Category: Anxiety Relief

Anxiety Relief, Mental health, Personal Development

Walking Meditation Benefits

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About a year ago, I started doing walking meditations, and the benefits have been profound. After experiencing these benefits, I knew I needed to create a YouTube video on why everyone should be adding walking mediations into their daily life. Walking meditation is a form of meditation that involves walking slowly, attentively, and with awareness.
Check out this video to learn how to get a free walking meditation! 
Walking meditation, also known as mindful walking, is a form of meditation that combines physical movement with mindfulness practices. It involves walking slowly and deliberately, focusing on the sensation of each step and the surrounding environment. This practice has gained popularity recently as more people seek ways to incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives. In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of walking meditation and how it can improve your overall well-being.

1. Reduces stress and anxiety

Walking meditation has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety levels. This practice can help you relax and let go of tension in your body, leading to a calmer state of mind. Focusing on the present moment and your surroundings can distract your mind from negative thoughts and worries.

2. Increases Mindfulness

Mindfulness is being fully present and aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. Walking meditation is an excellent way to cultivate mindfulness, as it requires you to focus on the present moment and be aware of your surroundings. By practicing this regularly, you can develop greater mindfulness skills that can be applied to other areas of your life.

3. Boosts Mood and Energy

You can experience a sense of vitality and renewed energy by engaging in physical activity while being mindful. Walking meditation can also boost your mood and energy levels. This practice can help you feel more positive and motivated throughout the day.

4. Improves Concentration

Walking meditation requires you to concentrate on your movements and your environment. This can improve your ability to focus and concentrate on tasks in other areas. By practicing walking meditation regularly, you can develop vital concentration skills to help you be more productive and efficient.

5. Enhances Physical Health

Walking meditation is a gentle form of physical exercise that can improve overall health. Incorporating this practice into your daily routine can improve cardiovascular health, strengthen your muscles and joints, and increase your general fitness level.


In conclusion, walking meditation is a simple yet powerful practice that can benefit your overall well-being. Practicing this regularly can reduce stress and anxiety, increase mindfulness, boost your mood and energy, improve concentration, and enhance your physical health. Whether you’re new to meditation or have been practicing for years, walking meditation is an excellent way to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life.

So why not try it and see how it can benefit you?

Buy one of my walking mediations here and jump-start your walking meditation journey!
Anxiety Relief, entrepreneur, Mental health, Personal Development

Want To Reach Your Goals? 3 Easy Steps to Prevent Anxiety From Stopping You

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There comes a point in every entrepreneur’s life when we become anxious about the future. This anxiety can lead to fear, frustration, and the lack of motivation or focus on the tasks that need to be completed today in order to reach our goals. It may seem like there is no way out, but sometimes all it takes to feel better is a small shift in perspective. 

The tips below show you how to take 3 steps towards preventing anxiety from stopping your goals.
When I discuss primary elements of executing goals for clients, we always circle back to the importance of aligned actions.  

What are aligned actions? Great question: these are the actions you take every single day that are in alignment with your future goals. For example, if you wanted to start an online business tomorrow, it wouldn’t materialize instantaneously with your desire to start the company. You would first need to make a list of actions you need to take to get the business up and running and then begin following that plan of action.  
 
Aligned actions do not need to be grandiose in size. They can be as simple as setting your alarm at the same time each day to keep your circadian rhythm steady, allowing you to have a consistent amount of energy.

These small, consistent steps will continue to build on top of each other until your goals become your reality.

Unfortunately, anxiety can spark fear and, as a result, get in the way of completing these aligned actions.

By now, most of us know anxiety can be completely debilitating and can invade your healthy headspace. But as I always remind my clients: thoughts are not facts. 
 
If you experience anxiety while attempting to carry out aligned actions, I challenge you to try these three steps.
 
Step 1: Acknowledge the existence of the anxiety. 
If I told you right at this moment not to think of a white elephant, what do you think your brain would end up doing? It would struggle with the natural urge to picture a white elephant.  

