Tenderoni Hotline #33: Why Am I Always in Fight Mode? + Learning to Love Safely After Trauma
Welcome back to the Tenderoni Hotline, our warm and cozy corner of The Feminist Wellness Podcast, where we talk nervous system healing, somatic tools, and reclaiming your self-worth, one question at a time. If you've got something tender on your heart and want my support, write to me at podcast@beatrizalbina.com and I’ll answer you in a future episode. Let’s dive in.
Question 1: Why Do I Go Into Fight Mode So Easily And Is It Connected to Emotional Outsourcing?
Oh my love, this is such an important question. And before we even get into the nervous system of it all, I just want to say this plainly: if you’ve been working in environments where you feel unseen, unsupported, overextended, and constantly evaluated, your body is not “overreacting.” It’s responding.
Especially for teachers, caregivers, healthcare workers, and anyone expected to emotionally hold entire systems together while receiving very little support in return, your anger makes sense.
Fight Mode Is Part of Emotional Outsourcing Too
I think it’s really important to name this because we often only talk about emotional outsourcing through the lens of fawning.
The people pleasing.
The overgiving.
The self-abandonment.
But fight mode absolutely belongs in this conversation too.
What Emotional Outsourcing Actually Is
Emotional outsourcing is the chronic pattern of sourcing your sense of safety, worth, belonging, and validation from outside yourself instead of from within.
So when your nervous system has learned:
- “I’m safe when people approve of me.”
- “I matter when I’m useful.”
- “I’m lovable when I perform well.”
- “I belong when I meet everyone else’s needs.”
…your body becomes hypervigilant to rejection, criticism, dismissal, and disapproval.
And when fawning stops working?
Fight often steps in.
What It Feels Like in the Body
- Your boss sighs, and your chest tightens.
- A coworker’s tone shifts, and you spiral.
- Someone praises you, and you finally exhale.
These are signs that your nervous system is still wired to find safety through others, rather than within yourself. And I want to be clear. This isn’t because you’re weak. It’s because you’re a mammal. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do under threat, seek connection to survive.
What Fight Mode Really Is
Fight mode is what happens when the nervous system decides:
“I cannot appease my way to safety anymore.”
So instead, the body braces.
It tightens.
It prepares to defend.
And in environments that consistently leave you feeling unsupported or invisible, fight mode can become a very understandable survival response.
Why Teaching And Caregiving Roles Trigger the Nervous System
Teaching is actually a near-perfect setup for nervous system activation:
- You’re constantly being evaluated.
- You’re expected to give endlessly.
- You’re emotionally regulating entire rooms of people.
- You’re carrying enormous responsibility with very little structural support.
- And when your body already carries old wounds around being unseen, dismissed, or unvalued, those environments don’t just feel stressful.
They feel existentially threatening.
The Nervous System Responds to Familiarity, Not Logic
The nervous system doesn’t neatly separate past from present.
It responds to patterns.
It notices familiarity.
If something today smells emotionally similar to something painful from years ago, your body reacts.
Not because you’re dramatic.
Because you’re human.
How to Work With Fight Mode Without Shaming Yourself
One of the first things we can practice is naming what’s happening before the activation fully takes over.
Not to suppress it.
Not to “positive think” your way out of it.
Just to acknowledge it.
“My body is protecting me.”
“I feel angry.”
“I feel disrespected.”
“I feel unsafe.”
The Power of Affect Labeling
This is called affect labeling, and research actually shows that naming emotional states can reduce nervous system activation.
When we put language to what we’re experiencing, it helps create a little space between us and the overwhelm.
And honestly?
Sometimes “I am angry” is the kitten step.
Eventually we may move toward:
“I’m experiencing anger.”
But first?
We just practice allowing the feeling to exist without immediately abandoning ourselves for having it.
Fight Energy Needs Somewhere to Go
Fight energy needs movement.
Otherwise it sits trapped in the body looking for an exit.
So when you notice activation:
- Press your feet firmly into the floor.
- Engage your thigh muscles for five seconds and release.
- Push gently against a wall.
- Exhale audibly.
- Let your jaw unclench.
Micro-movements matter
You Don’t Need Explosive Catharsis to Heal
Your nervous system doesn’t always need a dramatic catharsis.
Sometimes it simply needs a safe enough channel for the energy to move through.
Healing is often much slower and steadier than we’ve been taught to believe.
The Real Fear Underneath Fight Mode
Underneath fight activation is often a very old fear:
“If I’m unseen, what does that mean about me?”
And when your sense of worth has been outsourced to institutions, relationships, authority figures, or external validation, being dismissed doesn’t just feel disappointing.
It feels destabilizing.
