Overcoming Escapism | Trauma Response - Feeling the Need to Escape

One common trauma response is the feeling of needing to escape a situation, environment, or person, aka escapism. Feeling the need to escape stems from autonomic nervous system (ANS) interpretations of a threat in that situation, environment or from a person. When the ANS is traumatized, it can misinterpret a threat that causes you to feel like you need to escape. Let's examine the threat vs no threat for escapism to help you overcome feeling the need to escape if you don't need to! 

Many trauma survivors learn after leaving a narcissist that they are still living in survival mode but are unsure why - it's the autonomic nervous system (ANS) living in survival mode, not the survivor. The ANS is our threat detector and if it perceives something as a threat, it will tense up muscles as a result of going into survival mode. This occurs when the ANS interprets something as a threat in a situation, environment or when around another person. 

The ANS is also our inner child and can be re-traumatized if unaware of how it is responding to external stimuli and our own body movements. When the ANS perceives something as a threat, it will subconsciously have us feeling as though we need to escape the environment or the presence of another person. The ANS operates automatically, subconsciously. When it finally becomes clear that a survivor is feeling the need to escape, usually discovered once the ANS is relaxing, it is time to take the steps necessary to overcome escapism. 

Branching out from the January 2026 newsletter, let's elaborate on the three tips for how to overcome feeling the need to escape, starting with examining the environment around you to assess for a threat vs no threat. To begin assessing your environment, examining your thoughts about the environment will reveal if anything could be a potential threat to the physical body. After all, the ANS is part of our physical body and will only perceive threats that would be physically harmful to it, like radio frequencies that are higher than normal. 

Any mental threat is perceived by us and our thoughts control the ANS. Hence why examining your thoughts about an environment is the starting point for assessing the area for any potential threats. What you "think" may be a threat is what the ANS will interpret as a threat and respond according to its biological programming. Once you have examined your thoughts about the environment and assessed the environment, it helps to write down what you found as either a "potential threat" or "no threat" in your journal. Then you can review the two columns to address any potential threats by changing your thinking so they become a "no threat." 

It is important to note when doing this for your environment, the ANS is not responding to things like silverware or anything that is a known potential threat (knives, etc). The ANS is responding to a perceived potential threat to it that will cause muscle tension. Since the ANS is a significant part of our circulatory system, it does not like muscle tension because tension slows down normal circulation. The ANS can "breathe" better when circulation is normal. Remember to include examining your body movements in the environment too since the ANS responds to those as well.

For example, are you clenching your fist for no reason? Are you holding things with unnecessary force? These are the types of body movements the ANS will respond to as a need to escape the environment. These types of body movements are also a trauma trigger for the ANS and are often the result of walking on eggshells while with a narcissist. This brings us to the second tip in the newsletter for analyzing the trigger in the environment. When you become aware of the trigger, such as grabbing things with unnecessary force, you can mentally change the body movement in the environment by relaxing your grip. A simple change like this will signal to the ANS the threat is gone and the ANS will relax, letting go of needing to escape. 

It is about resetting your mindset, or changing that thinking to calm the ANS down so you overcome feeling the need to escape when you don't need to. If the threat is not a body movement but something else in the environment, like a sound, you can simply locate the sound to change it or eliminate it. An example of a sound that may trigger the ANS is a ringtone on the phone. Perhaps it is the same ringtone on the phone that was used while still with the narcissist? Bingo. The ANS made a negative association with the ringtone and the narcissist since the narcissist usually yelled in your ear when you answered the "ringtone." 

After all, the ANS is very anticipatory in nature and a negative association between a ringtone and a narcissist will cause the ANS to anticipate being "yelled" at when and if you answer the phone. The ringtone can be changed or silenced. Once the ANS no longer hears that ringtone it will relax in the environment and once again, you will overcome feeling the need to escape. It helps to remember the ANS is highly dependent on our five senses: sight, audio, taste, touch, and smell. The ANS uses our five senses to detect threats or no threats. It needs to make positive associations between the five senses and external things to feel safe and detect no threats. 

Making the proper associations between one of our senses and something in the environment is the third tip from the newsletter to help the ANS break any negative associations and correct any misinterpretations. These same concepts can be applied when assessing the situation or another person the ANS is detecting threats from or about. Overcoming escapism will get the ANS out of survival mode and into the present with you where it should be and you will stop feeling the need to escape! 

You can always learn more about your ANS by joining us here at CHA on our YouTube channel and other social media platforms as we continue ANS awareness as part of our movement, combating radio frequency (RF) for healthier living. After all, the ANS is a target for RF manipulation that can re-traumatize it if we are unaware of how it is responding to external stimuli. We become the parent of our ANS that we were born to become as God created our ANS to protect us so we must learn to protect it. When we protect the ANS, it protects us better!