195. The 5 Nervous System Response Mechanisms in Love: The Flight Response

The 5 Nervous System Response Mechanisms in Love: The Flight Response

The 5 nervous system response mechanisms in love: the flight response This episode marks the beginning of a series of 5 episodes on the 5 nervous system response mechanisms and how they manifest in love so that you begin to see how much these mechanisms influence, more or less positively, your couple dynamic. If you are new to the podcast and unfamiliar with the influence of the nervous system on your relationships, I invite you to listen to episodes 152 The impact of the nervous system on your relationships, 153 The 4 categories of love patterns and 154 The 3 states of your nervous system and the polyvagal scale. You can also read my book S’ouvrir a l’amour, and if the solution lay on the side of the vagus nerve? if you want to identify your own mechanisms and patterns. This episode is for you if you have the feeling that love both attracts and frightens you, that you are often blindsided because you project quickly, or that you avoid difficult subjects in relationships. In 8 years of practice, the flight response is one of the most subtle mechanisms precisely because it often disguises itself as independence or because the problem is avoided.

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The mechanisms of the flight response

  • Hypervigilance to your partner’s slightest actions, overanalysis
  • Avoiding difficult but necessary conversations
  • Sense of urgency inside (something must be done) and avoidance on the outside
  • Taking refuge in dreams, nostalgia, signs and projection instead of basing yourself on facts
  • Need to distract yourself, keep busy, obsessions and compulsive behaviours
  • Fear of commitment or losing your freedom in a relationship
  • Tendency to think that separation is the solution when your couple goes through difficulties or when you fear reliving suffering

If your partner is in this state, you may feel

  • That they “escape” from the relationship when things get too deep, too real
  • That they prefer to change environment, subject or dynamic rather than entering into intimacy or conflict
  • That they are insecure, overanalysing the relationship
  • That they punish you with silence
  • That their distractions take up more space than you
  • Left alone with your emotions or needs, that the other “flees” from you instead of facing your differences

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Thoughts in this state

Generally, a lot of mental cycling and thoughts:
  • “If it gets too intense, I’m leaving”
  • “I’m not going to get bogged down, I’ll keep my freedom”
  • “The worst is going to happen, I might as well leave before it does”
  • “What if…?”
  • “If I bring this up, it’s over…”
  • “I don’t want to talk about this again…”
  • “It was better before / with my ex…”
  • “There are so many synchronicities, it’s a sign”

Emotions in this state

  • Fear of suffocation, of losing one’s freedom
  • Latent anxiety (“what if?”)
  • Feeling of imminent danger or urgency, response on the inside

Physiologically, activation of the sympathetic state

  • You are agitated, you have a surge of energy (“stress burst”).
  • Your heart rate and blood pressure increase and blood flows primarily to your legs and arms.
  • Muscles are tense, ready to act (clenched fists, tense jaw, thighs).
  • Your breathing is faster or more shallow.
  • Your facial expression is rigid, not very flexible. Your cheeks flush.
  • You can no longer filter out background noise, which becomes intrusive, because your nervous system, in a state of hypervigilance, tunes into lower and higher frequencies than the human voice, in order to detect the presence of danger.
  • Your voice is shrill, too loud.
If this becomes chronic, you may suffer from restless leg syndrome, anxiety, difficulty concentrating (daydreaming), compulsive behaviours/obsessions, mental cycling, obsessive thoughts.

Some possible origins from your past

  • A period of chronic stress, just on the edge before burnout
  • A shock event where you were unable to flee and whose sympathetic energy is still circulating in your body (aggression, the birth of your child, an accident, surgery…)
  • Experiences of abandonment or betrayal where you registered the mechanism “when things get too real, you leave”
  • A childhood or adolescence with little security where your mechanism was “as soon as tension rose, I left” or you idealised your family by minimising their problems / flaws / impacts on you
  • A family environment where intense emotions were not welcomed, dialogue was avoided

How to change this mechanism?

If this is your dominant mechanism
  • Learning that you can be free in a relationship
  • Learning to face reality (I talk about the Disney syndrome in my book S’ouvrir a l’amour)
  • Learning to confront the problem instead of fleeing from it
  • Learning to reassure your body at the different stages of commitment
  • Trying to improve the relational dynamic before separating
Physiologically, this means that you may feel waves of flight responses rising to the surface depending on what you are experiencing in the relationship, that these are normal phases where you need to reassure your body and show it that it doesn’t need to flee. This mechanism will stop expressing itself in dominance when your nervous system has had enough evidence through your actions that you don’t need to flee to be free. The Day of the Past option that I offer in my programmes helps you to deprogram the love pattern — via my Somatic Deprogramming method — that makes you use this dominant mechanism in an inappropriate way, and to reprogram a new, more adapted mechanism, for example by confronting. You will still need to accumulate evidence. It will just be easier. When this is your response mechanism for a given situation
  • Identify the bodily signals of flight when you want to leave, move, change subject, “escape” into the mind.
  • Stop the escalation: work on somatic practices to feel the flight tension, bring it to awareness, then let it calm.
  • Let your partner know your mechanism has been activated so they don’t take it as abandonment.
  • Ask yourself what you need to do to no longer need to flee and feel safe in the relationship: set your limits, confront, simply realise that it’s an activation from your past and that the facts are okay.

Pour aller plus loin

Si tu as envie d’approfondir le sujet et d’identifier tes propres schémas amoureux, tu as mon livre S’ouvrir à l’amour disponible dans toutes les librairies.

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Going further

💕 OPENING UP TO LOVE — if you are single A 5-month programme to do deep work on your love life, identify and transform your love patterns, and meet someone with whom to build the relationship of your dreams.
OPENING UP TO LOVE
🌿 CULTIVATING LOVE — if you are in a couple A 5-month programme to transform your relationship, rediscover closeness, communication and the joy of being together every day.
CULTIVATING LOVE

Sandy Kaufmann

is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Editions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir a l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.

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