Bombing behavioral rounds after a layoff, and it's not even the technical stuff tripping me up

Got let go in March, finally back in the interview loop, and it's the behavioral questions wrecking me, not the technical ones. I can talk through a binary search fine. But "tell me about a time you handled conflict" and I just freeze, like I'm supposed to have a polished anecdote ready and instead I'm improvising something half-true on the spot. Anyone actually written these out beforehand, or does that make them sound rehearsed and worse?