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Our inborn fight, flight, freeze responses are automatic responses that help us cope when faced with dangerous situations. When we feel threatened, these subcortical mechanisms are triggered automatically. When triggered, our bodies experience an increase in physiological arousal and in muscular tension that hastens our ability to escape from the perceived threat, and or prepare our muscles to engage for fight. When we are unable to move away or strike back, in response to something dangerous, we are left with the option to freeze. The freeze response is the point where one becomes predisposed to traumatic stress disorders. The immobility of a freeze reaction is an incomplete response to danger. When one is frozen by fear as a means to survival, the body is often left in a state of hypertension and heightened physiological arousal that can remain even when the danger has passed.

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