I wrote an article yesterday about how safe relationships embrace and do not exploit the fawn response. This is a follow-up to that article, and the premise is there’s a redemptive side to all the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Firstly, I’ll concede that being triggered through the trauma responses never feels good, because being triggered occurs through unsafe vulnerability, personally, and at times through exploitation, interpersonally. Even if you can’t put your finger on it, it never feels good. I’m not giving license here to a positive spin on being triggered.
But I want this to be a space for encouragement for those who are on a journey with their trauma triggers.
FIGHT
When a person is triggered in fight mode, there is a sense of extreme injustice felt that compels a person to react against it. The heart is one of advocacy. It’s a flipping over of tables kind of heart. That’s our indignant Jesus.
Part of the journey of unpicking the maze that is the fight response is observing ourselves in the triggered moment, especially as we reach up toward a goal of “do no further harm.” It’s wonderfully redemptive to identify with not only the anger in the injustice, but with compassion for those who have been wronged. Healing is more of the latter. This is akin to what Jesus must have experienced in being “moved with compassion because the people were distressed and dispirited, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)
The goal of healing the fight response could be to refine compassion from the anger. The compassion has a productive pastoral use. Compassion connects us to a world that can be helped. There’s always healing in this kind of service.
FLIGHT
Being triggered in the flight mode is often done for self-protection. There are times to hide, just as there are times to reveal. Paul took flight at times, as did other biblical figures. Jonah hid. Even Jesus’ parents took flight when they wisely sought safety from Herod’s machinations. The point is, wisdom dictates that there are times when fleeing is right. We’ve all fled situations that would have been foolish to stay in. Especially in a world where malevolence is often cloaked in secrecy, blessed it is for the one who needs to escape when they can get refuge and indeed sanctuary.
The goal of healing the flight response could be to accept that fleeing is right at times, whilst discerning opportunities to stand one’s ground on those occasions that are actually safe. But importantly to neither judge nor condemn responses, but to observe and learn from them.
FREEZE
Whilst freezing in certain moments does serve to enable those who would exploit (and I can think of horrendous examples where people have been abused), freezing is also appropriate when the mind knows no way ahead.
This is not about making something good from something very disempowering, for I can’t think of anything worse than being frozen in trauma, but there’s some wisdom in not reacting overtly when there’s no capacity to process what’s going on.
The goal of healing the freeze response could be to accept limitations, to acknowledge safe boundaries and work within them, to respect the body’s communication method and go with it.
FAWN
Much as I mentioned in my article yesterday, there is a servant hearted desire to love the other in the fawn response. The difference being that not everyone is trustworthy enough to honour that servant heart that seeks to love others at all costs.
Too often people take advantage of it, and the narcissist particularly draws this behaviour out. But the redemptive feature of fawning is it’s a beautiful heart behind it.
The goal of healing the fawn response could be to see the fragile, vulnerable, naïve beauty in it, and to celebrate it within safe community of the like-minded.
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Too often the trauma responses are seen as dysfunctional. Perhaps it can be seen that the trauma responses can at times actually be functional.
It’s easy to get down about the automatic responses made to triggering events. Sometimes, however, there’s a redemptive side to these responses.
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