Fight-or-flight is a sudden, whole-body state of fear, vigilance, or readiness people experience when they perceive a threat. It’s an automatic reaction of your body in the moment, not a conscious choice.
In fight-or-flight, a sudden stressful event triggers a part of your nervous system called your sympathetic nervous system to kick into high gear.
This causes physical changes throughout your body that prepare you for action — like increased focus and a fast heartbeat.
The body secretes stress hormones including epinephrine (also called adrenaline), norepinephrine (also called noradrenaline), and cortisol, which flood into the bloodstream and cause changes throughout the body.
When people talk about being “activated,” they’re referring to being in fight-or-flight. People use this term especially about conflict in a relationship, like fighting with a partner or seeing your parents having an intense conflict.
Once the stressor goes away, the body’s parasympathetic nervous system calms the body down and brings you back to normal.
Who experiences fight-or-flight?
Fight-or-flight is a normal human reaction the vast majority of people experience from time to time.
However, people with a history of trauma, such as those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) tend to experience fight-or-flight more often — sometimes so much so that it negatively affects their well-being and everyday functioning.
Symptoms of fight-or-flight
Symptoms and signs you’re in fight-or-flight mode include:
- Increased alertness
- Vigilance
- Focused attention
- Rapid heartrate
- Fast breathing
- Gastrointestinal upset, like stomach pain, diarrhea, or vomiting
- Fainting
- Muscle tension
- Feelings of panic, fear, rage, overwhelm
- Dissociation
What triggers fight-or-flight?
Any acute stressful event can trigger fight-or-flight. It could be the threat of physical danger, like coming face-to-face with a bear. Or it could be a social stressor, like being called up to give a speech in front of a crowd.
Recurring memories of past trauma can also trigger a person’s fight-or-flight reaction. This happens in people with PTSD. It’s important to note that this happens from within and can occur even when there’s no stressful event in the present.
How long can your body stay in fight-or-flight?
The fight-or-flight process ends on its own within a few minutes to a few hours after the stressful stimulus has stopped.
However, if you keep being exposed to stressful events or triggers, your body can stay in a chronic stress reaction indefinitely.
In this case, you may want to consider how to remove or manage chronic external stressors and triggers.
How to fix the fight-or-flight response
How can you get out of fight-or-flight?
The fight-or-flight reaction will naturally pass on its own after the stressor has stopped. In the moment, it can help to acknowledge you’re in fight-or-flight and take care of your body with deep breathing and other calming techniques.
If you’re feeling chronic stress over days, weeks, or longer, there are a few other approaches you might want to try.
Therapists use a few different techniques to help patients get out of fight-or-flight or feelings of extreme stress, including:
- Slow, deep breathing
- Acupuncture
- Gentle exercise like yoga, progressive muscle relaxation, tai chi, and qigong
- Anti-anxiety drugs, such as benzodiazepines, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, dual serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, clonidine, and propranolol
- Mindfulness techniques like somatic micro-tracking
- Talk-based therapeutic interventions to reassess threat and reinterpret the traumatic memories, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and tapping
- Talk-therapy approaches that help the person bring themselves into a state of optimism, hope, compassion, and feeling protected. This may help people reframe their negative appraisals of the situation, which can make stress worse
Being around a calm person can also really help.
Co-regulation is a process in which one person who is calm helps another person become calm, too. On the other hand, when you’re already stressed, being with someone who’s reactive and upset can make the situation worse.
What does it mean to be stuck in fight-or-flight?
Being stuck in fight-or-flight means being in a state of high stress over a long period of time in response to chronic intense stressors.
The fight-or-flight response evolved to help you escape from or deal quickly with immediate danger. For that purpose, it’s very helpful. But it’s designed to go away quickly.
When stressors don’t go away or repeat frequently, that can keep you stuck in fight-or-flight, which can lead to burnout and illness.
Is fight-or-flight harmful?
In the short term, being in fight-or-flight isn’t the best time to make decisions, like whether to end a relationship, quit your job, or cut your hair. That’s because it can encourage you to take rash actions you might regret when you’re calmer and can see the big picture more clearly.
Over the long term, being in a chronic state of stress can also be harmful because it leads to eventual exhaustion and burnout.
Chronic stress can increase your risk of a multitude of different health conditions, including:
- Heart disease
- Autoimmune and inflammatory diseases
- Chronic pain issues
- Sexual dysfunction
- Fertility issues
And many more.
How does fight-or-flight affect relationships?
Your body’s fight-or-flight reaction can be triggered by psychological stress, including worries, work pressure, abuse, emotional pain, and your own expectations of yourself. When someone’s feeling this way, it can come out as anxiety, rumination, or perfectionism.
Fight-or-flight can be caused by stressful interactions in a relationship. But when someone’s experiencing chronic external stress, like stress at work, it can also negatively affect their romantic relationship and other relationships.
On the other hand, having support from your partner or others in your life can help reduce your stress level.
What are other words for fight-or-flight?
Fight-or-flight is also known as an acute stress reaction or “the fight-or-flight response.” It’s also called emotional flooding or emotional activation in the context of conflict in a relationship.
Is fight-or-flight the same as chronic stress?
Fight-or-flight isn’t the same as chronic stress. While fight-or-flight only lasts a few minutes or hours, chronic stress can go on for days, weeks, or longer.
Learn more
Explore articles on how trauma and fight-or-flight reactions can affect relationships in these Relationship Smart articles:
- 7 Ways Childhood Trauma Can Affect Your Relationships
- What Is Emotional Safety and How to Create It in Your Relationships
- How Reparenting Your Inner Child Helps Your Relationship
- Why Taking Time Outs is the Most Important Skill for Couples
- This is What a Toxic Relationship Feels Like: 4 Signs
Science writer and founder of Relationship Smart. A bad boss once scoffed at her decision to study psychology, calling it "pseudoscience." She's had a chip on her shoulder ever since. This website is her response — because the world of our minds is real, important, and studyable. Relationship Smart is here to answer all your burning questions about relationships with scientific rigor and sensitivity.