging between anxious hypervigilance and exhausted shutdown, or between people-pleasing and withdrawal. These patterns aren't random. They're your nervous system's attempt to navigate a world that once felt unpredictable or unsafe.

How Past Experiences Get Stored in Your Body

Here's what makes nervous system responses particularly challenging: they're not primarily stored as explicit memories or conscious thoughts. Instead, they're encoded in your body as patterns, reactions, and sensations. This is why you can intellectually know that you're safe while your body responds as if you're not.

When you experience something your nervous system perceives as threatening (whether that's a one-time traumatic event or ongoing stress like childhood unpredictability, work environments that demanded constant performance, or relationships where your needs went unmet), your body creates a kind of template for protection. This template includes physiological responses, emotional reactions, and behavioral strategies that helped you survive or cope with that experience.

The remarkable thing about your nervous system is that it's designed to learn and adapt quickly. This is protective: if something once posed danger, your nervous system wants to help you respond faster if you encounter it again. The difficulty arises when your nervous system generalizes these responses to situations that merely resemble past threats, even when the current situation is fundamentally different or safe.

For example, if you grew up in an environment where emotional expression led to unpredictable or negative responses, your nervous system might have learned to shut down your emotions as a protective strategy. Years later, even in relationships with people who welcome your authentic feelings, your body might still automatically suppress emotional responses. Intellectually, you know your current partner is safe, but your nervous system operates on old information.

This is especially relevant for neurodivergent individuals. If you have ADHD, autism, or other forms of neurodivergence, your nervous system may process sensory information, social cues, and environmental stimuli differently. You might have experienced more frequent mismatches between your needs and your environment, leading to accumulated stress your nervous system continues to respond to. Understanding your specific nervous system is essential for developing effective regulation strategies.

Why High-Functioning People Struggle Too

There's a common misconception that nervous system dysregulation only affects people who are visibly struggling. In reality, many high-functioning adults carry significant nervous system burden while maintaining successful careers, relationships, and outward appearances of stability.

You might have developed exceptional compensatory strategies: pushing through exhaustion, overriding your body's signals, or maintaining productivity despite internal distress. These strategies helped you achieve your goals, but they can also mask that your nervous system is working overtime, leading to burnout, anxiety, depression, or disconnection.

Many people describe feeling like they're "running on fumes" or experiencing a gap between external success and internal experience. They don't feel the ease, satisfaction, or connection they expected success to bring. This disconnect often stems from nervous system patterns that prioritize survival and achievement over genuine wellbeing.

Burnout is a nervous system issue at its core. When your system stays in prolonged mobilization (pushing, performing, staying vigilant) without adequate restoration, it eventually shifts toward shutdown as protection. What looks like depression may actually be your nervous system forcing the rest you've been denying it.

How Therapy Helps Your Nervous System Heal

The encouraging news is that nervous system patterns can change. Your nervous system has the capacity for what neuroscientists call neuroplasticity: the ability to form new neural pathways and update old patterns based on new experiences. Therapy provides a unique environment for this healing to occur.

Creating Safety First

In my practice, I prioritize establishing a sense of safety from our very first interaction. This starts with the free 15-minute consultation, where you have the opportunity to ask questions and get a sense of whether working together feels right for you. I don't want you to invest the time and energy in a full intake session unless we both feel confident about the fit.

Creating safety in therapy isn't just about being nice or supportive (though those matter). It's about helping your nervous system register, often for the first time in a therapeutic context, that you can be authentically yourself without judgment, that your pace will be respected, and that you won't be pushed beyond what feels manageable. For many clients, this experience of having their process truly seen and honored is itself healing.

Working at the Pace Your Nervous System Can Handle

One of the most important aspects of trauma-informed therapy is understanding that healing can't be rushed. I pay close attention to subtle cues like changes in breathing, shifts in posture, alterations in eye contact, or fluctuations in emotional tone that indicate how your nervous system is responding in the moment. This allows me to tailor our pace and approach to what your system can actually integrate.