Anxiety is similar in this regard. The more we pretend that it does not exist within us, the more it exacerbates until it hits its ultimate boiling point. 

Once we have acknowledged and validated the anxiety, we can utilize our favorite coping skills, such as breathing exercises, to help soothe the anxiety symptoms.
 
Step 2: Give yourself a pep talk!
By talking yourself through your anxiety, you remind yourself why you are putting yourself out there in the first place and setting goals for yourself.

Try it with a goal you are currently working on by saying something like, “Our future self will thank us for doing these aligned actions today” or, “these aligned actions will get my business to where I want it to be.”  As long as you frame the pep talk positively, there is no wrong way to go about it.

Don’t let frustration or anxiety prevent you from achieving your goals. Set reasonable boundaries and make realistic plans to reach your goals. Check out this blog on setting boundaries!  
 
 
Step 3: Break up your goals into 10-minute increments.
When you work on your goals, start by putting ten minutes on a timer. Once the timer goes off, ask yourself, “Do I want to continue, or is my anxiety impairing my ability to efficiently and effectively complete this task.” 

If your answer is the latter, take a break. Otherwise, you will continue to spiral and only make the anxiety worse!
With aligned actions, our goals become our dreams. So try these three steps, and don’t let anxiety prevent you from all you desire!
 

Sometimes it’s hard to recognize that our anxiety is blocking us, but we need to become aware of it and make sure we don’t let it dictate our lives. Check out this video to get more support on your entrepreneurial journey. 


Watch Here

Anxiety Relief, Personal Development

How To Bounce Back from Time Off

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Taking time off as an entrepreneur is a necessity to help rejuvenate and inspire us to continue to chase after our dreams.  However, it can be challenging to get back into the swing of things and get back on track with our daily routines.

Dishes and laundry start to pile up, leaving out brains completely cluttered and seemingly negating the relaxation we just enjoyed.

It’s no secret that mitigating this inevitability takes discipline! With that in mind, here are my three tips to help you stay on track after some prolonged relaxation.

1. Create a list of non-negotiables.

What I mean by this is that you should identify a list of activities or practices you adhere to every day without question to help maintain your wellbeing while you are on vacation or taking time off. Even if it’s as simple as drinking eight glasses of water, getting adequate sleep, or sifting through your work email, continuing to do this every day will keep you in a rhythm that makes returning home to the daily grind that much easier.

To begin, start with a small list of five or fewer activities. Doing so will give you easy wins and help you build confidence in your routine.

I make sure that I listen to my daily affirmations, meditate, write in my gratitude log, drink ample water, and stretch/do yoga daily. This list of non-negotiables allows me to hit the ground running as soon as I get home.

2. If possible, take an extra day off when you return from your vacation.

I understand this tip is potentially not feasible for everyone, but I have found benefit in scheduling a half day for the day I return from a long trip. Doing so allows me to help situate myself back into my own home. Whether starting laundry or getting groceries, it prevents me from falling into bad habits like eating fast food to save time.

3. Get help!

You do not need to do everything on your own! Consider having groceries delivered to your door when you get home, so you don’t have the added stress of immediately heading out to the store for fresh food. Or maybe you could order DoorDash the day before you leave so you don’t have to come home to a sink full of dishes.

I hope these tips are helpful! If you struggle to figure out how to bounce back from a routine, consider working with me through my monthly membership program, Inner Compass Support. For information, click here.

Anxiety Relief, Personal Development

Travel Anxiety Relief

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Summer is in full swing, and for many of us, it is time to take a break from our busy lives and travel!

Unfortunately, while traveling is exciting for many of us, it can ignite anxiety symptoms for others.

I know this to be true from personal experience. My anxiety used to ramp up during travel to the point that I couldn’t eat before or during the trip. My brain just stirred in circles over the fear of forgetting to pack something or not having my itinerary booked correctly.

Over several years I have developed five tips that help me avoid spikes in my anxiety while traveling. Whether in the airport, on the flight, or at my hotel, these are the tips I swear by!

