316 - Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn

Full transcript available

Three plus one makes four

Originally, there were three trauma responses, fight, flight, and freeze, which occur based on the brain’s limbic system, which is the part of the brain wired to go into survival mode when faced with danger in the wild, like being attacked by a bear. Now, fawn has been added, or the idea of the appeaser or people-pleaser.

Fight

A fight response might look like picking up a weapon to fight off the attacking bear, for example. In a relationship, this might look like you coming back with an angry retort when a partner offends you, not backing down, being aggressive, name calling, etc.

Flight

In the wild, a flight response could be as simple as you running for your life away from an attacking bear. In a relationship, it could look like you leaving the room after an argument, being avoidant, burying yourself in work to avoid dealing with the situation at hand, engaging in substance abuse, etc. It could also manifest as being overly judgmental, needing perfectionism in oneself and others, and being chronically busy to avoid the intensity of an intimate relationship.

Freeze

Exhibiting a freeze response might look like standing absolutely still in front of an attacking bear, waiting to see what it does and hoping it leaves you alone. A freeze response in a relationship could look like total solitude or abandoning hope that a relationship is possible.

Fawn

The fawn response was coined by Pete Walker, a psychotherapist who specializes in survivors of complex childhood PTSD.

“[The fawn] types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs, and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries.”

Pete Walker

Fawning behavior can manifest as being appeasing or people-pleasing, but also having poor boundaries, being overly agreeable, trying not to take up space, ignoring personal needs, etc.

Coping with responses

• If it’s clear that these responses are occurring constantly, it may be time to seek out a trauma-informed therapist.

• Learning how to set personal boundaries can be helpful for some, as well as learning to say no. Episodes 178 and 227 cover boundaries.

• Meditation and relaxation can be helpful when you feel your trauma response beginning to manifest, as can self-soothing, like taking a hot bath, using a heating pad, putting an ice pack on your chest, or humming to yourself.

• R.A.I.N, or Recognize/Relax, Accept/Allow, Investigate, and Note/Not attach.

In both platonic and romantic relationships, the manifestation of these responses are often our body’s way of telling us that something is wrong, so it may be beneficial to explore why they keep happening.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about fight, flight, freeze, and maybe one you haven't heard of, fawn. Fawn is also known as appeasing or people-pleasing. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into what all four of these responses look like, how they might be affecting your relationships, how to determine which one you tend to use in difficult situations, and some tips to help if your response has become unproductive or maybe unhealthy to you.

Emily: I just want to quickly shout out a Patron who turned me on to this topic in a discussion group that we had recently. Thank you very much because I had not heard of the fawn.

Dedeker: Really?

Emily: No, I know, terrible. I only heard of the other three. Those are the ones that you think of when they're talking about you off in the wilderness and you're going to fight, flight, or freeze. You're probably not going to try to tell the bear, "Hey, you're so beautiful."

Dedeker: You say that now, I've got some information to throw at you about-

Jase: About bears?

Emily: I'm excited.

Dedeker: A long history of talking to bears.

Jase: Okay, good.

Emily: This is going to be a different episode than what I originally-

Dedeker: No, don't you worry. I've got some stuff- Just be so excited for it.

Emily: Jase, have you heard of fawn before?

Jase: Yes, but mostly in conversations with Dedeker.

Emily: See, Dedeker?

Dedeker: Yes, that's the thing, I've been in the mode of learning about trauma and PTSD and also doing trauma trainings in the therapeutic world. Of course, I'm just like, "Oh, yes, fawn. Everybody knows that."

Jase: It's funny because I feel like when I first learned about this concept long ago, it was always just fight or flight and then, later learned that there's fight, flight or freeze, and now, we've got fawn. It feels like maybe every few years we're going to discover a new one and add that to the list. Maybe next, it will be fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or fart.

Emily: Fancy.

Jase: Or fancy.

Emily: That's where we went. You went to fart, I went to fancy. Whatever. That's a relationship.

Dedeker: I thought you said fencing.

Emily: No, fencing, it would be weird, but an option, I guess, you can fence with a bear. You could fart at a bear also.

Dedeker: Oh, my goodness, okay, let's rein it in, and let's do a brief overview of the three trauma responses that I think most of us are familiar with, which is fight, flight or freeze. These survival responses occur because of your brain's limbic system. The limbic system is the part of your brain that's wired to go into survival mode if you encounter a bear or a lion in the wild.

