Do we fight, flee, freeze or fawn?
Reading time: 9 minutes
Do you often find yourself reacting in the same way when your buttons are pushed? Afterwards, do you usually feel that you’d rather have reacted differently? Then there is a good possibility you have limited defence options in threatening situations. However, those can be expanded at any time!
People innately have three basic defences against danger: fight, flight, or freeze. However, the danger we’re talking about here is a physical threat to life; we end up in an acute life-threatening situation and in order to survive, the physiological stress response - in which a lot of energy goes to the muscle groups that need it very quickly - is highly welcome. Nevertheless, the times when we had to run daily from predators are far behind us, and a growing part of humanity hardly has to deal with daily acute mortal danger. A relatively new threat that we face, since the advent of the agricultural revolution, is the so-called emotional danger.
In old times, we had to deal with predators and the elements, but nowadays we particularly have to fear ourselves and each other more than anything else (see the news - or, better not, if you want to keep your stress level down). Societies are getting bigger and more complex, and that causes stress because: so many people have so many different views. We therefore increasingly find ourselves in situations that do not pose an acute danger to our lives, but which we consider to be highly threatening and dangerous nonetheless. A cheating spouse can undermine the perceived safety of the marital arrangement; a lying politician can damage public confidence; an irate parent may threaten a child; a new supervisor may threaten my job.
As we utilize fight, flight or freeze to protect our physical body, so we use them to fend off emotional danger. In addition, we have expanded our repertoire with the capacity to fawn (i.e. pleasing behaviour) as defence mechanism. This one generally takes on a rather negative connotation, but it can come in handy when a certain situation calls for it, as trauma therapist Pete Walker points out:
“People who experience ‘good enough parenting’ in childhood, grow up with a healthy and flexible repertoire in response to danger. In the event of real danger, they can rely on all their defence mechanisms. If they have easy access to the fight response, they are familiar with their own boundaries and well able to state them, be assertive, and aggressively protect themselves if necessary. Also, they easily and appropriately access their flight instinct and disengage or retreat when confrontation would increase their danger. They freeze appropriately and give up or stop struggling when further activity or resistance is futile or counterproductive. Finally, they also please in a compliant, ‘playful’ manner, and are just as ready to listen, help and compromise as they defend and express themselves and their needs, rights and points of view.”
This could be described as defence mechanism training. In a balanced household, where parents are both physically and emotionally available, children are taught knowledge of the different defence mechanisms, and in which situations or circumstances they can be best and most effectively used. Walker continues:
“However, those who experienced ‘not good enough parenting’ in childhood often learn to survive by relying too much on the use of one or two of the defence mechanisms.” (‘Not good enough parenting’ can vary from neglect or overburdening to mental and/or physical abuse – and not just from parents, by the way - but also covers that very large group of sweet and benevolent parents, who are however little or not physically and/or emotionally available. -ed.)
He then proceeds to explain that fixation on one or two particular defence mechanisms, limits one’s ability to access the other ones. Let’s use a fun analogy to illustrate how that looks. Imagine that we live in a world where only four languages are spoken, and those languages are our defence mechanisms: English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. In order to be confident and balanced, knowledge of all languages is necessary, because we never know in advance what kind of situation we will find ourselves in, and which language will be spoken there. Now consider we only speak English. Statistically that means in 25% of all situations are we able to deal with a situation effectively, because we can understand what the other people are saying. Yet the remaining 75% of our time we feel lost and vulnerable, because we can’t communicate in the language that the situation requires. Just talking louder in English when Chinese is being spoken by the rest of the people, usually doesn’t help a situation. As a result, our ability to relax diminishes drastically in the vast majority of situations we find ourselves in.
When we’re lucky, we grow up in an environment that teaches us all four defence mechanisms (or all four languages). More realistically, unfortunately, is that our parents are as unaware of their own impoverished repertoire of defence mechanisms as their parents were, so most likely we won’t even find out about this concept of defence mechanisms at all, before we reach adulthood ourselves.
Therefore, while growing up, as we will likely overdevelop one or maybe two of the four defence mechanisms, it figures that we won’t have access to the others in situations where they are most effective. Moreover, as Walker aptly explains, overdeveloped defence mechanisms can turn into rigid beliefs, behaviours, and mental (and physical) illness and disorders. An excessively developed fight response can progress into narcissistic disorders, while obsessive compulsive behaviour, and perfectionism, can arise from an overdeveloped flight response. If freezing is the sole go-to defence mechanism, dissociation might be lurking, while excessive pleasing increases our tendency to have our boundaries ceaselessly crossed, based on a false conviction that we are utterly helpless without the other (i.e. co-dependency).
As soon as we have specialized in one overdeveloped defence mechanism at the expense of the others, we then tend to automatically resort to it as soon as our buttons are pushed, regardless whether it is the most effective defence mechanism for that particular situation or not. Indeed, if English is the only language we know, but for whatever reason we find ourselves in a situation where everyone else only speaks Chinese, frantically shouting louder and louder in English only exacerbates the situation.
