Running Nowhere: Understanding the Flight Trauma Response
Blog Three in the Trauma Response Series
“If I can just stay ahead of it, I’ll be OK”
Flight says move. Don’t stop. Don’t feel. Don’t get caught.
What is the Flight Response?
The flight response is often misunderstood as cowardice or avoidance, but it’s far more complex. It’s a deeply rooted survival strategy, hardwired into our nervous system. When the brain perceives threat, and fight isn’t possible or safe, we run… physically or mentally. This might look like literal fleeing, but more often, it’s a psychological escape: overworking, perfectionism, anxiety loops, or constant busyness. It says: If I just do more, be more, keep going, I won’t have to feel what’s chasing me.
The Physiology of Flight
The flight response is mediated by the sympathetic nervous system, the same system that drives fight. When adrenaline floods the body and the brain signals danger, heart rate increases, blood is diverted to the limbs, and the mind sharpens, preparing the body to move fast and far.
But in chronic trauma, this system can get stuck. Instead of one-off sprints to safety, people live in a constant state of readiness to flee. Cortisol builds. Muscles remain tense. The mind never lands.
How Flight Shows Up in Everyday Life
Not all flight responses look dramatic. Here are some subtle but familiar faces of flight:
Chronic overworking — filling every hour to avoid silence.
Restlessness — feeling unable to sit still, especially in quiet or emotionally vulnerable settings.
Perfectionism — trying to outrun feelings of shame or failure.
Over-scheduling — staying busy to avoid feelings of loneliness or sadness.
Physical fleeing — walking out of difficult conversations, needing to “get away.”
Avoiding therapy or emotional intimacy — fearing what might catch up if you slow down.
There was a time I filled my weekends with back-to-back events, telling myself I was “making the most of life.” In reality, I was terrified of being still. Stillness meant reckoning with loss, grief, and parts of myself I hadn’t met yet.
When Flight Takes Over
Flight can be adaptive, it kept us safe once. But over time, it can become a prison. Constant running wears the body down. It leaves people exhausted, disconnected, and often burnt out. It may manifest as anxiety disorders, sleep disruption, digestive issues, and chronic tension. Relationships suffer because flight doesn't let people stay long enough to be seen.
The tragedy of flight is that the person isn't running from others, they're running from their own internal world.
A Different Kind of Movement: Working with Flight in Therapy
Healing the flight response isn’t about stopping movement altogether. It’s about learning when to stop, and feeling safe enough to do so. In therapy, this might mean:
Recognising patterns of avoidance or escape.
Bringing awareness to bodily sensations when restlessness arises.
Practicing staying in emotions, in relationships, in silence.
Using grounding techniques to anchor the body and re-regulate the nervous system.
Exploring where the need to flee began, and what made staying so unsafe?
It’s not about forcing stillness. It’s about cultivating safety so stillness becomes possible.
Flight kept you safe once. Maybe it still tries to. But you deserve to live somewhere other than escape routes. There’s a version of you that doesn’t have to run, not because the danger is gone, but because you’ve learned you can hold yourself steady when it arrives.