Why it’s so beneficial to understand your stress response
Today’s topic is one I wish I understood better years ago. I’ve talked a lot about what happens when you get stressed and the physiological reaction your body has to it. But today we’re diving into the psychological side of the stress response.
Over two decades ago, Pete Walker coined the term fawn as the fourth f after noticing stress response behavior in his therapy practice that was separate from the three more well known responses
Before we dive into the stress response, I want to make a special note that if this brings up thoughts, feeling, and/or memories of past trauma, please seek the support of a trauma trained professional to help you in processing what you’ve experienced. And one more note – this is a BIG topic I’ll be doing a deep overview, but we’re still just scratching the surface.
What is the stress response
At the most basic level, the biological imperative of all living beings is to survive.
To do that, organisms strive to gather the resources they need to meet their basic needs, and avoid risks and danger which could put their survival in jeopardy.
Baked into our brains is this desire to survive. And when we’re faced with one of those things that could put our survival in jeopardy, our brain, and body, react by triggering a stress response which prepares us to best handle the threat.
And that’s great when we’re actually in real danger.
Real vs. Perceived Threats
However, our brains just don’t differentiate between actual threats and perceived threats.
Actual threats are things like coming face-to-face with a hungry lion. Perceived threats are things like running late for work or unexpected company the day before you were planning to clean the house.
Here’s a great way to tell the difference between real or perceived threats – real threats don’t involve the past or the future, they’re dangers here in the present moment.
Perceived threats are based on the consequences you expect to happen as a result of something happening here in the moment (or something that has already happened).
For instance – the lion will eat you in the here and now. Running late for work isn’t about actually being late but about the consequences that may come from being late. And the unexpected company with a messy house is about what they might think or say in the future about your housekeeping.
How the stress response manifests
The way you respond to stress varies based on your past experiences, personality, and the current situation.
However, there are a few things we all have in common which we’ve talked about before.
When the stress response is triggered, your brain responds by flooding your body with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Your respiration and heart rates increase, and your body moves resources to your extremities and deprioritizes systems deemed non-essential for survival in a crisis. These “non-essential systems” include your digestive, reproductive, and immune systems. And the amygdala, the fear center in your brain steps into the driver’s seat as the logic and reasoning centers in your brain go off-line.
But that’s all about how you physically respond.
Where we start to see a lot of variation is in the way we mentally and emotionally respond.
The origin of your personal stress response tendencies
Most of us learn how to handle stress in childhood. We watch how the adults around us handle their stress, and we discover how when we feel stress or fear they react or respond to us. And based on those observations, we being to form stories and beliefs around the “appropriate” way to respond to fear and stressful situations.
It’s important to remember that many of these stories are formed when we’re still very young. And as a result we don’t have the life experience, nor the ability to think as logically and insightfully as we might as an adult. What we experience is being filtered through the limited life experience and world view of a young child.
Unfortunately, some children experience deep trauma which shapes their stress response. Others experience what might feel like a huge deal to them as children but which seems less important as they look back through the eyes of an adult. Regardless of how you might respond to these experiences now, please offer yourself the grace to recognize they were very real to you as a child.
Nature vs nurture
While our experiences in many ways shape the way we respond to the world, we also have our own unique personality that we came into this life with. And our personality can influence the way we respond to stress.
Additionally, based on your family history, there may be inherited trauma and corresponding epigenetic changes which come into play. When we experience trauma, it can cause our gene expression to change. It’s not changing our actual DNA, but rather changing the way our body understands our DNA.
I like to think of these epigenetic changes like a light switch – the trauma may be flipping the wires so off is on and on is off. The light and the switch are still there, they just aren’t responding the same way they used to.
All of these components – our stories and beliefs, our unique personality, and our inherited trauma all get thrown into a big mixing bowl, combined, and create the framework which drives our default stress responses.
So what are those stress responses
As you review the four f’s below, think about which one or ones you identify with. Try to do so without judgment – remember there’s an awful lot that goes into how you respond to stress – and none of the f’s is fancy free!