If I notice you becoming activated or shutting down, we might slow down, shift to a grounding technique, or pivot to a different topic. This isn't avoidance; it's titration. By working within what's called your "window of tolerance" (the zone where you can process difficult material without becoming overwhelmed or numb), we help your nervous system build capacity over time.

This approach is particularly important for neurodivergent clients. I recognize that your nervous system may have different sensory thresholds, need different types of regulation strategies, or require adaptations to traditional therapeutic approaches. My goal is to understand how your specific brain and nervous system work so that I can meet you where you are.

Building Awareness and Skills

Much of therapy involves developing what's called interoception: the ability to notice and interpret signals from your body. Many people, particularly those with histories of trauma or chronic stress, have learned to disconnect from bodily sensations as a coping mechanism. While this served a protective purpose, it can make it difficult to recognize what you're feeling or what you need. Sometimes for those with complex trauma or chronic stress grounding in the body actually feels very activating and overwhelming.  For example, you might find that mindfulness or meditation makes your mind race, or focusing on breathwork feels uncomfortable.  In these instances, it can be really helpful to focus on neuroception, where we are taking cues from the environment re: safety.  We look for ways to build safety into our daily routines, so that overtime our body feels safer and more comfortable.

Through our work together, you'll develop greater capacity to notice nervous system states as they happen. What does anxiety feel like in your chest, throat, or belly? What are the early signs you're moving toward shutdown? What sensations accompany feeling safe and connected?

I integrate evidence-based practices from Somatic Therapy, which focuses on the body's role in psychological healing. This might include noticing where you hold tension, exploring how postures affect your emotional state, or using gentle movement to help process stuck experiences. These are practical skills you can use in daily life.

We might also work with techniques from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), particularly distress tolerance and emotion regulation skills that help you navigate challenging nervous system states. Or we might draw on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you develop a different relationship with difficult internal experiences.

Processing What's Been Held

As your nervous system develops greater capacity for safety and regulation, we can begin to work with the experiences that created protective patterns in the first place. This doesn't necessarily mean revisiting traumatic events in detail. In fact, sometimes that's not necessary or helpful.

Instead, we might use Internal Family Systems-informed (IFS) and parts work approaches to work with different parts of your internal experience. The part that people-pleases, the part that shuts down, the part that drives you toward constant achievement: each served a protective purpose. In therapy, we can help these parts feel seen and appreciated while updating their understanding of your current reality.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) offer frameworks for examining and updating beliefs that developed alongside nervous system patterns. If your body learned that expressing needs leads to rejection, you likely also developed thoughts like "I'm too much" or "My needs don't matter." By working with both cognitive and somatic dimensions, we help create integrated change.

Developing New Patterns

Healing isn't just about processing the past. It's about creating new experiences that teach your nervous system different patterns. In therapy, this happens through the relationship itself. Experiencing consistent attunement, having your needs respected, and being truly seen provides your nervous system with evidence that safety and authentic connection are possible.

I also help clients identify opportunities for nervous system regulation in daily life. This might include exploring what activities genuinely help you move from mobilization to calm, developing routines that support your nervous system needs, or gradually expanding your capacity for connection and vulnerability in relationships.

For clients working on relationship patterns, Emotionally Focused Therapy provides a framework for understanding how nervous system responses show up in intimate relationships. By working with couples through this lens, I help partners understand both what's happening between them and within their individual nervous systems.

Mindfulness and Compassion Practices

Practices from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) offer powerful tools for working with nervous system patterns. Mindfulness helps you develop the capacity to observe your experience without immediately reacting to it or trying to change it. This creates space between stimulus and response, space where choice becomes possible.

Self-compassion is particularly important for high-functioning individuals who often have harsh internal critics. Your nervous system responds to both external experiences and how you treat yourself internally. Learning to meet your struggles with kindness rather than judgment can shift nervous system patterns, moving you from states of threat to safety.