  1. Visualization: When I am on my flight, I try to sit back and visualize how I will feel fifteen minutes after I have arrived at my destination and am ready to enjoy the trip. While doing this visualization, I ask myself, “what would each of my five senses be experiencing during this moment?” For example, I recently took a trip to Hawaii, and while on the plane, I imagined what it would feel like when I first got to the sandy beaches of Waikiki. I visualized the feeling of the sand between my toes as I took a deep breath of the salty ocean air and put my beach towel down. I envisioned myself sitting down and soaking in that beautiful, deep blue ocean color as the waves quietly crashed to the shore while drinking my favorite iced coffee. By activating my five senses during the visualization, I can stay present and avoid the stress associated with travel.
  2. Make a DIY calming jar: This is one of my mainstays for anxiety. With just the two ingredients of baby oil and glitter, you can create a versatile calming jar that can be taken anywhere! I like to use the jar by watching the glitter slowly fall while I focus on my breath. Try it out; you might find it soothing. Unsure of how to make one, watch my how-to video here!
  3. Read a book: In my experience, reading books are more effective than watching a movie to calm your anxiety while passing the time. This is because you are forced to use your imagination and thus activate your prefrontal cortex while reading a book. When your prefrontal cortex is activated, it has a diminished capacity to focus on thoughts of anxiousness. Contrarily, when you watch a movie, your brain can drift off; thus, your prefrontal cortex is shut off, and your anxiety amplifies. If you are not someone who enjoys reading, consider doing something active like journaling or drawing. Maybe even jot down a list of all the things you are hoping to do while you are on vacation.
  4. Magnesium: Taking magnesium can help lower muscle tension and thus lower those panicked feelings of anxiety. It’s a safe and easy over-the-counter solution that I cannot go without!
  5. Breathing exercises: If you follow any of my social media platforms, you have probably heard me talking about triangle breathing. It’s an easy three-step process that you can imagine in the shape of a triangle to help naturally reduce anxiety symptoms. First, inhale for four seconds, then hold your breath for four seconds, and finally, exhale for four seconds. By changing your breathing pattern, you can naturally regulate your heart rate and thus reduce the feelings of anxiety.

Hopefully, these tips can help you feel empowered on your next trip from home.

Struggling with anxiety more often than just flying?

Stay tuned to this blog for more mental health tips!

Anxiety Relief, Mental health, Personal Development, Trauma Healing

How to Start a Gratitude Practice

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During my 2nd year of graduate school, I began experiencing the pendulum of anxiety swinging to depression. Searching for a solution, I ended up taking a workshop on how incorporating a practice of gratitude can help decrease your symptoms of both anxiety and depression. I decided to commit to spending five minutes a day writing what I am grateful for, and on the days where I struggled to find gratitude, I would go back and revisit past entries for inspiration. I found it beneficial because it was gratitude in my own words, not someone telling me to be grateful. This is why I encourage all of my friends, clients and family to start a gratitude practice.

If you have noticed that you have difficulty focusing on the positives rather than the negatives, you are not alone. This is because we have had what is known as the “negativity bias” hardwired in our brains since the primitive ages. At that time, this was a crucial survival tool that allowed us to prepare for and navigate the worst-case scenario in each situation.

However, just because this was programmed into our nervous system thousands of years ago doesn’t mean we are helpless. That is where the power of gratitude comes in!

Whether you choose to verbally recite or jot them down in a notebook, formulating a list of things we are grateful for helps rewire our brain to remain in a positive state. I have an app that gives me a daily prompt of things I am thankful for that day.

If you are new to practicing gratitude, you are in luck, it’s easy, and there are no rules on how to do it. Putting in the effort is what matters.

I recommend my clients start by stating or journaling between 3-10 things they are grateful for within the last 24 hours. This helps us stay grounded in the present and prevents the tasks from becoming repetitive over time.

Maybe you are grateful for the discount you got on groceries, how great the outfit you wore to work looked, and how the sunset looked on this beautiful spring evening. Boom! You’re done! It is that easy.

