Feral Instinct

There’s a moment trauma survivors know all too well: that sudden snap inside the body, the way your chest tightens, the world narrows, and something ancient wakes up behind your ribs. It’s not logic. It’s not personality. It’s instinct.

Being triggered isn’t a dramatic response — it’s a survival response.

It feels like being an animal suddenly backed into a corner.

A quiet room becomes a cave with no exits.

A raised voice becomes the sound of snapping branches.

A harmless question becomes the echo of a threat you didn’t choose to remember.

Inside, the nervous system goes feral.

Not unhinged.

Not irrational.

Just scared.

And like any cornered creature, you don’t rise into grace — you shrink, bare teeth, freeze, or scramble for any way out. Your body floods with the same chemicals it would use if it were trying to escape a predator. You become adrenaline and instinct. Your heart beats so loud you swear it could warn the whole forest.

But here’s the part trauma survivors rarely get told:

You’re not reacting to the present. You’re reacting to a past you never got to escape.

Your body learned what danger felt like the hard way.

It learned what to fear.

It learned that sometimes the world is not safe — and that survival means moving fast, protecting yourself, shutting down, or disappearing.

So when you feel triggered, your body isn’t being dramatic.

It’s being loyal.

It’s being protective.

It’s being the animal you had to become to survive.

But healing is learning that you’re not cornered anymore.

Little by little, breath by breath, experience by experience, you teach your body that the walls aren’t closing in. You teach your instinct that this time you’re safe. You teach your nervous system that it can soften without being swallowed.

And eventually, the wild creature inside learns she doesn’t have to roar, freeze, run, or hide at every shadow.

She can rest.

She can look around.

She can trust her surroundings.

She can step out of the corner and back into the open.

You are not the scared animal you once had to be — you are the one tending to her now.

And that is the quiet, feral miracle of healing.