From Reaction to Response: Emotional Regulation and Trauma Recovery.

By Chris Meehan

Making Space for Choice

There’s a difference between a reaction and a response.

Signs for action and reaction

A reaction is fast, automatic, often unconscious. It’s the honk, the slam, the sharp word, the slammed door, the retreat into silence. It feels like it just happens—because it often does. Reactions are usually born out of perceived threat: to our safety, our pride, our identity, our belonging.

A response, on the other hand, holds something rare and hard-earned: choice. It has a pause in it. A breath. A beat of awareness. It’s not always better, but it’s deliberate. And more often than not, that pause includes a willingness to sit with something uncomfortable—an emotion, a memory, a wound—without needing to discharge it or defend against it.

This doesn’t mean reactions are bad. They’re protective. Reactions are part of our design—especially for those of us shaped by trauma. The nervous system’s survival menu (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) is not a moral failure. It’s a brilliant adaptation. The problem is when that same adaptation keeps us stuck—keeps us snapping, storming, shutting down, walking out, or blowing up long after the danger has passed.

And most of us know the aftermath: the apology.

Apologies often show up as the emotional receipts of reactivity. They’re not just admissions of guilt—they’re signals that something automatic took the wheel. And while there’s grace in apologizing, there’s also wisdom in examining the recurring pattern: Why do I keep reacting like this? What’s the threat I keep defending against?

That’s where the work begins.

The Cold Water of Consciousness

One of the best ways I’ve found to understand the difference between a reaction and a response is cold water.

Man in ice plunge

If you’ve ever done a cold plunge, you know what I mean. You get in, and your body reacts. You gasp. You tighten. You want out. Everything in your nervous system says no. But if you’ve chosen to do it—and you stay in, breathing through the discomfort—you’re no longer just reacting. You’re responding.

You’re building capacity. You’re telling your body, Yes, this is unpleasant—but we’re safe. I can do hard things without panicking. That gap between stimulus and behavior—between cold and calm—is the very muscle we need to flex in the emotional world too.

The same applies in relationships.

A comment lands wrong. An old insecurity flares up. A tone triggers a memory. If you’re tired or hurt or not grounded, you react. And often, you regret.

But when you create even a moment’s pause—even if you don’t say the perfect thing—you’ve moved from reaction to response. And that’s everything.

Regulating the System

We can’t stop being triggered. And we shouldn’t try to eliminate all our triggers. The goal isn’t to sterilize the world—it’s to disarm the bombs inside us that keep going off.

Regulation isn’t just mindfulness or breathwork. It’s practice. It’s learning to stay with discomfort. To sit in your own heat without lashing out or shutting down. To be with the feeling instead of being run by the feeling.

When we practice pausing—when we repair after a rupture, when we reflect on what hit us, when we breathe through the urge to attack or escape—we’re rewiring our nervous system. We’re becoming people who can respond. People who can choose.

And over time, the things that used to set us off lose their fuse. The trigger remains, but there’s nothing left to ignite.

The Apology as Awareness

Signs of forgiveness

Sometimes, our best entry into this work is the apology itself. Not just saying sorry, but looking at what we’re sorry for. What got stirred? What were we defending? What story did we tell ourselves in the heat of the moment?

That kind of reflection helps us train for the next time.

The goal isn’t to never react. The goal is to be less ruled by it. To notice it sooner. To repair more honestly. And maybe, just maybe, to start catching ourselves in that sacred, fleeting gap—where the pause lives, where the body calms, and where the real self gets a chance to speak.

That’s not just emotional maturity.

That’s freedom.

Chris Meehan is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Los Angeles specializing in trauma recovery, emotional regulation, and relational health.

Learn more at ChrisMeehanTherapy.com.