Still unsure? Here are five benefits of having a consistent gratitude practice.


  1. Gives Us Hope for the Future

    If you can find a way to be grateful for the small milestones you accomplish today, think about how you will feel when you truly achieve your dreams?


  2. Reduced Stress

    Loads of research have shown that keeping a daily gratitude journal can help lower cortisol levels and, as a result, signal our body to relax.


  3. Improves Sleep

    By lowering our stress, we can sleep much more freely. Plus, if you wake up and cannot fall back asleep, rather than check your phone, start reciting things you are grateful for and watch yourself slowly doze back off to sleep.


  4. Boosts Self-Esteem

    You will often be writing about things you have accomplished. What better way to remind yourself of your successes than seeing them written down on paper?


  5. Instantly Boosts Your Mood

    Focusing on all the positives in your life makes it that much harder for your brain to drift back toward the negatives. Plus, on days that seem especially hard, you can return to previous days and remind yourself of all the things you have been grateful for. The best part about it? It’s written in your own words. It’s not a friend or coworker trying to convince you that your life is fantastic. You already did that heavy-lifting!

Through your journey as an entrepreneur, your emotions will undoubtedly vacillate from high to low depending on your success.  This is why I encourage my clients to start a gratitude practice to help them cultivate a positive mindset, allowing them to avoid the severe pendulum swings that seem almost built-in to the entrepreneurial experience. 

It can be easy to forget to focus on our lives’ beautiful aspects with an increasingly hostile world around us. That is why I cannot emphasize enough the importance of developing a gratitude practice as part of your daily routine.

Start getting in the habit today! There is no wrong way to add gratitude to your life.

Anxiety Relief, Mental health, Personal Development, Trauma Healing

What is the difference between EFT and EMDR?

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Are you starting to embark on your healing journey and find yourself researching ways to jumpstart or accelerate the healing process?

You may have come across the terms Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Both are widely accepted and prominently used models in psychotherapy that help reprocess past experiences.

When we are actively healing trauma, we need to rewire and strengthen the neural pathways in our brain. This is necessary because our brain tends to get “stuck” and focus on the negative aspects of past experiences. For example, a person who survives a car crash often agonizes and relives the traumatic portions of the event, rather than finding solace that they survived the event and became more appreciative of the fragility of life.

Both EFT and EMDR require the brain and body to reprocess your trauma by simultaneously stimulating both sides of your brain. Ultimately the aim is to allow yourself to view the full scope of an event.

When I discuss EMDR with my clients, we start by understanding the role rapid eye movement plays in processing our day. As you may know, the portion of deep sleep is known as REM-sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep. When we reach this level of sleep, our body is essentially paralyzed outside of our eyes, which flicker back and forth as we process the day’s events. If that day was particularly traumatic, the events can get “stuck” and develop into recurrent nightmares, physical manifestations, or dramatic shifts in our personalities.

With EMDR, we want to tap into the brain’s ability to process and digest memories. During a session, you will discuss a problematic memory with a licensed professional while moving their fingers back and forth while you track with your eyes. Sometimes they may use a light bar, a set of buzzers, or ask you to tap your shoulders as an alternative. Regardless of the practice, the idea is to activate both sides of the brain and help us stop reliving our trauma, and allow us to move forward in our lives.

EFT is a similar practice but does not require the guidance of a licensed professional. Instead of following a finger back-and-forth with your eyes, you will be tapping on different meridian points while desensitizing yourself to the stressful memory. I like to think of it as a form of emotional acupuncture.

Now that you have a better understanding of the basic concepts let’s talk about some similarities and differences.

