Trauma Responses: Understanding The Fight Response
ShrinkChicks
Jennifer Chaiken, LMFT and Emmalee Bierly, LMFT
4.9 • 755 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on ShrinkChicks, Em and Jen continue their trauma response series with a deep dive into the fight response: what it is, why it develops, and how it shows up in everyday life. Often misunderstood and heavily judged, the fight response is a nervous system survival strategy rooted in mobilization, power, and protection.
They explore how fight can look like anger, defensiveness, control, irritability, or needing to win, especially for people who learned early on that being loud or strong was the only way to be heard. Em shares how fight shows up in her own body, why it’s often reinforced by systems that reward dominance, and how neglecting basic needs can lower the threshold for activation.
Listener questions focus on recognizing when you’re in a fight state, coming down from it in real time, and unlearning the belief that conflict is the only path to safety. Em and Jen offer practical tools for regulating the body, slowing conversations, and building new relational pathways without shaming a response that once served a purpose.
Tune in to gain insight, awareness, and action! PS: Fast forward to around 4:30 to skip the intro and get straight to today’s content.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You want to talk to me, you want to bully me, you guys want to leave me out and kick me out of the group? |
| 0:04.0 | No problem, suckers. |
| 0:05.0 | And so it gives you this amazing coat that you put layers and layers and layers on so that you never get cold and nobody ever gets close. |
| 0:14.8 | Because what anger is also amazing at is pushing people away and creating distance, right? |
| 0:30.0 | No. amazing at is pushing people away and creating distance, right? Welcome back to another episode of shrink chicks. |
| 0:32.8 | Take a seat on our virtual therapy couch and get ready to learn all about, well, you. |
| 0:37.9 | I'm Emily Beirley. |
| 0:39.0 | And I'm Jennifer Chakin. |
| 0:40.3 | And we're both licensed, marriage and family therapist and relationship experts. |
| 0:44.4 | We're the owners and founders of the therapy group, a nationwide psychotherapy practice |
| 0:49.0 | with down-to-earth therapists just like us. |
| 0:51.4 | Your session is starting. |
| 0:53.0 | So get ready to know yourself and grow yourself. |
| 0:59.3 | Hi, Jen. I am. How are you? I'm doing pretty well. How are you? You know what? I'm great. It's like |
| 1:07.6 | 40 degrees here, so it feels like Florida. I keep saying. I think it was like 28 degrees yesterday. |
| 1:14.4 | Beautiful. |
| 1:15.1 | I was like, ah, amazing. I'm going to put shorts on. |
| 1:19.8 | I don't think it's 40 degrees. Is it actually 40 degrees right now? |
| 1:23.2 | I don't fucking know. There's no way. I would. That I would. But there's no way because I would be outside right now. We wouldn't be recording. I would be outside frolicking. You'd be having a margarita. Frolicking in the frozen tundra that we're in. But I'm glad to be here today with you. And we have an intro question. Yes, we do. |
| 1:45.5 | If someone calls you and you don't have their number saved, do you answer or do you let it go to voicemail? |
| 1:53.1 | Who's answering the phone? |
| 1:55.1 | Who's answering? |
... |
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