This is a part of your autonomic nervous system, which is essentially your nervous system self regulates, so it's the kind of thing where it's stuff like your breath really bridges this gap, I guess, where you both have this conscious control over it, but also your nervous system takes over, things with your heartbeat or the stuff that your organs do. It's very similar with these survival mode mechanisms is that it's part of your autonomic nervous system. Of course, in modern days, these type of encounters where we truly are fighting for our life, especially against something in the wild or at the elements don't happen very often in our day-to-day lives.

Emily: Knock on wood.

Dedeker: Yes, knock on wood. We can still have similar responses in many situations. These are your brain's way of keeping you safe from danger, even if that danger looks a lot different than just a bear coming after you.

Jase: The first one is the fight response. Again, with the bear, this would be you picking up a weapon, or a rock, or a stick, or something and trying to fight off the bear that's attacking you. In a relationship, for example, if your partner says something that offends you, the fight reaction may look like coming back with an angry retort or not backing down, being aggressive, taking actions to manipulate or control the situation, name-calling, contempt, insults, things like that.

As we've talked about before, those hit some of the Gottman's Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse. Don't do those things. These are bad things in a relationship, but it's unfortunate when that fight response that maybe would help save us from a bear can actually cause us to harm our relationships and ultimately are not serving us.

Dedeker: If you're in a relationship with a bear.

Jase: Oh, Okay. Yes, you're right.

Emily: The bear needs to learn to live with you and not eat you.

Dedeker: That'll be our spinoff podcast someday.

Jase: What, the Dating a Bear podcast?

Emily: How to Date a Bear Effectively.

Dedeker: You do have to clarify, is it dating an animal bear or a gay bear because that's also very different.

Emily: Yes, it's different than this, I'm assuming.

Jase: We'll start two different podcasts, I guess.

Emily: Yes. I was thinking about the Gottman's, and contempt I think would fall under the fight, and name-calling is contempt?

Jase: That's fight as well, or contempt, yes.

Emily: Yes, but then stonewalling, is that more maybe of a flight response?

Dedeker: I'd call it a flight/freeze response.

Jase: Yes.

Emily: Yes, and then what's the other one?

Dedeker: Criticism?

Emily: Yes, that's almost a fight response, also.

Dedeker: Defensiveness, also.

Emily: Defensiveness is-

Dedeker: I don't know, I don't think that the Four Horsemen necessarily equally correspond as a perfect proxy to all of these because I think that your survival mechanism, how it manifests, can fuel any of those in a particular way.

Emily: Yes, absolutely. All right. Let's talk about flight. With that bear again, in the wild, if the bear is running after you, it may just look like you running in the opposite direction. You're trying to get away from the bear by running. I'm assuming the bear is faster than you, so good luck with that, but maybe, you're Usain Bolt and you're fine, you don't have to worry.

In a relationship, if your partner says something that upsets you, maybe you leave the room, maybe you are simply just taking actions altogether to be avoidant of your partner. Maybe, you bury yourself in work so that you don't have to deal with the issue at hand or with the conflict that's arising or that's underneath the surface in your relationship. Maybe, you engage in substance abuse and maybe you're fleeing from the problem in that way.

The research that I looked up specifically with Pete Walker, he talked a lot about that, that sometimes substance abuse is a flight response for sure, to exit the situation in some way. It can also result in being overly judgmental or a need for perfectionism in others or in oneself and chronically busying oneself to avoid the intensity of an intimate relationship. There are some similarities here to the avoidant attachment style, which we've talked about in previous episodes as well.

Dedeker: There's also connections to particular anxiety responses or nervous responses, that sometimes, that is your body and nervous system preparing you to run away, but you can't in the situation.

Emily: Yes, that's a good point.

Dedeker: That can be some of the really, really uncomfortable experiences of your body and nervous system wanting to do something, but you're just literally unable to. Then, the freeze response, again in the wild, that can look like standing in front of the bear, just being frozen, waiting to see what it does next, hoping that will leave you alone. There's actually two different types of freeze response. There's what's known as tonic immobility, which that's our classic deer in the headlights, so it's frozen, but the muscles have a lot of high tone. That's why they call it tonic and mobility.

