2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Defensive bio-behavioral fight / flight / freeze strategies are used by all people from time to time depending on the situation requiring protection. The history of violence suffered in childhood determines a predisposition to certain survival tactics, which, being fixed, ultimately integrate into the structure of the personality. People with traumatic experiences lose their ability to interact with others, replacing patterns of interpersonal communication with patterns of "perpetuated" protection.
Action defense includes fight-or-flight responses mediated by the sympathetic nervous system. The reaction "freeze", is activated in a situation of emergency, this is the path of "last hope", using deadness, leading from a state of connectivity and awareness to a state of collapse.
The "hit" type of reaction correlates with the narcissistic organization of the personality. People with such an organization are convinced that power and control can soften their distress and gain love. Bey responders use contempt, intimidation, and devaluation of others to achieve the desired mirroring. It is about overcompensation, demonstrating the opposite behavior and lifestyle. The cover for the inner emptiness is a constant struggle for the survival of the narcissistically organized individual (pride as a cover for inferiority, strength as a cover for powerlessness). Pathological narcissism has been compared to a kind of malignant tumor that has affected the self.
Self-consciousness in the narcissistic organization of the personality is “split” and has a “two-level” structure: at the surface level, a protective grandiose I is found, while at a deep level a weak real I is hidden. Experiencing oneself includes: feelings of falsehood, shame, envy, emptiness, defectiveness and inferiority, or their compensatory opposites - defensive self-sufficiency, vanity, superiority and contempt.
The type of reaction "run" is correlated with obsessive compulsive defense and schizoid personality organization. M. West argues that the "run" reaction underlies the schizoid organization of the personality with its tendency to actively avoid difficulties and limit self-perceptions. The schizoid person strives to isolate himself from painful experiences and close himself off from the influence of other people.
P. Walker describes representatives of the escape type as people who constantly avoid the pain of abandonment by means of a symbolic escape into constant activity. They rush both in thought (obsession) and in action (obsession). When the obsessive-compulsive escape type is not doing anything, he is worried and plans activities.
The reaction of "numbness" is associated with dissociation, which allows you to break out of the rigid framework that reality imposes, bring dramatic memories and affects outside the framework of everyday consciousness, change the perception of the I, create a distance between different aspects of the I and raise the threshold of pain. The reaction of numbness is "the path of last hope", immersion in ignorance, insensibility and nothingness.
P. Walker describes the reaction of "numbness" as a reaction of camouflage, prompting to hide, isolate oneself and avoid human contact.
Stupor types can be so slowed down in isolation that it looks like their starter switch is stuck in the “off” position. (P. Walker)
Fight / Flight / Freeze Responses in Therapeutic Communication
The "beat" reaction manifests itself in confrontation with the therapist, devaluation and attack, insistent demands for recommendations, exploitation of the professional intelligence of a specialist as a computer.
The "run" reaction is manifested in active and passive avoidance of closeness with the therapist; during the therapy session, the escape is represented by the chaotic nature of the therapeutic session, the client's bodily anxiety with a frequent change of posture, excessive talkativeness: the client's behavior informs - "I do not want to be here", "I must leave immediately."
The reaction "freeze" manifests itself with a fixed gaze, "empty" eyes that do not look, an amimatic and indifferent face, silence, a stupor pose, we do not understand the meaning said by the therapist.
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