Similarities
  • Both focus on rewiring the brain to process traumas, fears, and limiting beliefs.
  • Both incorporate the mind-body connection by stimulating the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
  • Both use the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS) to measure progress objectively.
  • Both focus on our earliest memories rather than our most severe ones. For example, if you fear public speaking rather than focusing on the worst sensation you’ve felt, you are asked to think of why this fear originated in the first place.
  • While public speaking, the aim is to pin the earliest time the physical sensation was present in your body. Our oldest memories are the ones our brains return to the pull evidence to support their desire to catastrophize an upcoming decision.
Differences
  • Anyone can be trained in EFT, making it more accessible. When I got certified in EFT, I took an 8-hour class with an exam at the end.
  • EMDR, on the other hand, requires a master’s level therapist or a therapist working towards a master’s degree while under the supervision of a licensed therapist. Because EMDR tends to bring up intense memories, someone with experience in therapy must be present to help you stay in your body and prevent you from dissociating.
  • In my experience, EFT is less intense because you are focusing on how the memory feels in your body rather than solely on the memory. EFT helps remove the feeling in your body to allow you to discuss then and further heal the trauma.
  • EMDR, on the other hand, focuses on the image without talking or looking inward.
  • EMDR “butterfly tapping” can be helpful to do at home but is more effective when done with a licensed professional.
  • You can do EFT on your own. Many free resources on Pinterest and YouTube can help guide you through EFT tapping protocols. While there are YouTube videos that take you through EMDR sessions, I personally would not recommend these as I had had clients do them in the past and found themselves more triggered than ever before because there was no one present to help guide them out of their altered mental state.
As a provider, I am always looking for new and effective tools for my clients to utilize. In 2015 I got trained in EMDR, and every few years, I participate in additional training to help support my clients. My first introduction to EFT came in the summer of 2021. After my first experience with it, I felt a significant benefit and knew I had to get certified in this modality as well.

Being trained in both, you might ask which I prefer or find most effective… 

The answer is that you really can’t go wrong with either one! I practice EFT on myself regularly, as I don’t always have the opportunity to sit down with a licensed therapist to do EMDR. I recommend trying both and finding out which one works best for you.

The important thing is that you are actively striving to make yourself a better person!
Anxiety Relief, Mental health, Personal Development

H.A.L.T.

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Ever have one of those days where you’re trying to make a decision about the direction of your business but your brain just doesn’t seem to be clicking like you’re accustomed to?

Don’t be alarmed! It happens to the best of us.  


When I feel out of sorts, my favorite tool to evaluate why I am not feeling myself is the simple acronym of H.A.L.T. 
H.A.L.T. in this circumstance does not simply mean to stop what you are doing; it acts as a helpful tool to help us evaluate what is causing a change in our mood. 

H = Hungry

A = Angry 

L = Lonely 

T = Tired


Hungry

Crashes in blood sugar are known to cause mood swings and changes in mental status. When we return these blood sugar levels to the normal range, whether eating a meal or a quick snack, we can expect many of these symptoms to resolve. So the next time you might be feeling a bit more irritable or reactionary, the first thing you should ask yourself is, “when was the last time I ate?”   

Hunger does not exclusively have to relate to food. There are times we have “emotional hunger,” in which we crave a human connection. When this occurs, don’t hesitate to reach out to a friend or coworker and let them know that you need extra support.


Angry

In my course Inner Compass Accelerator, we dive deep into what anger is and how it often presents itself. I emphasize with my clients that anger is a secondary emotion, meaning that below the surface, there is another emotion driving the anger. 

Whether it’s resentment, frustration, jealousy, or embarrassment, we use anger to meet our emotional needs. This can be seen as having a short temper, cutting someone off, or just being downright rude because you feel like it!

Try and take time to connect to your body and figure out what is causing this anger to come forward, then take a deep breath yourself, “how can I express what my true emotions are with a more pleasant and constructive attitude.”


Lonely

Loneliness is something we have all been through and can acknowledge the negative changes in our mood that come as a result. Whenever I feel lonely, I try to ask myself, “when was the last time I had a quality connection with a friend or loved one?” 

The pandemic has taught us that there are many ways to connect with others, whether in person, on the phone, through FaceTime, or just a good old-fashioned handwritten letter. You will be stunned by the power you have to improve your overall mood by just talking with someone about how their day went.

