Are You Living in Survival Mode?
(Note*this blog post is part of an excerpt from my Straight Talk About Anger tele-series)
When I went to boarding school when I was younger, I ended up going through experiences in my life that shut me completely down to healing.
What I mean by that is that I went into survival mode. Many times when we go into survival mode we shut down our feelings, because to feel means to feel pain. And when the body goes into survival mode, it shuts down the mechanism to not only feel pain, it also shuts down the mechanism to feel joy.
As I grew older what I realized is that my numbing out was my way of survival. But there becomes a time in our live where we don’t want to live from a place of survival mode any longer, because the danger and the fear is no longer in front of us, it is only within us.
Often this isn’t a conscious thing – but our body gives you really important clues.
If you have ever been pulled over for speeding, then you know this really well. The very sound of the sirens sends your heart racing.. and why? Because of your past experiences of receiving a ticket, your body has integrated this experience (a form of trauma) and your body is reacting out of survival mode in the face of the danger of a ticket.
So the question then becomes, are you LIVING out of survival mode? 
Because there is a distinction with LIVING out of survival mode. When you consistently re-act to situations with the same behaviors such as shutting down, becoming angry, avoidance, brushing feelings or situations under the rug, etc. then the question you may want to ask is.. do you want to live that way?
If you are living out of survival mode (and I was for quite some time through my own anger), there is something really important to recognize. It is not your fault. Each one of us has a survival mode that was created at a time that we needed to cope with a traumatic experience. It was necessary at that time to create a way to deal with whatever we were facing. The thing is this survival mode may not be serving you anymore.
In order to face life, Awareness is the first step. So I challenge you to really ask yourself:
“ where have I been living in survival mode in my life?” Please let me know by commenting below. I'd really like to hear.
Tags: anger, fear, numb, survival mode, trauma
My marriage has been failing for a while. We dont communicate. We dont challenge one another to be better people…or even ourselves. We dont make plans for the future. And we dont do the things or even talk about the things that we really care about. Our marriage is starving and it’s in a survival mode right now. But I didnt get placed on this earth to survive. I was born to thrive.
Yes. Tamara. You were born to thrive. And it sounds like you may feel hurt or frustrated with the way things are right now. Do you know what you want to shift in your relationship? Are you doing things to support your own growth and insight? I’d be glad to have a conversation with you about this if you want. Feel free to email me at TeresaLea@InTouchInLife.com . Also, You might want to check my free audio that addresses some of this: http://www.intouchinlife.com/resources/freeaudio/