By Dr. Jessica Dorland, MS MEd LPC DBH
Someone drops a pan in the kitchen. Everyone else glances up and goes back to what they were doing — but your whole body jumps. Your heart pounds, your shoulders climb toward your ears, and it takes a long minute to come back down. Later that night you lie in bed exhausted, yet wide awake, catching every creak in the house. And you can’t quite explain why you’re so drained when, by any outward measure, nothing happened today.
If that sounds familiar, I want to offer you a different way of looking at it. None of this is a character flaw or proof that something is wrong with you. It’s the predictable work of a nervous system that learned, at some point, that the world wasn’t safe — and has been doing its best to protect you ever since.
After trauma, the nervous system often lowers its threshold for danger. Sudden sounds, unexpected movements, a raised voice in the next room — they all get treated as threats until proven otherwise. That’s why an exaggerated startle response is so common among trauma survivors. Your body isn’t overreacting so much as it’s reacting first and asking questions later, because at one time, that speed may have mattered.
That same protective wiring shapes how you respond when danger feels real. Most people have heard of fight or flight, but those aren’t the only options your body has. There’s also freeze — the moment when you can’t move, can’t speak, can’t run. Many survivors carry deep shame about freezing. They replay the moment and ask why they didn’t do something. But freeze is a survival reflex older than language. It isn’t a choice you made. Your body chose what it believed would keep you alive, and you are still here.
There’s a fourth response that gets talked about even less: fawning. If you notice that when someone gets angry, you get sweeter — apologizing, smoothing things over, making yourself small — that may be fawn. It often begins in childhood, when keeping a caregiver happy was the safest way to get through the day. Fawning is surviving by pleasing. It was never fake kindness; it was a skill that protected you. Noticing it now isn’t about blaming yourself for it. It’s how you start getting yourself back.
Here’s the part that often gets missed: staying ready for danger has a cost, even on days when nothing goes wrong. A nervous system on constant alert is quietly scanning, bracing, and anticipating all day long. Nobody else can see it, but your body is running security around the clock. So when you hit the end of an uneventful day completely wiped out, that isn’t laziness. It’s the energy it takes to always be prepared.
That cost shows up in places you might not expect, including your stomach. Your gut and brain are in constant conversation. When your body senses danger, it pulls resources away from digestion so you can deal with the threat. That’s why stress can show up as appetite loss, nausea, or an unsettled stomach. It’s worth listening to those signals — and worth mentioning them to your doctor too, so nothing physical gets overlooked.
It shows up at night as well. Sleep asks your body to feel safe enough to stop keeping watch. After trauma, lying down in the dark can feel like dropping your defenses, so your system stays on the night shift — waking at small sounds, keeping you hovering just below real rest. Often, what helps sleep come back isn’t something you do at bedtime at all. It’s building a sense of safety during the day, so your body has less reason to guard you once the lights go out.
So where do you begin? One of the simplest places is with words. When you feel flooded — chest tight, thoughts spinning — try naming what you feel, even out loud. Research suggests that putting a feeling into words can help quiet the brain’s alarm response. It won’t make the feeling disappear, but it can give you a little distance from it, enough to breathe. The next time you feel overwhelmed, try finishing this sentence: “Right now, I’m feeling…”
The startle, the freeze, the fawn, the exhaustion, the knotted stomach, the restless nights — they’re all pieces of the same story. Your body learned to protect you, and it’s still doing that job, sometimes long after the danger has passed. The good news is that nervous systems can learn again. With patience and support, yours can come to recognize that it’s allowed to rest, and that you’re allowed to feel safe.
I’m Dr. Jessica Dorland, a trauma therapist offering telehealth therapy through In One Peace. If you’d like support in helping your nervous system settle, you can learn more at InOnePeace.com.
This article is educational content, not therapy or medical advice. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988 (US).