It's theorized that this has maybe a little bit of like a gas and brake at the same time situation where it's like the muscles are ready and activated, but we've hit a point of just too much activation where we're just frozen. Then, there's also collapsed immobility and that's playing dead or just total complete collapse. The collapse response is often the last resort response when it's everything else in the situation hasn't worked to get me out. I can't fight, I can't flee, I can't fawn my way out and so then collapse is literally the last resort.

In a relationship, not with a growling bear, a freeze response might result in wanting to totally isolate yourself or completely abandoning hope that a successful relationship is possible. Pete Walker, who's a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in adults with PTSD specifically due to traumatic childhood experiences says, "Unable to successfully employ fight flight or fawn responses, the freeze types defenses develop around classical disassociation, 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 re-abandoned.

Emily: We've talked about this association a little bit on the podcast, can you discuss it again, maybe in this context?

Dedeker: Yes. The classic dissociation response is a freeze response. It's like a little bit of a shutting out of what's going on in the here and now. Sometimes, it can manifest, I think, especially in kids, it can manifest as going off into flights of fantasy, like connecting into one's just inner fantasy world really intensely. For some people, it shows up as just suddenly feeling cut off from their emotions, where they can get really activated, really angry, really sad, really angry, really sad, and then, they reach a point of disassociating away from it and not feeling any of those things anymore, just cutting it off.

Emily: I've heard of zoning out to a degree is a disassociation response. Maybe, in certain situations, it's stronger than others. Obviously, we all zone out sometimes.

Dedeker: Like anything, it can show up on a spectrum from very mild freeze/disassociation response to something very, very extreme.

Jase: I think we've talked about this at some point in the past, but another way that freeze shows up is if you're in conflict and you find you just get really, really tired. That for me, in years past, in relationships that were higher conflict, that's what would happen to me is I would just be like, "I'm just so tired. I need go to bed. I'm just so tired," because that was my body's collapsing and freezing and shutting down and just being like, "You can't do this. You're just going to shut down." For me, it would be tired is how I would feel because of that. Of all of these, as we've talked about a few times, these are natural, these are things that we evolved to do to help keep us alive.

These are things that most animals do, some of these, if not all of them. This is very much normal. These are natural. However, they can get out of hand. A strong reaction or propensity toward one of these responses might not be a big deal if you tend to go toward one, but it could also be due to early childhood trauma like we mentioned, PTSD later in life, things about the way that you were raised in your family of origin.

While it's natural to have sometimes these overzealous emotional responses that seem disproportionate to the situation, however, if there's a pattern of these things recurring often in difficult situations, especially if you're finding for yourself that they're destructive to your relationships, it might be time to take necessary steps to investigate some of the deeper roots of that and actually get some treatment or therapy for that. There's a lot of great modalities for helping with that. You could reach out to Dedeker and get some more input on it because as she said, she's done a lot of research in PTSD as well.

Emily: We're going to talk a little more.

Dedeker: Not just me, please, don't just reach out to just me. Oh my God.

Emily: Only Dedeker. No, but we'll talk a little bit more about that later in the episode, but for now, we're going to talk about fawn because, again, this is the thing that drew me to this topic because I had not heard about it before. Fawn is the people-pleaser, the appeasing, that thing. It was coined, again, by Pete Walker, that psychotherapist that we previously mentioned.

He did it in this context of discussing fight, flight, or freeze. Fawn is the other trauma response that people can have. He's an expert on and a survivor of complex childhood PTSD, and he's also an author of a book that is pretty highly acclaimed in the field called Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. A lot of this stuff came from his writings and from his research on these things.

Dedeker: Direct quote from Walker, he says, "Fawn type seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs, and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences, and boundaries." I know he lists them as like fawn types, which I think is interesting because I do think that you can maybe have a predominant type in particular situations or in your life as a whole, but also, I just want to give a reminder to people that we're all capable of all of these and often, all of these responses show up in us.

Basically, what he's referring to is that the fawn response results in appeasing, people-pleasing, or engaging in self abandoning behavior when faced with a situation that feels threatening. This can manifest in the form of having poor boundaries, not being able to say no, doing everything you can to please someone so that you can avoid conflict, ignoring your own personal needs, trying not to take up space, being overly agreeable, or going with the flow. I've also called this or heard this trauma response being called a flow. It's flow/fawn.

