Breaking Free From Generational Trauma: The Space Between Reaction and Response

Create Space to See, Feel, and Heal

Space is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as the area around everything that exists, continuing in all directions.

For me, space is what allows truth to come into focus. It’s what helps me separate what happened around me from who I am inside. Space is where healing and clarity begin.

Throughout my life, as many of us have, I became very familiar with the four survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. I didn’t know their names at the time, but I knew their rhythms. They became the unspoken language of survival I learned from generations before me.

The Four Survival Responses

When our nervous system senses danger — real or remembered — it flips into survival mode. These are automatic reactions, not conscious choices. They show how the body has learned to protect itself over time.

Fight — Pushing back. This can look like anger, defensiveness, or needing to control the situation.
Flight — Getting away. Sometimes it’s literally leaving, other times it’s distracting yourself, staying busy, or avoiding conflict.
Freeze — Shutting down. Feeling stuck, numb, or unable to act — like your body hits pause.
Fawn — Pleasing others to stay safe. Saying yes when you want to say no, smoothing things over, or minimizing your own needs to keep the peace.

How These Responses Showed Up in My Life

I learned early on that control felt safer than chaos. My fight response often looked like trying to manage every variable around me. Anticipating what might go wrong, staying one step ahead, striving for a seamless life so nothing could “spark” when attention turned my way.

When control didn’t work, I turned to flight. I ran into distraction: teaching full time, coaching three soccer teams, getting my master’s degree, maintaining a social life so full there was no room left for stillness — or for feeling.

Then came the freeze. Numbness became my favorite escape. I could be physically present but mentally gone, disconnected from myself and everyone around me. It was safer not to feel than to face what was real.

And fawn, my specialty. I learned to read the room, identify the storm, and calm it before it started. I said yes before I even checked in with my own boundaries. Helping others made me feel useful and needed, but it came at a cost. Every time I ignored my own needs, I quietly taught others that they didn’t need to honor them either.

Why Regulation Is the Key to Healing

These responses aren’t flaws. They’re evidence of how our bodies learned to survive. Many of us inherited them. What kept our parents or grandparents safe in unstable homes became the patterns we repeat, even when we’re no longer in danger.

That’s why regulation is the first step in breaking free. Regulation isn’t about “staying calm” or pretending everything is fine — it’s about teaching your body that the danger has passed.

When you regulate your nervous system through practices like breathwork, grounding, movement, or mindfulness, you send a new message:

“This is now, not then. I am safe enough to choose differently.”

Regulation creates the space between reaction and response.
It’s the pause that turns survival into choice.

Without regulation, we stay stuck in old loops. Snap when we mean to connect, shut down when we want to speak, over-give when we need rest. But when we begin to calm the body, clarity returns. We stop replaying what we lived through and start writing something new.

Your Reflection

As you read this, take a breath and ask yourself:
Which of these responses — fight, flight, freeze, or fawn — feels most familiar to you?
Where might it have come from?
And most importantly, can you create just a little more space between what happened then and who you are now?

Healing doesn’t start with perfection — it starts with awareness.
And awareness grows in the space we create to finally see ourselves clearly.

As humans, we are all craving resources that help us return to our authenticity — tools that remind us how to use our experiences for good and how to regulate our nervous system when the past tries to resurface.

Hold on tight.
More is coming.