Adaptive Stress Responses
Most of us have heard the phrase “fight or flight.” But the nervous system has more than two strategies for protection. It carries a whole repertoire of adaptive stress responses — ways of keeping us safe when life feels like too much.
These responses are not flaws. They are intelligent survival patterns built into our biology.
What Are Adaptive Stress Responses?
When the body perceives too much, too fast, too soon, or too often, it shifts into protection. This happens below conscious awareness, through what Dr Stephen Porges calls neuroception — the body’s built-in surveillance system that constantly scans:
the environment,
the nervous systems of others, and
the internal landscape of our own body
for cues of safety, danger, or life threat.
When neuroception senses danger, your system may move into one of several states:
Fight — anger, frustration, a push to control
Flight — anxiety, avoidance, restlessness, overworking
Freeze — stuck, foggy, unsure what to do
Fawn / Please — appeasing, people-pleasing, over-giving
Collapse / Flop — numbness, withdrawal, disconnection
These are your body’s protective strategies. They once served an important purpose. The problem isn’t that they exist. The challenge comes when we get stuck in them, especially in response to things that aren’t actually life-threatening — like emails, deadlines, social dynamics, or old stress patterns being replayed.
Dysregulation as an Invitation
It’s easy to assume the goal is to be “regulated” all the time. But that’s not realistic — or desirable.
Dysregulation isn’t the problem. It’s a signal.
A message that something matters, that the body is trying to protect us.
The work of nervous system literacy is not to eliminate these states but to:
recognise them respond with compassion and build our capacity to return to connection
This is how we expand what Dan Siegel calls the Window of Tolerance, the range in which we can feel challenged and still remain present, creative, and connected. I prefer to use the term, Window of Capacity, capacity for choice or ‘Response-ability’.
Reflection: Which Patterns Feel Familiar?
Take a quiet moment to notice:
Which protection state do you most often find yourself in — fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or collapse?
How does this state show up in your body? In your relationships? In your work?
Can you recall a time you noticed yourself shifting from protection back into connection? What helped you to do this?
Simply naming these patterns begins to loosen their grip. Awareness creates choice and response-ability.
Free Bonus Tool: Download The Autonomic Compass, a simple and practical self-awareness tool to support your nervous system and expand your response-ability.
Coming Up Next
In Part 3, we’ll explore burnout as a nervous system signal and how reframing it this way can help us move beyond exhaustion into resilience and imagination.
Want to go deeper?
If this exploration resonates, I invite you to join my Nervous System Literacy Training. It’s a practical, science-informed program designed for leaders, changemakers, and professionals who want to build resilience, creativity, and capacity for collaboration in complex times.
