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cptsdwhoa
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Default Jun 09, 2019 at 10:41 PM
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lilfae View Post
Interesting thread!

Does the book say that people tend to do just one of these things? I think it sounds strange to think of it as types. I think I do all of them from time to time. Fighting is not very often, but I can do it if it's not just for me, but for somebody else as well.

But flight, is that only meant physically? In therapy this week my therapist talked about the window of tolerance (not sure of the word in English), and that when I fall down beneath it, I am often dissociating, which means I've fled the situation, mentally. But if so, fleeing and freezing can actually be the same thing. Or am I getting it all wrong?


Do you experience feigning as something different than freezing? I would have thought it was the same.
In the book he does write that you can have hybrids of the types. Like for me I tend to Fawn and Freeze mainly. Fawn is my usual response though.

This is some information from his site about the flight response and the freeze response (I hope it answers your question):

The Flight Type and the Obsessive-Compulsive Defense
Flight types appear as if their starter button is stuck in the "on" position. They are obsessively and compulsively driven by the unconscious belief that perfection will make them safe and loveable. As children, flight types respond to their family trauma somewhere along a hyperactive continuum that stretches between the extremes of the driven "A" student and the ADHD dropout running amok. They relentlessly flee the inner pain of their abandonment and lack of attachment with the symbolic flight of constant busyness.

When the obsessive/compulsive flight type is not doing, she is worrying and planning about doing. Flight types are prone to becoming addicted to their own adrenalization, and many recklessly and regularly pursue risky and dangerous activities to keep their adrenalin-high going. These types are also as susceptible to stimulating substance addictions, as they are to their favorite process addictions: workaholism and busyholism. Severely traumatized flight types may devolve into severe anxiety and panic disorders.
TX: Many flight types are so busy trying to stay one step ahead of their pain that introspecting out loud in the therapy hour is the only time they find to take themselves seriously. While psychoeducation is important and essential to all the types, flight types particularly benefit from it. Nowhere is this truer than in the work of learning to deconstruct their overidentification with the perfectionistic demands of their inner critic. Gently and repetitively confronting denial and minimization about the costs of perfectionism is essential, especially with workaholics who often admit their addiction to work but secretly hold onto it as a badge of pride and superiority. Deeper work with flight types - as with all types -gradually opens them to grieving their original abandonment and all its concomitant losses. Egosyntonic crying is an unparalleled tool for shrinking the obsessive perseverations of the critic and for ameliorating the habit of compulsive rushing. As recovery progresses, flight types can acquire a "gearbox" that allows them to engage life at a variety of speeds, including neutral. Flight types also benefit from using mini-minute meditations to help them identify and deconstruct their habitual "running". I teach such clients to sit comfortably, systemically relax, breathe deeply and diaphragmatically, and ask themselves questions such as: "What is my most important priority right now?", or when more time is available: "What hurt am I running from right now? Can I open my heart to the idea and image of soothing myself in my pain?" Finally, there are numerous flight types who exhibit symptoms that may be misperceived as cyclothymic bipolar disorder; I address this issue at length in my article: "Managing Abandonment Depression in Complex PTSD".

The Freeze Type and the Dissociative Defense
Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the "off" position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - "the lost child" - who is forced to "choose" and habituate to the freeze response (the most primitive of the 4Fs). Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type's defenses develop around classical dissociation, which allows him to disconnect from experiencing his abandonment pain, and protects him from risky social interactions - any of which might trigger feelings of being reabandoned. Freeze types often present as ADD; they seek refuge and comfort in prolonged bouts of sleep, daydreaming, wishing and right brain-dominant activities like TV, computer and video games. They master the art of changing the internal channel whenever inner experience becomes uncomfortable. When they are especially traumatized or triggered, they may exhibit a schizoid-like detachment from ordinary reality.
TX: There are at least three reasons why freeze types are the most difficult 4F defense to treat. First, their positive relational experiences are few if any, and they are therefore extremely reluctant to enter the relationship of therapy; moreover, those who manage to overcome this reluctance often spook easily and quickly terminate. Second, they are harder to psychoeducate about the trauma basis of their complaints because, like many fight types, they are unconscious of their fear and their torturous inner critic. Also, like the fight type, the freeze type tends to project the perfectionistic demands of the critic onto others rather than the self, and uses the imperfections of others as justification for isolation. The critic's processes of perfectionism and endangerment, extremely unconscious in freeze types, must be made conscious and deconstructed as described in detail in my aforementioned article on shrinking the inner critic. Third, even more than workaholic flight types, freeze types are in denial about the life narrowing consequences of their singular adaptation. Because the freeze response is on a continuum that ends with the collapse response (the extreme abandonment of consciousness seen in prey animals about to be killed), many appear to be able to self-medicate by releasing the internal opioids that the animal brain is programmed to release when danger is so great that death seems immanent. The opioid production of the collapse or extreme freeze response can only take the individual so far however, and these types are therefore prone to sedating substance addictions. Many self-medicating types are often drawn to marijuana and narcotics, while others may gravitate toward ever escalating regimes of anti-depressants and anxiolytics. Moreover, when they are especially unremediated and unattached, they can devolve into increasing depression and, in worst case scenarios, into the kind of mental illness described in the book, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.
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Thanks for this!
blueoceaneyes, Lilfae, may24