Fight, Flight, and Stage Fright: The 3rd Fear Response No One Talks About.

In my weekly studies I've been reading Anodea Judith's, "Eastern Body, Western Mind." Below is an excerpt from her book, specifically taken from the chapter that specifically deals with healing the 2nd chakra.

(Photo: Dressed myself as the Marionette from FNAF. Made the mask out of liquid latex and everything!)

(Taken from page 153)

"When an organism is threatened, the flow of energy in the body is increased in preparation for fight or flight-..."

I had to stop myself for a second because once again, I didn't relate to something I was reading and I became momentarily irritated. 

 I've never had a fight response but I've also never had a flight response. I don't run, I don't punch things that jump out at me, I always seem to freeze. Then I continued reading-

"-If neither running nor fighting are possible (as with a child getting beaten by his father), then we have to override these impulses, even while the body is being energized. Repeated trauma that we cannot overcome forces us to live in this energetic contradiction of activation and inhibition. This results in a kind of frozen intensity known as 'tonic immobility' or the 'freezing response'."

I had to put the book back down and process this. 

The freeze response is a direct result of trauma.

Memories of past violence and shit relationships came flooding back to me all at once. I don't really care to go into detail, but I can state for whatever record is out there that this is SO true. 

The fight response can assist an individual in defending themselves against other 'predators.'

The flight response assists the individual by moving them away from the threat.

The freeze response allows an individual to temporarily separate from their body to spare them from feeling pain.

"The ability to to play dead as a way to fool predators or lessen the effect of the trauma is a natural biological response throughout the animal kingdom. Freezing enables us to partially check out of the body and disassociate from the painful sensations that are likely to occur. If we cannot prevent trauma, disassociation is a powerful defense. It keeps us from being overwhelmed by deadening our awareness in the immediate experience."

Disassociation is something that I've struggled with my entire life. It probably stems from my struggles with depression, but the worst part about my depression was I couldn't turn myself back on. 

I felt like a shell of a person and a lot of times hours would pass with me doing nothing more than staring out into space. In fact, the disassociation became so prevalent at one point I turned to self harm.

( I began to cut myself at a young age. (I was probably 10 or 11.) I discovered a strange and intoxicating immediate relief after accidentally scratched the back of my hand with a sharp rock.  I didn't know what "cutting" was. I didn't know that other people did what I was doing. . .to me at that point in my life i believed I was insane. But now I've been almost a year clean! :)

I'm milking it at this point, I suppose. I'm just documenting thoughts at this point. 

This has brought up so many questions and theories in my head that I finally had to get them out.

• Is the freeze response considered "learned helplessness" in terms of psychology?
• If someone screams and shields their face when faced with a perceived threat, is that considered freezing or is it a modified version of the fight response?
• (Continuing the thought above) And does this change depending on what the perceived threat is? Like a male scaring someone vs. a spider.
• Can the freeze response fade over time? (Can you 'cure' the freeze response?)
• Does the fear response have any correlations with potential/existing mental illness?
• In terms of evolution is the freeze response 'weaker' than the other types of reactions? (I think this one depends entire on the person and their experiences of their own life so far)
• Can one person display multiple responses to fear? Or are we 'stuck' with only one?

If you have anything to add, please leave your comments below! I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!!

Just to be clear, I haven't intended any of the information above to be offensive or condescending. I bring this content to the proverbial table with nothing but love for knowledge and respect for individualistic struggle/growth.  Please be respectful of others opinions. 

-MerMayed

(Photo: I figured out that if I move the camera while I take the shot, everything blurs and becomes 299463x more spoopy)