Picture this: You're sitting in a therapy session, trying to explain why you feel so disconnected from yourself and others, why you struggle with relationships, or why you can't seem to trust your own emotions. Your therapist asks about your childhood, and you shrug. "It was fine," you say. "Nothing really bad happened. My parents weren't abusive or anything." And that's exactly the problem.

When faced with perceived danger, our nervous system has four primary responses that have kept humans alive for millennia: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn.

Our brains evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to thrive in small, tight-knit communities where physical movement was constant, social bonds were essential for survival, and threats were immediate and concrete. Yet in just a few decades, we've created an environment that contradicts nearly every aspect of how our minds are designed to function.