Sometimes we will even self-isolate ourselves on purpose. I cannot emphasize enough that you do not need to do this to yourself! You never should feel like you must deal with things on your own. If you feel lonely, reach out! Even those of us who identify as an introvert need physical connection.


Tired

Whether physical or emotional, we can exhaust ourselves to the point we feel drained. When this happens, try to navigate why you might be feeling this way with yourself. Did you have a stressful deadline you needed to meet at work? Did you have a medical appointment that you had been ruminating on for a while?

Regardless of the cause, you need to find ways to rest and relax so you can recharge! Maybe you need to go to bed earlier, take a nap or vegetate and watch one of your favorite TV shows. 

The next time you notice you are not feeling yourself, tell yourself to “H.A.L.T.!” It is your body’s way of telling you to “do something different and get our basic human needs met!”  

If you are struggling with knowing whether you are genuinely feeling off, check out my YouTube video on how to do a Body Scan!
Anxiety Relief, Mental health, Personal Development, Trauma Healing

Five Benefits of Healing Your Trauma

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Back in January, I did my first ever YouTube Live. As the nerves were settling in, I took a moment to pause and reflect on how far I had come since posting my first YouTube video back in 2020. If you had told me back then that I would ever have the courage to go live on YouTube, I would have said that you had lost your mind! Until recently, I considered myself risk-averse, so what changed? The answer is pretty simple: I invested the necessary time into healing my past trauma.

But Alyssa, healing your trauma sounds intense! Who wants to be reminded and have to relive awful memories? Most of us would rather “keep calm and carry on.” While that motto seems like the safer route, there are several benefits to healing your trauma! Let’s dive into what I feel are the five most essential advantages of healing your trauma.

1. Feeling Validation and Acknowledgment
We often downplay the trauma we have been through as a defense mechanism, telling ourselves and others things like “it was so long ago” or “you know it really wasn’t that bad.” In reality, trauma can negatively impact our lives, regardless of how others interpret its severity.

When I am doing trauma work with a client, we focus on validating what happened to us. We acknowledge that these negative experiences were not okay and that it is okay to feel sad that they occurred.

This validation can help us process and move forward, cultivating a sense of safety that we can live our truth and not force ourselves to downplay past experiences.

2. Acquire New Coping Skills
As we heal our trauma, we develop new coping skills that allow us to manage past, present, and future traumas more efficiently. Not everyone’s coping skills will be the same, but we will find skills that best suit our needs with practices.

One of the most significant benefits of healing our trauma is getting rid of the layering effect. Without healing trauma, we continue to compile trauma on trauma, which adds more and more stress to our plates. Instead, we are now given somewhat of a blank slate, allowing us to remain in the present and worry about the here and now.

In my course Inner Compass Accelerator, we dive deep into the idea of widening our window of tolerance. As our window of tolerance expands, the more stress we can handle and the less fear we develop about experiencing future stressful situations.

3. Understanding How Your Trauma Has Impacted You
Our trauma causes us to see our lives through a distorted lens. This lens often catastrophizes the worst possible outcome in every scenario. As a result, our decision-making changes. We try to “play it safe” rather than take the necessary risks to live the life we desire.

Understanding how our trauma has impacted us changes our perception of what we are capable of achieving. It also unlocks our ability to find more joy in life, ultimately allowing us to live the life we truly want to live. Who knows, after healing your trauma, you may have a career change or find the courage to get back out there and search for your soul mate.

4. Improved Self-Worth
Trauma survivors often blame themselves for their experiences, saying things like “I should have listened to them” or “why didn’t I just stay at home,” etc. This type of thinking is toxic and can lead us to go into a “shame-spiral” that prevent us from chasing after our goals and dreams.

When we heal our trauma, we no longer waste precious moments of our lives shaming ourselves for the painful experiences. This newfound self-love allows us to bounce back from stress.

5. New Sense of Self
By healing your trauma, you will believe that things are possible that you would never have thought about before.

You will no longer find yourself scrolling through social media, seeing other successful people, and thinking, “they have something that I don’t.” Instead, you will say, “I have the same ability to be successful; I just need to nurture it.”

