Survival States

Here’s the hard truth: most of what goes wrong between partners doesn’t start with the words spoken. It starts in the body. One sigh, one shrug, one interruption, and your nervous system decides: unsafe. The moment that switch flips, everything that makes connection possible—curiosity, generosity, presence—drops out. You’re no longer in the relationship. You’re in survival.

Survival shows up differently for everyone. Some people snap back or raise their voice. Others shut down, go silent, or walk out of the room. Some keep talking endlessly, filling the space because stillness feels unbearable. Whatever your version, it’s the same thing: your nervous system has taken over. And while that’s happening to you, it’s also happening to your partner. What looks like two people arguing is often just two survival states colliding.

Once that happens, you’re no longer having a conversation. You’re defending. This shift—from connection to protection—is what I call a Survival State. Saturation is the tipping point itself, the moment your system can’t absorb any more and locks down. Survival States are everything that comes after: the fight, the flight, the freeze, the collapse. The body defaults to old protective strategies, and dialogue becomes impossible.

This is why so much gets misinterpreted. When you see your partner roll their eyes, you might read disrespect. When they leave the room, you might read abandonment. But if you can step back and say, “This is a Survival State,” you change the frame. You stop filling in the blanks with intent or malice. You start seeing what’s actually happening: their nervous system has flipped into protection, just like yours does.

That doesn’t excuse harmful behaviour. But it does separate behaviour from intention. You can have real limits, real standards, and still recognise that much of what you’re reacting to is an overwhelmed nervous system, not a calculated attack. And this is where ownership matters. You don’t choose the surge of activation—that’s physiological. But you do choose what you do next. The anger is real. The anxiety is real. But the shouting, the withdrawal, the sarcasm, the door-slamming—those are behaviours. They belong to you.

These survival responses didn’t start in this relationship. They come from your blueprint—old strategies from earlier in life that once kept you safe. Maybe shutting down protected you from volatility. Maybe pushing in was the only way you were ever heard. Maybe keeping things upbeat kept you from rejection. These moves once worked. That’s why they’re stubborn. But in a close relationship, the same strategies that protected you end up corroding the space between you. They stop being protection and start becoming poison.

That’s the heart of it: two bodies, two histories, two nervous systems trying to protect themselves, colliding in real time. And unless you can see that clearly—and own your part in it—the entire relationship becomes a loop of survival, misinterpretation, and reaction.