What the Healing Process Actually Looks Like

I want to be honest about what therapy for nervous system healing involves. This isn't a quick fix, and it's rarely linear. Some weeks bring significant shifts; other times progress feels slow. Old patterns may reemerge when you're stressed. This isn't failure. It's the nature of nervous system healing.

During our 90-minute intake session (for which I charge my standard 50-minute session rate), we'll develop a comprehensive understanding of your nervous system patterns and how they show up in your life. In our feedback session, we'll create a detailed treatment plan tailored to your needs and goals.

From there, the shape of our work depends on what feels right for you. Some clients benefit from brief, focused work. Others prefer deeper, longer-term therapy. I'm genuinely comfortable with either approach, supporting your goals rather than fitting you into a predetermined model.

Between sessions, I may suggest practices or awareness activities. These aren't homework but opportunities to extend the therapy into your daily life. However, I recognize you have a full life with competing demands. If you can't engage with between-session work, therapy can still be highly effective. You're always in the driver's seat.

Signs Your Nervous System Might Need Support

You might benefit from therapy focused on nervous system healing if you recognize these patterns:

You feel anxious or on edge even when nothing is objectively wrong. Racing thoughts, difficulty relaxing, trouble sleeping, or a persistent sense that you need to be prepared for the next challenge may indicate your system is stuck in mobilization.

You experience unexplained fatigue or numbness that doesn't match your activity level. Feeling disconnected from your emotions or going through the motions of life without feeling fully present suggests your nervous system may be in shutdown mode.

You find yourself in repetitive relationship patterns, always accommodating others, struggling to express needs directly, or withdrawing from connection even when you want closeness.

You have difficulty setting boundaries or saying no, leaving you overcommitted, resentful, or unclear about what you actually want.

You feel successful externally but empty or anxious internally. The satisfaction or peace you expected from your achievements hasn't materialized.

You struggle with perfectionism or harsh self-criticism, finding it difficult to meet yourself with compassion when you make mistakes.

Beginning Your Journey Toward Nervous System Healing

If you're reading this and recognizing your own experiences, I want you to know that what you're feeling makes complete sense. Your nervous system's protective responses developed for good reasons. They helped you navigate challenging experiences and achieve what you have. The fact that these patterns now feel limiting doesn't mean something is wrong with you. It means you're ready for something different.

Therapy offers a space to understand your unique nervous system, develop greater capacity for regulation, and create new patterns that support who you want to be. In my practice, I bring training in multiple therapeutic approaches to tailor our work to your specific needs. My role is to track both the immediate moment and your larger goals, helping you move forward at a pace that works for your nervous system.

I work with young adults, adults, and older adults in PSYPACT states, including Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Florida, Colorado, Washington DC, and Illinois.through secure online sessions. My practice supports high-functioning individuals navigating the gap between external success and internal experience. I approach this work through both a trauma-informed lens and a neurodivergent-affirming perspective, recognizing there's no one-size-fits-all approach to healing.

I also offer couples therapy, support for family dynamics and parenting challenges, and assistance with life transitions. Additionally, for those wondering about neurodivergence, I provide ADHD testing and evaluations.

Taking the First Step

If you're curious about whether therapy might support your nervous system healing, I encourage you to reach out for a free 15-minute consultation. This is a no-pressure conversation where you can ask questions, share what you're experiencing, and get a sense of whether we might work well together. I'll also ask questions to ensure I'm a good fit for your needs. I believe strongly that therapy is most effective when there's genuine alignment between therapist and client.

You can find information about scheduling and next steps on my website at www.alignandempowertherapy.com. I look forward to supporting you in developing a healthier, more flexible relationship with your nervous system: one that honors your past while creating space for the present and future you're moving toward.

Your nervous system has been working hard to protect you. Through therapy, you can help it learn that you're safe enough now to begin living differently.