Also keep in mind that while you might have one or two you normally default to, depending on the situation you may find you respond with any one of the four.
Fight
The fight response is meeting fire with fire. When you come face-to-face with danger (or stress), you prepare to meet that danger head on.
If when you feel stressed, your first response is to get angry, to look for someone or something to blame, or if you prepare to “stand your ground”. That’s the fight stress response.
Flight
Flight is avoiding danger through escape. Instead of fighting the lion, you’re ready to run as far and as fast as possible to get away from the danger.
If when you feel stressed, your first response is to physically remove yourself from the situation or to try and keep so busy, perhaps throwing yourself into work or projects, that the danger can’t catch up to you that’s the flight response.
Freeze
Freeze is when you’re simply unable to respond to the threat. Often when experiencing the freeze response, you disassociate either by checking out of the situation or from your own role and experience in the stressful situation.
If when you feel stressed you tend to shut down or feel unable to make any decisions or take any action, that’s the freeze response.
Fawn
Fawn is the fourth f. It’s when you try to be so helpful and try to meet the needs of others in a way that the threat diminishes, is redirected, or disappears.
If you find in stressful situations you’re constantly trying to keep the peace, if you struggle to say no, or if you’re more worried about what others think and feel, or what others think about you, than what you actually need, those are all indicators of a fawn response to stress.
If you identify as a people pleaser, you might be raising your hand right now – fawn is often the stress response people pleasers’ default to.
How understanding your stress response can help you
Knowing how you respond to stress can be incredibly helpful as it allows you to focus on the right tools and techniques to best help you remain calm and resilient – even in the face of stressors.
I have a friend who’s currently experiencing an ongoing stressful situation as a result of family not respecting her boundaries.
As someone who defaults to the fawn response when stressed, she’s recognized a pattern of allowing others needs to come at the expense of her own.
When we don’t treat our boundaries as important things that need to be respected, neither will the other people in our life. Not only has she recognized this pattern, she also knows her resilience is low as she deals with fallout from this situation and it would be “easier” to just allow to all be “ok”.
But allowing it all to be “ok” would simply lay the groundwork for her boundaries to not be taken seriously or respected in the future. To start shifting the way she shows up in these relationships, she’s chosen to limit contact to email right now. It allows her the opportunity to respond when she’s in a less reactive place and able to offer compassionate but clear communication which respects everyone involved.
So how can you use this to help you?
If you know you frequently default to the fawn response
When you hear your mouth saying “it’s ok” while a voice inside says – “no, no it’s really not”, take a step back from the situation. Consider what the realistic consequences will be of vocalizing what you’re really thinking or feeling. And consider what the realistic consequences will be of not vocalizing what you’re thinking or feeling.
Think about what methods you can use to advocate for yourself in a way that feels doable – like responding via email instead of over the phone.
If you know you frequently default to the flight response
When you notice you’ve thrown yourself into distraction to think about anything but the stressful situation you’re trying to avoid, ask yourself if the situation will go away if you simply avoid it. Chances are it won’t. And even if it does, would you be happy with the outcome that resulted?
Take some time to reflect on the situation and the best way for you to take action to reach an outcome you’d like to achieve. You can journal, meditate, make lists, or use any other self-reflective activity that works for you.
If you know you frequently default to the freeze response
When you notice you’re shutting down emotionally, or feel stuck, unable to take any action on a specific topic or in a particular area of your life, zoom out and ask yourself where you want to be, and how you want to feel, five or ten years from now.
In order to become that person, or have what that future version of yourself has, what action would you need to take today to move down the path to become that person living that life in five or ten years?
If you know you frequently default to the fight response
When you notice your temper flaring, it’s a great time to give yourself a time out. Think about how an angry response might play out – in the past has it resulted in the outcome you wanted without any unwanted consequences?
Consider how you can communicate how you feel about the situation using calm and neutral languaging and focusing on “I” statements combined with facts – for example “I feel disrespected when you say X”.