As an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to balance the demands of running a business with the need to heal traumas from your past.  Believe me, of all people, I get that.  But prioritizing your mental health and well-being is essential for setting yourself up for success in both your personal and professional life.

If you believe that you have past traumas that are holding you back and don’t know how to begin resolving them, I have two ways you can work with me at this time. You can either join my self-paced course Inner Compass Accelerator, or schedule one-on-one sessions to work with me directly.

Anxiety Relief, Mental health, Personal Development, Trauma Healing

5 Types of Trauma Responses

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Have you ever wondered why you act or respond the way you do during stressful situations?

This is something I ponder a lot, then one day, while I was attending a training, it hit me: most of us are just reacting to being triggered by trauma!

Trauma comes in all shapes and sizes and is something we all deal with regularly, regardless of where we are currently in our lives. Trauma at its core is something you perceive to be a negative past or present experience. Trauma causes a knee-jerk reaction in our nervous system that ultimately decides how we respond to the situation.

A typical example of this that you may have heard of is the “fight or flight” response. Often, this example is described as a situation such as a hiker accidentally running into a bear in the wilderness and is left with two choices: fight the bear or run.

However, it may surprise you to find out that there are five different trauma responses, not just these two choices. 

Before diving into each of these responses, it’s essential first to understand why these automatic physiologic reactions occur at all when we perceive stress.  
The prefrontal cortex of our brain controls judgment, decision making, personality expression, planning complex behaviors, and moderating social behavior. When trauma occurs, our brains go offline, and we rely upon our autonomic nervous system to take over. 

In the case of our hiker analogy, when the hiker hears or sees the bear, their prefrontal cortex doesn’t have enough time to interpret, process, and analyze the situation. Instead, it interprets and then immediately reacts. 

Our emotional trauma responses are similar to this mechanism. Whether the trauma happened five seconds ago or five years ago, our brains are wired to have instinctive reactions.

It is absolutely essential for entrepreneurs to be aware of the signs of their trauma responses so they are able to identify and react appropriately when they occur.  Otherwise, trauma responses can lead to decreased productivity, missed deadlines, hostile work environments and impacted team morale. 

My hope with this blog post is to provide you with an understanding of each of the five different trauma responses. Comprehending each of their signs and tendencies allows us to illuminate our negative behaviors and unhealthy coping habits. 

In no particular order, here are the five different trauma responses:

Fight:  When experiencing the “fight” trauma response, individuals develop a need for control and become combative and vigilant. Maybe you will notice you’ve become more argumentative with a loved one than usual. Or that you have become more mistrustful or judgmental than you had been in the past. This response can lead to self-destructive or self-sabotaging tendencies.

Flight:  With the “flight” trauma response, individuals will find themselves doing anything possible to avoid or escape a situation. Whether it’s distancing yourself from friends, refusing to commit to plans, or consuming social media rather than creating your own life experiences, this trauma response can be just as harmful to our mental health as any other.  

Freeze: When someone is in the “freeze” trauma response, they are consumed by fear and will only see the bad in situations. Generally, people will be overwhelmed with anxiety and the desire to fly under the radar and be more passive in social settings.

Submit: The “submit” trauma response is precisely what it sounds like: the person has submitted themselves to defeat or shame from the situation. Often those experiencing this will have an attitude of “why bother, I know I have lost” to whatever stressors present themselves to them. This manifests into self-hatred and causes them to stop working toward personal goals.

Attach: Those who experience the “attach” trauma response will do anything to help themselves feel connected. Whether it’s remaining in a toxic relationship or having promiscuous sex, this trauma response is fueled by a fear of abandonment. Many will feel like they need a connection with another human to help them navigate them through the day. 

These trauma responses will ebb and flow throughout our lives depending on the situation. Our bodies rely on them to protect ourselves from traumatic experiences.  

I encourage you to give compassion when you check in with your body during stressful situations and understand that these trauma responses are normal!
If you have made it this far and are interested in exploring this topic further, check out this video!