Me and my “fight” response.

We trauma survivors often have a complicated relationship with the “fight” trauma response. 

We don’t like it. It often reminds us of angry people we grew up with— or angry people who have appeared in our lives since. 

Anger and aggressive energy have often been used to intimidate and control us— thus, when we feel the “fight” trauma response leap up inside us, we can be profoundly uncomfortable with it. 

We don’t want to be angry. We don’t want to be aggressive. We don’t want to hurt anyone. 

Speaking for myself, my “fight” trauma response is often in an effortful tug of war with my “fawn” trauma response. 

I can get just enraged when I feel I’m being treated disrespectfully or unfairly— and then, in short order, be flooded with profound anxiety that I’ve ruined a relationship or an opportunity, and scramble to make things right as fast as I can possibly backpedal. 

The thing is, I’ve come to believe it is VERY unhealthy to deny or disown the rage that I experience when I feel I’m being treated unfairly or disrespectfully. 

At the very least, it’s counterproductive to my recovery to deny or disown what’s at the core of that rage: an instance that, god dammit, I am worth being treated fairly and with respect. 

The truth is, I HAVE had people, including professionals in the mental health field who have bigger reputations in trauma psychology than I have, take advantage of me. 

I HAVE had people lie to me. 

I HAVE had people turn their back on me. 

Is my reaction to these things spiked because of my complex trauma history? Of course it is. It takes a minimum of self-awareness to realize that I’m hypervigilant to feeling unsafe or unrespected in a relationship. That’s real. 

But it’s ALSO real that that hypervigilance doesn’t come out of nowhere— and the “fight” impulse behind it is, in some ways, fundamentally healthy. 

It may not be to my advantage— or fair to the people I am in personal or professional relationships with— to come at them with undue aggression when I’m triggered and in “fight” headspace; but it’s also the case that, without the nudging of that “fight” impulse, I’m very likely to let people get away with disrespectful or unfair behavior, just to avoid making things unpleasant or awkward. 

What the “fight” impulse does, for me, is it allows me to step out of my normal anxiety about what people think about me and what they want from me— and I NEED to be able to step out of that anxiety in order to appropriately assert myself. 

The “fight” impulse, in some ways, can be our best friend. 

The truth is, all trauma responses— fight, flight, even freeze and fawn and flop, even “fuck it”— have an aspect to them that can be fundamentally healthy. 

They definitely have aspects to them that supported us in literally surviving some pretty awful sh*t once upon a time. 

We don’t want our trauma responses to be our ONLY go-to’s when the pressure is on; and we don’t want to let our trauma responses run roughshod over our consciously chosen values and priorities. 

But, returning specifically to the “fight” response, sometimes we NEED that little bit of rocket fuel to break out of a “freeze” or “fawn” pattern. 

Yes, sometimes there is internal backlash. We’ve been WELL conditioned to keep our “fight” response under wraps. 

We’ve often been shamed for getting angry— told that it is “childish.” We’re told that getting emotional, as we often are when a “fight” impulse pops in us, is a signal that we’re “immature.” 

Make no mistake: we NEED our “fight” response. 

I need my fight response. 

Do I sometimes have to course correct for it? Sure. But that doesn’t have to mean launching into a full on “fawn” response. 

That balance isn’t always easy to find. 

But welcome to trauma recovery— where everything is nuanced and mistakes don’t matter. 

Breathe; blink; focus.