When it comes to deploying defence mechanisms, no two situations are identical, so each one needs a fresh point of view and its own unique approach. If a situation turns out to be a dead horse, but the only available defence mechanism is pleasing, then there is a good chance one will continue to pull that dead horse for way too long a time. Having access to all defence mechanisms therefore gives real freedom of choice and can provide complete relaxation. If there is a comprehensive defence mechanism training, there is confidence in one’s spontaneous ability to use the most appropriate mechanism in any threatening situation, without having to think about it in advance (just like intensive physical and mental training eliminates the need for an athlete to think about the execution during the world championships).
In my particular case, I am a specialized, over qualified, licensed, distinguished and award winning pleaser. That was reflected, for example, in some of the bands I played with, because I wanted to be a rich and famous drummer. I would first gather musicians with the unchecked expectation that they wanted the same thing as me. Then we usually worked it out musically, and after about six months there was a great repertoire, so from that moment on I wanted to accelerate: performing a lot and develop a show/image/brand, preferably based on my musical heroes of Iron Maiden, Kiss and Van Halen.
Since none of the other band members came up with a vision, which was essential to me; I created one, and then presented it to the band. My expectation here was that any vision was better than no vision, and that my fellow band members agreed on that - again without checking (concepts like tuning in and feedback – except from guitars – were as yet unbeknownst to me). So I’d start making a website, posters, arranging performances, etc., only to find out after another six months that I was the only one who developed ‘extra-musical activities’. That pushed my buttons because: big threat ahead - my intended desired situation was endangered! That's where the pleaser came into action.
Now, in addition to the musical and extra-musical activities, I also started putting time into enthusing the individual band members. I visited them, discussed the vision, encouraged and supported, anything to get them into first gear. Again with the expectation that… well, you know by now. After about another half year it turned out: nothing had changed (in my perception). So instead of enthusing, I then began to threaten to quit, but still I thought to be doing this with the aim of making this band into the new U2. The fact that I was pushing the other band members away from me, remained safely out of sight.
That childish thought fit very well with my childish behavior, which resulted from my childish pain, or child pain. In my young youth, I started to develop pleasing as a defence mechanism to keep myself afloat. When my fellow band members didn’t act the way I had hoped for, my child pain buttons were pushed with the result that I sought refuge in the only defence mechanism available to me: pleasing. While a freeze reaction for instance would probably have been much more effective at that moment. If I only had asked if the other band members enjoyed my vision and were willing to comply, that could have saved everyone time, headaches and energy leaks.
Finally after about two years I left the band with an accusing finger pointing at the rest; after all, it wasn't my fault that the band didn't work out. This pattern repeated itself in about six bands before it became apparent to me. And even then I got into it once again! It's like the great Dutch football player and Zen master Johan Cruijff once said: “You won't see it until you get it.”
It becomes apparent here that I was little aware of my own boundaries and needs, and that I had an unrealistic wish (namely to become a rich and famous drummer as opposed to a professional musician) which, when achieved, would satisfy my needs and solve my problems forever. The lack of self-knowledge made my unrealistic wish incredibly important, and the moment the path to the desired situation was jeopardized, I was automatically triggered into the only defence mechanism I knew; pleasing until way past the expiration date, only to leave the bands highly frustrated in the end.
Luckily, the flight instinct and the freezing reaction have developed and improved greatly over the past eleven years. Sooner and sooner I seem to recognize when a situation turns out to be a dead horse, and it is becoming easier and easier to count to ten as opposed to a primary reaction when my buttons are pushed, or when the bucket overflows. But that wouldn’t have been possible without my family, friends and not least my classmates from physiotherapy training. I am still very grateful to all of them for the feedback and mirrors that they, with a lot of compassion, have continuously presented to me – and still do.
Still lacking, though, was a developed ability to fight. Knowing my limits and needs and having the ability and courage to stand up for them, was until recently an underdeveloped and unknown area. The only known fighting manifested itself in outbursts of anger when my bucket was again full, and was therefore by definition not very healing or effective; not for the situation nor as a stress release. Hence the decision to leave the Netherlands for a while to learn Tai Chi in China, because by now two things had become clear: 1) having access to all four defence mechanisms under stressful conditions gives one a choice in behavior (and thus a clear increase in self-confidence and overall relaxation); 2) regardless of age, every defence mechanism can be learned.
Moreover, Walker also rightly states that there is a great power in an overdeveloped defence mechanism, because we obviously have developed the positive side of that mechanism as well. When our defence repertoire is expanded with the hitherto less developed mechanisms, the overdeveloped one can turn into one’s greatest asset.
Finally, to find out in which defence mechanism we often shoot automatically, many ways of self-assessment are available. In this article I share my own developed method for that purpose, which you can use freely when it suits you you. As soon as you find out about your own overdeveloped defence mechanism(s), you can then decide to practice your less developed ones, and thereby playfully become more resilient and relaxed simultaneously.
Good luck and jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
How self-wise are you?
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