According to the book I'm in, which I'll put below, there are four ways people generally react and protect themselves when faced with emotional pain and of course we supposedly all picked these things up for the most part during childhood.
There's fight, flight, freeze, and faint. They give a couple examples like "if you were beaten or molested, you may leave your body under stress, going into a kind of trance" or "if you identified with a parent who raged, you may be hot tempered and often scare others with your anger".
Personally, I do all four types and it just depends on the situation. The book says that's normal but we all have one that's usually more dominant than the others; our go-to protection strategy, if you will. There's a little quiz of course. I think I know exactly where I'll be more dominant lol but I'll put my responses here.
Directions go something like this. Think about a recent situation where you felt like someone was angry at you or rejecting you. Examples: when you felt blamed unfairly, when you felt disrespected, when you felt like you'd been betrayed. Using a scale of 0 (Not me!) to 5 (Are you reading my journal?), how well do the following responses describe your reaction to the situation.
Here we go!
- Fight
- I get angry so fast, I can't control it. I might break something or hit someone.(5)
- My heart instantly hardens. I feel cold, unloving.(5)
- My whole body gets hot. I want to jump up and scream. (5)
- Flight
- I'm out of here! I might even leap from a moving car if it's bad enough.(1)
- I want to just walk away. I think I never want to see the other person again.(5)
- I cant stop talking. My mind is going a million miles an hour.(0)
- Freeze
- My mind is a blank. I can't think of a thing to say.(4)
- I feel punched in the stomach, unable to move or talk.(5)
- My heart is beating so fast. My mouth is dry. I feel like a robot.(4)
- Faint
- I can]t remember what the other person said.(1)
- My body feels like Jell-O. My knees buckle and I can't stand up.(0)
- I just wait until the bad part stops, then act like nothing has happened.(1)
From most-likely reactions to least my scores go like this:
Fight=15
Freeze=13
Flight=6
Faint=2
Basically, my scores say that when I get hurt emotionally, I get angry to protect myself. This doesn't surprise me. Anger's protected me many times. Anger enabled me to protect myself physically when I needed to. Anger protected me so I was able to do things that I could never or should never have done. Anger protected me until I could get to safer places. Anger protected me when I needed to leave bad people and toxic relationships behind. Anger protected my mind from feeling what it should have been feeling but maybe would have been too much.
However, not counting my mom, I could probably count on two hands the amount of times in my life that my anger has actually boiled over into violent action. There must have been some lessons I was taught along the way as a kid about not losing control or my grip on reality and consequenses. Maybe it was seeing my mom lose control and my desire to never be like her or do that. Maybe it was because seeing what my anger did or caused when it came out never felt good later. Maybe it was because my anger scared me when I thought of what I knew I had inside of me and what I was capable of if I lost that control. I would guess that's why freezing up is a close second for dealing with bad stuff. In my mind, freezing up is like shutting down completely and that goes hand in hand with anger.
I would say the degree to which this type of reaction happens is directly based on how vested I am in whatever is causing the pain. I'm not going to get overly riled up if I don't give a shit about you and if I do care, then it will be swift, automatic, and with an intensity level of Insane. Aside from my mom, its only happened with people (or animals) who have been kind of important at one point or another. I've only lost it (my control) on my brother when we were kids, an old boyfriend, my previous dog who thankfully always knew exactly when to exit stage left, my husband once a long time ago, and one of my kids who I never hurt but did end up scaring which made me feel like the biggest loser in the world afterward. That happened a couple times. I'm not proud of all those times or the things I did but I do think I'm doing pretty well considering the amount of rage I've had floating around inside me. I've learned to use my anger in positive ways like in the gym or if I have to do scary things like make a speech. It can get me through almost anything! Additionally, when things are going in a bad direction sometimes its good to be quiet, listen, observe, and not lash out right away. So me completely shutting down and not being able to express anything, including the craziness that might be happening inside, has turned out to be a helpful thing in a lot of situations.
Something that's not helpful and is getting in my way though is when these types of reactions are automatic but not necessarily warranted anymore. I'm human so I'm going to experience emotional pain from time to time at the hands of someone else. That doesn't make them the "bad ones" from my younger days who genuinely seemed out to get me. It doesn't mean they deserve to be cut from my life for minor infractions and it doesn't mean I need to lose good people that potentially, actually love me in the right ways because I don't have a handle on myself. I need to be able to turn it on and off. What I'm trying to say is that now, when it comes to emotional pain caused by others, I want to learn how to act instead of just reacting.
And that, folks, will be the meat and potatoes of a future exercise on trust. 😉
Goodnight everyone and no one.
Wall, C. L. (2005). The courage to trust: A guide to building deep and lasting relationships. Oakland, Calif: New Harbinger.
No comments:
Post a Comment