When the Alarm Doesn’t Turn Off:God’s Design for Stress and How We Can Meet Each Other in the Chaos

Have you ever had one of those days where your brain completely leaves the building, your heart is trying to escape your chest, and you’re suddenly ready to either fight a bear or go full opossum and play dead?

First off: you are not alone in your struggles. Second: congratulations, you’re a mammal!

I’ve been spending a lot of time buried in my study materials—specifically looking at Best Practices for Trauma and Crisis Response: The First 24-48 Hours. While reviewing some notes, I had a massive lightbulb moment about how beautifully, deeply, and intentionally God programmed our bodies.

But I also realized how easily we get stuck when the world breaks around us, and how we can better show up for each other when it does.

1. The Emergency Response System (Thanks, God!)

Let’s look at how our bodies handle a crisis. In my notes, there is a point that stands out: God biologically programmed us this way.

When we face a perceived threat, our “acute stress response” kicks in. You might know it as Fight, Flight, or Freeze. To put it in silly terms (because if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry):

• Fight: You are a lion, bear, or tiger ready to throw hands.
• Flight: You are a rabbit or a deer, running for your absolute life.
• Freeze: You are an opossum, completely paralyzed, hoping the problem just walks away.

This is an unconscious, instant reaction. As I scribbled on the side of my papers, “This is automatic. This isn’t a switch you just turn on and off.” Stress hormones flood your system, making you run faster and feel stronger, and your blood flow shifts entirely to essential functions.

The Brain Going Offline

Here is the wildest part: during an acute crisis, your Prefrontal Cortex goes completely offline. That is the part of your brain responsible for logic, language, and making good decisions. (Fun fact from my notes: it’s not even fully developed until age 25!) Instead, the Amygdala—your brain’s emotional smoke detector—takes over the driver’s seat.

So, if you’ve ever gone through a traumatic event or a massive shock and thought, “Why couldn’t I think straight? Why couldn’t I find the words?”—don’t beat yourself up. Your brain was literally protecting you by shutting down the logic board so you could survive.

Normally, this “alarm” goes off, your body does its thing, and it returns to normal typically within 48 hours. But what happens when the alarm gets stuck? If that alarm keeps ringing for more than 30 days, that is when post-traumatic stress can settle in, and it’s a sign that we need to reach out to professionals for rest and healing.

2. Being the “Ministry of Presence”

So, knowing that our brains literally short-circuit when life hits the fan, how do we help each other? How do we show up for a friend whose alarm is ringing at full blast?

The curriculum talks about the Ministry of Presence and Spiritual and Psychological First Aid (SPFA). SPFA is just a fancy way of saying: being a compassionate, supportive presence to help lower someone’s acute distress.

It’s not about having the perfect answers. It’s about the art of being.

According to my training, being a safe space for someone means:

• Exhibiting a comfortable, non-anxious presence (showing them “God with us”).
• Meet someone exactly where they are—not expecting them to change how they are feeling.
• Validate their feelings instead of arguing or minimizing their problem.
• Give undivided attention, take cues from the hurting person, and focus on their needs, not your own ego.

A Note to Self (and You): If you don’t feel care or compassion for the person in that moment, or if you feel yourself getting anxious, the guidelines give us the green light to step back. You can’t pour from an empty or chaotic cup.

3. How to Actually Make Someone Feel Safe

When someone is in a heightened state of vulnerability, their judgment might be impaired, and they might have a diminished capacity to care for themselves. They don’t need a sermon; they need to feel safe.

Here are the practical steps straight from the course on how we can create that safety for them:

1. Ask them directly: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how safe do you feel right now? What can I do to help you feel safer?”
2. Connect them to their comfort zone: Lean on who or what makes them feel secure—whether that’s a pastor, a close friend, or even their pet.
3. Take practical, small steps: Provide comfort, ask permission before touching or moving things, and just provide a glass of water.
4. Breathe: Encourage deep breathing to physically tell the amygdala to step down and let the prefrontal cortex back online.
5. Connect to God quietly: Turn to prayer, a gentle hymn, or a grounding Bible verse.

As the Good Samaritan’s Parable (Luke 10:25-37) beautifully reminds us, a neighbor is simply a person who helps another person when they have trouble—especially when they are a stranger. And as the training diagrams show, helping is a beautiful blend of Listening, Being, Doing, and Speaking (with Listening and Being taking up the biggest slices of the pie!)

Final Thoughts

We live in a broken world where trauma and unexpected loss can hit us out of nowhere, bringing depression, heavy burdens, or the temptation to make poor choices just to numb the pain. But those effects can be mitigated when crisis responders—when we as friends and sisters in Christ—step in to give hope, offer stability, and support each other so nobody gets stuck in their worst moments.

Let’s use the NLT version of Galatians 6:2 to anchor this home:

“Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.”

Next time someone you love has their “alarm” going off, remember: you don’t have to fix it. You just have to be warm, safe, accepting, and fully there.

Have you ever felt your brain go completely “offline” during a stressful moment? How did someone help you feel safe again? Let’s talk about it in the comments.