Dear mental health advocate,
How has your weekend been? Here in Amsterdam spring is finally happening, so this is definitely lifting my spirits up. I hope that wherever you are in the world, you are feeling okay too. If you need some distraction or something to read, here’s another free edition of The Present Psychologist Paper. In this issue I will discuss how our body can react to the impact of trauma. You might have heard of the flight-or-fight response, but did you know there are actually more? If you want to know which, scroll down to find out!
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How Our Body Reacts To Trauma
The fascinating part of being human is that we can contemplate our existence, we are aware of our thoughts and can think about the future and past. But, just like any other species we also have our automatic processes in our body we do not consciously control. Think about our heart, it just beats. We do not have to deliberately manage it every second of every day. Sure, we can become aware of how our heart pumps, we can listen to it or feel it. Fascinating, right? And there are more mechanisms inside of us that can be triggered in certain situations. One of these instinctive reactions you might have heard about is the flight-or-fight response.
If we are faced with immediate danger then our body and brain quickly calculate how we need to act. It is a natural and physiological feedback system, and it is a survival instinct that has existed for a long time. Walter Cannon, an American physiologist first mentioned the flight-or-fight response in 1915 in his book ‘Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage’. At first, he saw this as our acute reaction to intense stress. It stems from our history as hunter-gatherers. Way back then, we faced dangerous situations when we were hunting for food. Imagine that suddenly a lion is standing in front of you. Your life is at stake, so you have to react quickly. Do you run or fight?
How it works inside our body is very interesting. Our senses and brain perceive a threat to our life and trigger our sympathetic nervous system immediately. Hormones are released like epinephrine and adrenaline, preparing ourselves to either attack the thing that is a danger to us or to run away from it. This is such a fast mechanism, we are hardly aware as it is activated automatically and subconsciously. The body needs to defend or preserve itself. After discussing this flight-or-fight response, other people (mainly psychologists and physiologists) further researched how our body reacts. They found that besides fighting or running, there are other triggered responses too.
The four responses and their symptoms
Next to fight or flight, there are other options our bodies and brains consider when we are faced with a threat or danger to our lives. Psychologists nowadays differentiate between four systems and define them as fight, flight, freeze or fawn. To understand each of these reactions better, I will list them below and describe which symptoms generally accompany each response:
Fight: this mechanism is triggered when our body and brain believe we could potentially overcome the threat we are facing. It means our brain prepares our body to fight, which looks like this:
Feeling strong anger
Violent tendencies
Clenched jaw and fist
Willingness to punch, hit or kick
Being upset and in attack mode
Flight: this response is triggered when our body and brain are certain we cannot survive or deal with the danger around us. The brain then wants to ensure the body will move as fast as possible away from the threat. The following symptoms rapidly arise:
Tightening muscles
Strong desire to move
Fidgety and anxious behavior
Feeling restless in your whole body
Eyes dilating and looking around for a way to escape
Freeze: sometimes a person knows that fighting is not an option because they estimate the threat will overpower them, but there is also no possibility to escape. They believe they will not be fast enough or there is no direction to run away to. In that case, a person can shut down and completely freeze. The body and brain then cause the following:
Skin becoming more pale
Feeling numb and stiff, getting cold
Heartbeat rising quickly
Being overcome with fear and dread
Trying to accept and tolerate some stress
Fawn: the most unknown reaction to a threat situation, the fawn response can best be explained when the body and brain cannot freeze, fight or flight anymore. It is not a mode triggered by imminent danger such as a dangerous lion, but more caused by chronic stress and slumbering danger. Many times this is seen in abusive families and environments. A fawn response looks like a person trying to please to avoid escalation. The following behavior is often present:
Trying to get approval
De-escalating the situation
Not saying no to people
Crossing your own boundaries
Mirroring expectations and behavior
Trauma and why it happens
It is crucial to understand that each of these modes and responses are perfectly human, it is part of our instinct. Our will to live and to survive is such a primal force that we resort to various coping mechanisms if we face a crisis. These dangers could be acute trauma, like a building that is on fire or a snake trying to bite. But as seen with the fawning response, sometimes the danger is not necessarily acute and instead more chronic and dormant. Even if it is not immediately life-threatening, such situations like abuse can trigger all of these responses too. People should remember that childhood trauma or even adult trauma in many gradations lead to fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses.
Sometimes people have been subjected to so much trauma or threatening situations that their nervous system and fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses are activated when there is no danger. When people suffer from phobias this is seen as an overactive and falsely triggered mechanism for example. Trauma deregulates our bodies and therefore healing requires not only talking and therapy, also body work. Think about meditation, working out, mindfulness, yoga, breathing exercises and consistent sleep. A deregulated system needs consistent care.
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My name is Alf Lokkertsen and I am a psychologist and writer, creating mental health content for you. My passion is to raise awareness about topics related to psychology, as it has helped me greatly in my personal life. I strongly believe that many problems could be avoided or dealt with better if everyone had some in-depth psychology knowledge.
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