Fight Mode Is Often Defending Your Worth
Fight mode is often the nervous system’s attempt to defend your worth after too many moments of feeling invisible.
So the healing isn’t simply “anger management.”
It’s not about becoming endlessly calm inside environments that continually harm you.
It’s about slowly building an internal source of worth sturdy enough that other people’s inability to see you stops feeling like evidence about your value.
Sometimes Healing Starts With Leaving the Environment
And sometimes healing starts with changing the environment first.
A new job.
A new pace.
A little room to breathe.
Then, from there, the deeper work becomes more possible.
Question 2: Can Someone With Developmental Trauma Learn to Love Safely?
Oh, my tender love.
This question touches something so deep and human.
Because I think the question underneath the question is often:
“If my nervous system learned that closeness equals danger… can that ever truly change?”
And the answer is yes.
Absolutely yes.
Developmental Trauma Creates Survival Strategies
Developmental trauma doesn’t just create symptoms.
It teaches survival strategies.
It teaches:
Stay small.
Stay vigilant.
Monitor everyone else’s emotional state.
Do not lose connection.
Do not become “too much.”
Functional Freeze and Losing Connection With Yourself
What often develops is a person who becomes extraordinarily skilled at reading everyone else while feeling deeply disconnected from themselves.
This is what I often call functional freeze:
You’re accomplishing.
Performing.
Showing up.
Doing all the things.
But internally?
You feel disconnected from your own needs, emotions, and body.
Why Love Can Feel Unsafe
And then when love enters the picture, many people find themselves relating from outside themselves.
Monitoring.
Analyzing.
Watching for signs.
Trying to predict outcomes.
Instead of actually feeling safe enough to simply be present.
When Closeness Was Once Dangerous
When the people who were supposed to protect you were also the source of fear, criticism, unpredictability, or emotional inconsistency, your nervous system learns:
“Closeness must be monitored carefully.”
So as adults, many trauma survivors simultaneously crave intimacy while also feeling activated by it.
And that’s not a character flaw.
That’s attachment physiology.
The First Step Is Interoception
Before healthy love comes something even more foundational:
Interoception.
Which is simply your ability to feel and notice your own body from the inside.
Questions That Help You Reconnect to Yourself
Questions like:
- What does safety feel like in my body?
- What happens in my chest when someone gets emotionally close?
- What does anxiety feel like before it becomes a spiraling thought?
- What sensations show up when I want to disappear?
And the goal is not fixing those sensations immediately.
It’s learning your own internal landscape with curiosity instead of fear.
Regulation Comes Before Relationship Skills
Before communication frameworks.
Before relationship strategies.
Before “green flags.”
We need nervous system capacity.
Because genuine warmth, curiosity, and connection are incredibly difficult to access while the body is stuck in survival mode.
Somatic Work Is Foundational
The social engagement system and the threat response system do not fully coexist.
This is why somatic work matters so deeply.
The grounding.
The settling.
The orienting.
The resourcing.
These are not “extra credit” wellness tools.
They are foundational.
Secure Attachment Is Built Through Practice
And then?
We practice.
Not through giant dramatic breakthroughs.
But through tiny moments.
Saying what you actually think.
Letting a compliment land.
Noticing when you disappear from yourself in conversation.
Coming back to yourself gently.
Again and again.
Healing Happens Through Rupture and Repair
Small moments.
Small repairs.
Small risks.
This is how secure attachment develops:
Rupture and repair.
Rupture and repair.
Rupture and repair.
Not perfection.
Just enough new evidence that your nervous system slowly begins updating the old story.
A Final Loving Reminder
My love, if developmental trauma taught you that love was unsafe, unpredictable, or conditional, that was never proof that you were unlovable.
You were born lovable.
Always.
Nothing that happened to you changed that truth.
And yes, your nervous system can absolutely learn new ways of relating.
Slowly.
Gently.
Safely.
Not by forcing yourself into vulnerability before your body is ready.
But by building capacity one kitten step at a time.
You do not need to become fearless to experience love.
You simply need enough safety inside yourself to stay present long enough for your nervous system to discover:
“This moment is different.”
And that changes everything.
Want to Go Deeper?
Grab your copy of End Emotional Outsourcing to learn how to stop performing safety and start actually feeling it.
You will get real tools, somatic practices, and feminist coaching support to help you come home to yourself, one nervous-system-loving step at a time.
And if you want my free orienting audio and grounding meditations to support your daily practice, head here to get your free downloads.
My 12-week programs include live teaching, guided somatic practices, journaling workbooks, and a private podcast where I answer your questions directly. Learn more here.
Tags: emotional outsourcing, fight response, nervous system regulation, developmental trauma, attachment healing, somatic healing, people pleasing, functional freeze, trauma healing, nervous system healing,