Fight, Flight, or Fight

Fight, flight, or freeze.

I like to think of myself as a bad-ass. I have a black belt, I've been in many fights (with men bigger than me), I ride a motorcycle, and hey; I throw cabers. I should respond to perceived danger with a Fight response, right??? I can't tell you how many times I've told myself this, because the number is really impossible to judge...thousands, hundreds of thousands...millions... The truth is, I "know" better than to berate myself, but I do it anyway. My higher brain knows better, but part of me that was traumatized, and that was told in so many ways by so many people that it was always her fault, that she was the "wrong" one...she can't listen to logic...she can't believe logic.

Fight, flight, or freeze.

I had my black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I was strong as hell. I was an adult, and I was never going to let anyone violate me again.  I looked him in the eye and told him "no." But then he was on top of me and I froze. i couldn't breath. i couldn't speak. i couldn't move. It was my fault, I should have fought...

Fight, flight, or freeze.

These are the ways our nervous system responds to danger. We don't get to choose. To a small degree our predisposition determines how we will respond, and to a greater degree our early experiences of sense of safety, trauma, and support (or lacks there of) determine which mode we will default to. We can predict who will develop PTSD, and who won't based on a person's perception (and actual) current internal and external resources, as well as that's person's belief that they can utilize and rely on those resources...which has a ton to do with the previously mentioned factors. As a trauma therapist I know this. And yet, I don't always feel it, I don't always own it, I don't always KNOW it... I have gotten better over the years...therapy, lots of therapy. Being in positive relationships (not just romantic). Learning to trust myself in small ways, that don't seem to have anything to do with all of this stuff. Loving myself and others. Finding and recognizing my strengths.

Fight, flight, or freeze.

Over the years I've had therapists try to tell me that if I'd fought back, he probably would have killed me. They were attempting to help me not be so hard on myself. But he wasn't that kind of guy, and their attempts were more annoying than helpful. I wasn't protecting myself from a horrendous beating, or murder when I froze that morning. I was doing what my nervous system had been programmed to do years before when I was (like a fawn) truly helpless: I froze. The nervous system is an amazing thing. It keeps us breathing without thinking about it, it can block out the billions of bits of information that our sensory system is taking in so we can focus in on what is "important", it develops automatic responses to various stimuli, including danger so that we can deal with it without thinking about it.

I have been working on re-writing my programming for a loooong time. Sometimes I think I have the cracked the code, sometimes I think it's hopeless. It's been a long spell of being in the Hopeless mode, but this whole finding my voice thing seems to be shaking things up. I can't always speak up for myself, but I can speak up for others. I can't always act in the moment, but I can muster up the courage to deal with some things later.

I'm starting to thaw. I'm starting to fight. Or maybe I have been fighting, I just didn't KNOW it until now.

(There are many cultures that believe that there is power in knowing/saying someone's name. I can speak now. I speak your name, Jeff H. I reclaim my power from you.)