Unpredictable emotional abuse in childhood can train the nervous system to equate silence with safety, producing shutdown responses during conflict. The nervous system reacts before conscious thought and deploys fight, flight, freeze, or fawn survival modes. Trauma can lock these patterns in place so minor triggers provoke intense reactions. Hyperarousal generates overwhelm, anxiety, and a need for control, while freeze leads to numbness or withdrawal. These survival strategies may appear as coldness or unavailability, but they are bodily memories of threat rather than deliberate choices. Recognition of these responses is a step toward healing.
Have you ever gone completely quiet in the middle of an argument-your mind blank, your mouth frozen? Or felt so overwhelmed after a fight that you left-not just the room, but the relationship itself? I've been there. And for a long time, I didn't know why. I thought I was the problem, or maybe I was just cold. Unavailable. But I've come to understand something important:
When I shut down, it wasn't because I didn't care. It was because my nervous system had learned that silence was safety. I grew up watching emotional abuse in my home. My stepfather often emotionally hurt me, and I've never told that to my mom until recently. The energy was unpredictable. I never knew what to expect next. When my mom left him, I felt joy and relief-finally, we were safe. But then she went back.
It all comes down to the nervous system-the part of our body that reacts before our brain can even process what's happening. If it senses a threat (even if there isn't one), it jumps into survival mode (Zingela et al., 2022): Fight (argue or defend) Flight (escape or avoid) Freeze (shut down or go numb) Fawn (people-please to stay safe) And if you've experienced any trauma, your nervous system can get stuck in these patterns, responding to small triggers as if they're huge threats.
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