Do you find yourself in fight mode a little.. too easily?
Aggressive, defensive, and otherwise unflattering behaviors rearing their heads during the moments in life when you feel threatened, are not system malfunctions — they are automatic safety protocols.
They are orchestrated by your nervous system and enacted by your subconscious mind — based largely on your conscious personal preferences and experiences from the past.
During early childhood, your system establishes instinctual behavior patterns in all areas of life based on environmental observations and interactions.
Once consciousness matures into function (around the age of 7), your system begins establishing those instinctual behaviors, based on your direct input as well.
While these behaviors do run automatically and constantly — you hold the executive authority to override them in certain ways.
During fight mode, your programs are simply responding to your current conscious upset in real-time.
Managing your hormones, awareness levels, and so much more — to ensure you have the biological power available to navigate things as they are happening.
The amount of conscious energy you have available at any one time determines how long and how intricately you can stay in manual override mode to do this.
If your energy is depleted during the process, auto-mode naturally resumes as programmed until your override energy is restored.
When a situation triggers you to respond with dukes up — handling it in auto-mode is not usually the most flattering and mature way to go about things.
The aggression is an instinctual response to a safety issue — Which is essentially built-in to make sure you can protect yourself.. Ferociously if needed.
But most modern day fight mode threats are inadvertently exaggerated due to conscious awareness limits — and absolutely do not require a ferocious response.
They require you to maintain the conscious energy to override them — which simultaneously allows you the power to rewrite them into behaviors that fit with your current preferences.
When you catch yourself getting ready to fight — or already in the middle of one, use it as a moment to exercise your authority.
Embrace the Disengage
Anytime a conversation, project, responsibility, thought, emotion, or uncomfortable situation activates your need to fight — Immediately stop yourself.
Walk away, hang up, bite your tongue, pop in some head phones and jam out, or do anything feasible at the time that will allow you to eliminate the pressure of responding before you have gotten ahold of yourself.
If you hit the point when it feels like a monster is trying to come out of you — That’s the threshold.
Cross it with dignity.
There is a quieter voice behind the emotion — it reminds you that the animal instinct to protect is there for you anytime you may need it.
But you are capable of taming it when you don’t to fine tune its programming for best function.
Your system will recalibrate much quicker than you may expect after an override — and you can too.
After you’ve cooled down, if the situation was more than a trivial moment and still needs to be addressed — you can attempt to do so again, from a less agitated and reactive headspace.
Want to Dive Deeper?
The Bridge guide explains more.
⚠️ Please Note: This content is for educational purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for therapy or medical advice.