Take the steps you need to help you stay calm
With all of these stress responses, as you begin to take action, remember that the best way to keep your instinctive stress response from kicking in is to remain calm.
As you notice you’re responding from a place of stress, or before you begin to take action, use whatever self-care tools and techniques work for you – things like the mindful moment, the audible exhale, grounding visualizations, or a round or two of tapping can be powerful in helping you downshift your stress before or while taking action.
Offer yourself grace recognizing the deeply rooted origins of your reactions
Having said all that, it’s important to remember that for the most part, these stress responses have been with you most of your life. The goal here isn’t to erase that part of you, rather to learn to recognize it when it comes up and to use tools and techniques which help you provide some supervision to the response so it’s not running the show.
This all takes time and effort, just like building any other habit or technique, the more you practice, the easier and more natural it will become.
Consider practicing on “smaller” stressors before tackling big ones. For instance, if you’re feeling stressed because you have a major work deadline coming up AND you’re stressed because you have to send something to school with your kids for the bake sale tomorrow, consider trying out your tools and techniques on the bake sale first to help you build confidence in your ability to provide supervision to your stress response.
Power of awareness of patterns and habits in enabling you to make a different choice
Throughout this episode, I’ve used words like understand and notice.
The most important step in being able to make a change in the way you respond to stress is recognizing first how you’ve responded to stress in the past, and second recognizing in the moment when your stress response is stepping into the driver’s seat.
Without being aware of what’s happening, we’re unable to make any changes to how we react or respond – we’re simply running on autopilot. Which again, is probably great if a bear is about to eat you, but not so great if you’re running late for work and stuck in traffic.
Once you know how you’ve responded to stress in the past, it allows you to be on the lookout for similar reactions to arise as you continue to move through life. And when it does, you have the opportunity to take action before you shift into autopilot mode.
When you notice you’re moving into a stress response, take a few minutes to calm yourself. Those things we talked about earlier – the mindful moment, audible exhale, or grounding visualization are all a great place to start. Turn to the tools and techniques you’ve found work for you in shifting into a state of parasympathetic nervous system response – your rest and digest state. And from there, determine the best way to move forward.
Helping you understand which situations might be more difficult for you
Knowing the stress response, or responses, you normally default to can help you recognize which situations might be more difficult for you.
With that knowledge you can decide if you simply don’t have the resilience for a specific conversation or experience at the moment, or if you need to do a few minutes of extra self-care and resilience building before you approach it.
Think about the ways to communicate that will best help you manage your stress response in a given situation or with a specific person. Often using modes of communication that allow you to pause, take a few deep breaths and think about how you want to respond can be helpful.
Sharing this awareness
Depending on the specifics of the situation, if it feels safe, you can even vocalize to the person you’re engaging with that in this type of situation, you have an instinctive response to react in a certain way, you’re trying not to do that, but may require a time-out if your stress response starts stepping into control.
If Adam says or does something that hits one of my triggers, we both understand when I say – I’m feeling triggered, and this isn’t really about what you said or did, but it’s hit an old wound, and I need a little time to process what’s just happened. It allows me the opportunity to calm my instinctive response, and then return to the conversation with additional reserves. And it provides him with some context for why I’m walking away in the middle of a conversation.
When you can identify potentially stressful situations or conversations in advance, it allows you to prepare yourself to handle them in a way that will help you control your instinctive stress response. And that means you’ll be showing up more fully present – which allows you to communicate clearly and compassionately.
Your Next Steps
We’ve covered a lot today! And as you can probably tell, this is just an overview of a very broad topic. If it resonated with you, make sure you get the cheat sheet for this week’s episode – it covers the four different stress responses and how once you understand them you can use them to help you live your best life. You can get your copy using the form below.
And remember – living your best life isn’t about changing your life – it’s about changing the way you show up for your life!
Show Notes
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[…] from a place of having virtually no boundaries. I was a people pleaser and no stranger to the fawn stress response. The result, I was more than willing to sacrifice my needs to take care of someone else. […]