(Edit: This is one of those posts that didn't go where I thought it would. I'm glad I wrote it.)
We've all heard of the "fight/flight" response to a perceived threat. Well, apparently there are more options than those two.
A few years ago, I heard the "freeze" response added to the list: fight, flight, or freeze. Still more recently, a true crime podcast introduced me to the fourth—and so far final*—member of the list: fawn.
When you're confronted with a perceived threat, your body produces hormones (maybe adrenaline and epinephrine? I'm not a scientist) that fire you up to handle the danger in one of those four ways.
Until about ten years ago, I operated under the assumption that 1) there were two responses to a threat: fight or flight, and 2) that everyone was predisposed to favor one response or the other. Since humanity's threats are now less "a sabertooth tiger is chasing you" and more "your inbox is overflowing," I assumed that we got to choose our stress response, and the choice was more personality-based than anything else. Some people are fighters, some people are flighters.
Naturally, I wanted to be categorized as a fighter, and between those two, I think I probably was.
Was.
The thing about stress** is that it puts a lot of—well, stress on your body. It's exhausting. It's unsustainable. We cannot operate under stress forever, at least not without real consequences, like depression and anxiety and hormonal imbalances.
I think I spent a lot of my life being a fighter, and kinda thriving off of it. I always enjoyed arguments and challenges. I have a sign in our kitchen that says, "Underestimate me. That'll be fun." My character Ember is 100% a fighter.
But...I think I got tired?
As for most people, age 18–22 was a season of change for me. And for me, it wasn't a season of good change, at least on the whole. Yeah, I went to college and won awards and learned a lot and made friends that are still with me today. But a lot of the trauma I carry with me happened in those years too. I internalized a lot about relationships that I'm still unlearning. I shoulded myself out of 95% of the college experience in favor of a GPA that I couldn't even tell you today. I sought counseling and couldn't get any. I went to church alone for a couple of those years and cried and felt invisible. I watched out my dorm window as people played in the snow and realized I didn't have anyone to play with. I sank back into an eating disorder for a bit. I just...
Basically, I got really, really tired and stopped being a fighter. And I don't know that I ever really "rested" from that season in a soul kind of way. I'm not sure I know how.
I'm doing a lot better now. I was doing a lot better by the time Gabe and I got married, and holy CRAP am I doing a lot better now than I was when we got married. I think the Covid years hit all of us pretty hard, and I'm still processing all that too.
But I still don't feel like a Fighter. A while ago I told Gabe that I feel like my brain has been living in fight/flight mode for years and I'm so exhausted that all I can do is flight***—from just everything. Like some days I can't even face getting up, much less working or cooking dinner. I hate that because I consider flight to be the coward's way out, the weak way out. Stand and fight your battles, dammit. Stand and brush your teeth.
When I heard about the other two stress responses, freezing and fawning, I had to reconsider.
Freezing is what it sounds like: neither fighting nor seeking shelter from a perceived threat, but becoming paralyzed by it.
Fawning is a learned trauma response and it applies when the perceived threat involves another person. "If I can please/placate/flatter this person who threatening me, maybe I can avoid conflict with them."
Maybe I am worse than a flighter, I thought. Maybe I'm a freezer. When it comes to certain types of interpersonal conflict, I'm a fawner too, although maybe that's the ENFJ. It ain't the Eight, that's for sure.
As I sit here and write this post with no point as of now, God has suddenly struck me with two things:
1) None of the stress responses are inherently dumb or cowardly. They're all designed to save you in different scenarios. If you're faced with a sabertooth tiger, fleeing is probably the smart course of action. In a situation where you've hidden from a threat, staying frozen is probably wise. In some kidnapping situations, fawning has bought victims time and allowed them to escape—or fight—at more opportune moments. God didn't wire our brains with one "right" stress response and then three others for those too weak to use fight. The stress responses are all tools and we need to use wisdom to understand which to employ at what time.
2) I always think about the Fighter/the Eight part of myself as being the "real" one, and maybe that's not true. I have this idea that I need to get back to being able to fight all the time. I need to get back to not feeling so much. (Even though I'm also on a journey to feel more?) I need to get back to being tougher and more active and more aggressive and more sarcastic and more "me."
But maybe that's not the truth. Maybe—just like God didn't make one "right" stress response and three loser ones—God didn't create me to be one side of myself. Maybe the Fighter/the Eight is me, but so is the part of myself that's really, really tired. Maybe that part of myself doesn't need to be amputated; maybe it's telling me something important. Maybe the part of me that's bubbly and attuned to other people's emotions isn't an overly sensitive people pleasure, but represents virtues like compassion and mercy.
Maybe the "realest" version of myself is an integrated version where all the parts have an open dialogue with each other, and all four of the stress responses are available to me as appropriate.
Well huh. I don't know where I thought this post was going, but not here. I think I meant to talk about the four Fs and define them and ask everyone to consider which one feels most accessible to them? But now I think the goal is to have all of them accessible and not be angry at yourself for choosing a "dumb" one.
The thing is, we're all doing the best we can. The ultimate goal is to increase our capacity for better, but until then, you're fine. You're okay. Have a little compassion. You're not going around hoping that you do a bad job of your day or wanting to sabotage everything you love. On a day when you only have 40% to give and you give 40%, you gave 100%. Everything you do or don't do is a part of you trying to talk to the other parts. Maybe we just need to get better at listening.
And, as always, I'm talking to myself, I'm just doing it in written form because that's the only time I actually listen to me. I do hope something in here was encouraging to you, even if the journey was a little indirect.
~Stephanie
* In the midst of Googling for this post, I did see a list of five: fight, flight, freeze, flop, friend. I'm guessing that in the list of five, "fawn" was broken up into flop and friend.
** She says with authority, having done diddlysquat research and relying only on things she thinks she remembers hearing on podcasts and YouTube videos.
*** I know it's "fly" or "flee." I don't care.
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