Arrested self-protection

Who protected you?

Who protected you as a small child through your teen years and into young adult life?

Much of the conversation about anger focuses on explosive anger and out of control rage. The ruined relationships caused by lashing out or the devastating contempt on someone’s face or in their words. We can see these fight responses as unskillful attempts at self-protection.

That wasn’t what I did. I went into flight/freeze and pretended it wasn’t happening. This works well in families who are invested in promoting the idea that everything is fine if they don’t talk about it. It fits in well with the naive ideas we are conditioned to believe of happily-ever-after in romantic comedies.

Denial takes a lot of energy but it is an essential cornerstone for people with a predominant strategy of flight/freeze/fawn. We learn to ignore our gut feelings and bare our throat to bullies and narcissists, like a scared dog submitting to a more powerful one. If I pretend this person isn’t harmful, if I’m super nice and compliment them, they will protect me.

There is a high cost to this strategy of putting down our weapons and hoping to not be hurt. We all know that some people do kick people when they are down. So what drives this behavior? What makes us think that not protecting ourselves is going…