Why We Can't Overlook Our Nervous System

Why Christians Can’t Overlook the Nervous System (Fight, Flight, Freeze & Fawn)On the Storyed Podcast, host Chaz Becker and Jesse Ojeda discuss why Christians shouldn’t overlook the nervous system in discipleship and emotional health. They explain the nervous system as the body’s signaling system, distinguishing voluntary and involuntary processes and focusing on the autonomic nervous system’s two branches: the sympathetic system (activation/fight-or-flight) and the parasympathetic system (rest-and-digest). Jesse connects nervous-system responses to Lazarus and Folkman’s coping model, describing how stress appraisals trigger coping and physiological activation. They expand beyond fight and flight to include freeze (shutdown, numbness, dissociation) and fawn (appeasing, people-pleasing, boundary blurring), often shaped by past experiences. Chaz shares a practical parenting example of using coping skills to regulate and respond calmly, and they emphasize God’s care and healing for embodied patterns through practical tools like mindfulness and emotion surfing.00:00 Psychology Meets Faith00:25 Why Nervous System Matters02:05 Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic04:56 Coping Appraisal Model08:07 Fight Flight Freeze Fawn10:59 Freeze and Fawn Explained15:25 Modern Stress and Discipleship19:41 Parenting Trigger Example24:13 Hope and Healing in Christ28:16 Practical Coping Skills33:15 Wrap Up and Thanks