Are You In Survival Mode?
My God it’s been a tough few years hasn’t it? We’re just over a pandemic and then we’re in a cost of living crisis, there’s a war in Ukraine, plus navigating all these changes we’ve been through, hybrid working, readjusting to socialising and life opening up again but maybe not having the time or space to process what’s happened, let alone any personal challenges we may have had.
What is survival mode?
Survival mode is when we are in our physiological stress response fight, flight , freeze or fawn. Our nervous system is literally in this hypervigilant state and it’s hard to switch it back to ‘rest and digest’ or relax. We want to fight our way through, run away, are stuck or feel paralysed or we try and make things better by placating others to the detriment of our own needs. Cortisol and adrenaline are flowing around our bodies, it’s hard to think creatively , it may even be hard to connect with others. Survival mode can be brought on by acute or prolonged stress, triggered by a traumatic event or events ( a pandemic and cost of living crisis definitely meets the criteria!).
Signs you may be in survival mode?
Physically you may feel exhausted or unable to sit still, kind of ansty, on edge, restless. You may have aches and pains, a low immune system, always picking up bugs and viruses, have headaches or gut issues
You may feel irritable, easily overwhelmed, tearful or all of them
You may feel unable to switch off, your mind always going - maybe if you’re stressed about something in particular you find yourself always thinking about it, trying to come up with solutions, consumed
You will likely be unable to fully connect to joy - simple things that used to make you happy don’t quite hit the spot anymore. You may feel detached and shut down to positive feelings
You may have lost your sex drive
You may find yourself avoiding doing things and seeing people, procrastinating more
You may be self soothing with alcohol or food, numbing out with scrolling, spending, TV
How you can start to move out of it
We can’t think our way out of survival mode. Our nervous system speaks a different language to our mind. It lives in the body so we need to find ways to communicate with it that it understands. We need to make this primal part of our system feel ‘safe’ it’ perceives it’s under threat. In other words, We need to regulate our nervous system. This is why approaches like CBT for stress often fall short.
Things to try:
Breathing - any breath pattern where the exhale is longer than the inhale will tap into the rest and digest system - try 4,7,8 breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8
Grounding - when we’re in survival mode we can disassociate from our bodies - when we are fully in our bodies we feel safe. One way to do this is get into the senses. Identify 5 things you can see, 5 ( or as many as you can) sounds you can hear , 5 things you can touch/ feel ( like your own hand, your bottom in the chair, textures of your clothes), and then anything you can smell or taste
Havening - this is touching your upper body to soothe the nervous system, start with the hands as if applying hand cream but slow it down. Then slowly stroke your forearms and then move up to a crossed arms position rubbing the opposite shoulder and up and down the arms. Slowly is key.
Spending more time outside in nature - teaching yourself to need less stimulation from phones, screens and noise which can exacerbate the stress response.
Plus talking through your situation, acknowledging how hard things are and having another person hear you.
I hope this helps, being gentle with ourselves and applying practical tools is the winning combination.