- Why do we fight?
Fighting is a coping mechanism to trauma.
It could be mental, emotional, physical, or sexual trauma.
Each of those traumas has the same effect
on the body and our brain.
A simple definition of trauma
is that you thought your world was safe, something happened,
and then you no longer felt safe.
In response to that trauma,
our nervous system is automatically hardwired
to keep us safe.
There are three stages to this pre-programmed response.
Whenever we feel threatened,
we instinctively turn to the first level,
which is social engagement.
We call out for help, support,
and comfort from the people around us.
But if no one comes to our aid
or we are in immediate danger,
then we revert to a more primitive way to survive,
fight or flight.
We fight off our attacker or we run to a safe place.
However, if this fails,
if we can't get away or we're held down, or we're trapped,
or the adults in our life do not protect us,
then we try to protect ourself by shutting down
and expending as little energy as possible.
We are then in a state of freeze or collapse.
So quick recap.
The first stage is social engagement or calls for help.
The second stage is fight or flight.
The third stage is collapse or freeze.
The body signals defeat and withdraws.
This is the stage where disassociation happens.
In this video, we are focused on the fight component.
It is important to recognize though
that each of these reactions
is in response to a threat or a trauma to keep us safe.
Fight is a coping mechanism.
It is a pre-programmed response of our nervous system
when we feel threatened.
That threat could be a real one, such as a trauma,
or it could be a perceived threat such as a trigger.
A trigger is something that reminds us of a previous event
where we felt threatened or unsafe.
So what does this look like experientially?
Our body has a built-in warning system
that is part of our nervous system.
When we are in danger, signals through stress hormones
are sent to our brain.
These signals provide a lightning fast response to threats.
Like when a car in front of you slams on their brakes,
you feel a rush of emotion,
and quickly brake to avoid an accident.
For me, this feels like a pulsing in my head,
a wave of heat through my entire body,
and my breathing gets faster.
For a person not affected by trauma,
you quickly return to a place of calm,
and continue going throughout your day.
The car in front of you in this example
can be compared to a trauma trigger for you.
You are going throughout your day,
and out of nowhere, there are red brake lights.
You are in danger.
It could be a smell, a song, a color, a name,
or someone that reminds you of someone else.
In an instant, you are back in that unsafe
and vulnerable place.
You respond with your go-to coping mechanism of fight.
The hardest part, no one else sees the brake lights.
Everyone else is going about their day
as if nothing happened.
For those who live with PTSD,
the proverbial car slams on their brakes.
You experience a trauma trigger
that no one else sees or relates to.
Your warning system goes off,
and then does not go back to a place of balance and calm.
Instead, stress hormones stay elevated.
Danger signals continue to flood your entire system
repeatedly day after day for weeks, months,
and years on end.
In the long term, this cycle wreaks havoc on your health.
Dr. Kolk in his book "The Body Keeps the Score"
explains it this way.
"After trauma, the world is experienced
with a different nervous system.
The survivor's energy now becomes focused
on suppressing inner chaos
at the expense of spontaneous involvement
in their own life."
These attempts to maintain control
over unbearable physiological reactions
can result in a whole range of physical symptoms,
including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue,
and other autoimmune diseases.
This explains why it is critical for trauma treatment
to engage the entire body, mind, and brain.
Now, you might think to yourself,
"I've never experienced a trauma."
Or, "Well, yeah, I experienced some hard things,
but other people had it so much worse."
This is not the Olympics of suffering.
And just because someone else's journey
looks different than yours
does not mean that yours isn't valid.
Something to be aware of is chronic emotional abuse
and neglect can be just as devastating
as physical abuse and sexual molestation.
Not being seen, not being known,
and having nowhere to turn to feel safe
is devastating at any age,
but it is particularly destructive for young children.
If your go-to emotion in your life when you feel threatened,
unsafe, or vulnerable is fight, you are not alone.
It is meaningful to recognize
that this is a stress response.
It is a reaction to a time and place in your life
where you felt unseen, unheard, or unsafe,
and damn it if you're going to let that happen again.
That is why you are fighting.
You will protect yourself and keep yourself safe,
especially if you weren't in a position to do so previously.
It's also worthwhile
to bring up that different personality types
tend to respond to trauma and triggers differently.
In some of our videos,
we've talked about the personality types dreamer,
healer, closer, and thinker.
I joke that the go-to emotion for closers is anger,
and that they are the most likely
to react with a fight response.
Though other personality combinations can also.
You may be highly competitive, ambitious, and driven.
You may gain your self-worth from this drive.
You possess great confidence,
which is often taken as arrogance, though it may not be.
If you will do whatever it takes to accomplish a goal
and tend to be very creative
in finding solutions that no one else sees,
your coping mechanism for stress is quite often fight.
This is because that response is in alignment
with protecting what you value and how you see the world.
I relate to this because I'm a closer,
and as a child, my mom would say to me,
"She would rather hit you than look at you."
My mother was a healer
and sometimes she was a bit overwhelmed by my tenacity.
Now, I'm not saying a fight response is a bad thing.
The question for you, if this is something you relate to,
is is your reaction serving you?
Is it helping you be the highest
and best version of yourself?
Or are there things you would like to do differently?
Nobody can answer those questions but you.
Okay, so I'm going to tell you
about three different times in my life.
Lucky you, story time.
Okay, so we were on a trip,
and my siblings and I had gone to,
like, this youth activity.
Basically it was like childcare
while our parents went and did other things.
And so these weren't kids
that we knew or had any sort of relationship with.
I was a tweenager, not quite a teenager,
but that age where boys and girls
like start to like each other, except for I was a tomboy.
So I definitely didn't like boys, ew, that's gross.
Anyway, there's these two little boys there
that were friends,
and one of the little boys decided that he liked me
and he wanted to be my friend and hang out with me
instead of hanging out with his buddy.
Well, his buddy took that hard
and decided to start picking on me.
And if you know anything about me outside of YouTube,
I am not the type of personality
that takes well to being picked on.
And so, and my dad, who has a background in martial arts
taught me how to hit correctly. (laughs)
And so this little boy keeps physically attacking me,
and he pins me down on the ground,
and I push him off and I say,
"Don't do that, or I'm going to hurt you."
And he did it a second time.
And I push him off and I say,
"Don't do that, or I'm going to hurt you."
He does it a third time and I give him a black eye.
And I told him, "I told you I was going to hurt you.
You shouldn't have done that."
Of course, the adults that were watching us were horrified.
They thought I was way out of line.
They didn't know the backstory.
My own brother, who's a healer,
and we have a great relationship, said to me,
"Why are you always hitting people? It's so embarrassing."
And I said to him, "Well, you're my big brother,
and if you protected me, I wouldn't have to protect myself."
I had a level of tenacity for sure
that has mellowed out with experience and age.
But I would look at that situation,
and I would say was that serving me,
was that instinct to fight serving me?
And I would say it absolutely was.
Story time.
We're going to go to a story from my second marriage,
which was rough, it was really rough.
So we were having a fight,
and he had just, you know, gotten drunk,
and slept with someone,
because that's within our moral values.
And then he had told me during this fight,
it was a couple days later.
He told me that if I hadn't been such a bitch
that he wouldn't have cheated.
And well, I hit him.
I didn't give him a black eye,
but you know, I hit him
and it turned into a physical altercation.
And I was so, so angry for, you know,
what he did and then what he said,
and then the fact that he tried to blame it on me,
which is completely ridiculous, right?
But I also realized something later that day
and the next day, you know,
besides the fact we were getting divorced,
was that I had given him my power.
I had given up my choices,
because I didn't respond to the stupid things he said.
I reacted.
And I did not ever want to be in the position
where I wasn't in control
of my own emotions or my own response.
And that was a huge lesson in my life
that we can be justified in how we behave.
And I would say in that situation, I was justified,
but is justified what I want?
And I would say in that situation,
fighting that way didn't serve me.
Going to my marriage with Jonathan,
there was definitely bumps and roller coasters
in my previous marriages,
and that absolutely affected our marriage now.
And Jonathan had never been married before,
and was so sweet and so kind,
and just out of graduate school
as a marriage and family therapist.
But we still had to work through
our own conflict resolution skills.
We still had to figure out what that looked like for us.
And I absolutely had the tendency to be volcanic,
and lash out and explode, and he would be so, so hurt,
because one of his love languages is words of affirmation.
So harsh and critical words for him are just as devastating
or even more devastating than physical attacks.
And that was also a place in my life
where I decided that I didn't want to be this fighter,
that that didn't serve me,
that that's not how I wanted to show up.
And so I had to go through the work and the process
of learning new behaviors and learning new habits,
and learning healthy conflict resolution.
On the flip side of that, there's been more than a few times
that there has been incidents regarding my children
that I have had to show up.
Well, I didn't have to,
but I chose to show up in a very firm manner,
and there have been incidents with my children
that I have had to show up in a very firm manner.
And my kids know that about me and they appreciate it.
But it is that response,
not so much a fight response that is just a reaction,
but a protection response.
And I am still very much in control of my emotions.
And I just wanted to share those stories with you,
because we all have our own journeys
and we all have our own stories.
And sometimes it can feel a little bit lonely,
or like no one understands,
or maybe there's shame surrounding our stories.
And I want you to know that you aren't alone.
So the question to ask yourself
isn't whether your fight response
is good or bad or justified.
The question is, who do you want to be in your life
and how do you want to show up?
And is our coping mechanism for stress,
trauma, or triggers serving you, or is it out of balance?
Will you do me a favor?
If this video has been helpful for you,
will you share it with a family member or loved one
who could also use this support?
And remember to keep shining, we need your light.
(gentle music)