Just trying to go along with the flow and not rock the boat, even when maybe it's quite appropriate to rock the boat. Some interesting evolutionary psychology here is basically, there is this theory that sometimes when we are threatened, often the first resource within ourselves we rely on is our most recently evolved portions of our nervous system and our ventral vagal complex is our most recently evolved portion of our nervous system. That's the portion of us that makes it able to socialize essentially and be around other human beings.

Often, that is our first place that we go in a threatening situation. That can look like choosing to laugh, choosing to make yourself seem less threatening when someone else is around, choosing to try to talk to somebody in a low voice. You made the joke about not talking to the bear, but it's this thing where it's like when someone's sometimes threatened by an animal, you will start talking to be like, "Okay, Hey, it's okay. I'm just going to walk over here," It doesn't make any sense. The animal doesn't know what you're saying. They're not going to engage with you socially, but it's that weird knee-jerk thing that we've evolved to have that still comes up with us.

Emily: That's a really good point.

Jase: Do you remember, Dedeker, from when you were reading about that what the evolutionary order of the other ones were? If they do go in that order where fawn's the first one that your brain would try, do you remember the order of the others?

Dedeker: Yes. If we're roughly looking at a timeline and I'm not a neuro evolutionary historian, so don't expect me to be one.

Emily: Be one now.

Dedeker: Yes, we're definitely looking at most recently in our evolutionary history is our nervous system learning to adapt to socializing. Essentially, it's the part of our nervous system that allowed us to be around other creatures of the same species, even though they're within striking distance of us is this idea that we can socially engage, even though technically, these other beings could hurt us if they really wanted to. That was part of our evolutionary development. Then, before that, we get into more of the sympathetic nervous system part that controls the fight or flight essentially, that's before that. Then, the oldest is actually like our dorsal vagal complex, which is the freeze or the energy conservation.

Jase: That makes sense. When you said before, that's our last resort, if nothing else was working, that's what happens.

Emily: Play dead.

Dedeker: Yes. Basically, that's the oldest one. Of course, that doesn't mean that that's always the order these responses are going to go in. Of course, it's possible to just like skip and hop around. Of course, over time, depending on the trauma or triggers that you experienced in your life, you may learn different responses, have differing degrees of success as far as keeping you safe or keeping you undamaged and so that can also create different habits and different knee-jerk reactions within you as well. It's not always just like a nice, neat little domino effect.

Jase: One to the other.

Emily: Something that I didn't write down, but that I saw in some of my research was that trafficking survivors often do the fawn response just to, again, appease those who are putting them through that situation, who are victimizing them. I thought that that was very interesting and clearly to maybe a lesser degree, some of us also feel maybe victimized or the situation is going to be better if I just tend to downplay or make myself as small as possible to make the other person feel bigger and better. It's really interesting looking at this particular response.

Dedeker: This is all very nested of course, within socialization, depending on what body you were born into, that can change whether or not you get the message that like, "Okay, my threat response needs to be to make myself seem less threatening, or my threat response is I need to make myself seem more threatening," and that's going to change what the defaults are as well.

Jase: Yes, absolutely.

Emily: With all this, and we're going to talk about this more in our bonus, but because you have read and some of the research and looked at all of this, do you feel like you fall in a specific category of these four? If you have a propensity towards one versus the others, for instance. I know that we all can have all of them at different points in our life or different types of conflicts or with specific people, it might manifest more in one space than another, but do you have a default? Because I definitely do.

Dedeker: Yes, we know. We all know.

Jase: It's funny. I was thinking about the example with dogs and that very much my reaction to meeting any dog is to immediately go into this, the fawn behavior of talking to it and like being like, "Hey, we're cool. We're hanging out," and hoping that that comes across. I was just thinking about that because I know some people that even with Freddie, who's the tiny little dog that when some people meet him, because he gets very excited about people, that I'll watch them freeze. Physically, they'll just freeze up.

Whereas I know my reaction with a dog is almost to become a little extra loose to really be like, "Hey, I'm cool. I'm not a threat to you, don't even worry about it." I'm not saying that's always my type or anything, but just, that was something that came up when Dedeker was talking about those reactions.

Jase: What about you, Dedeker?

Dedeker: Oh God, sorry. I don't know. All of them, probably my knee-jerk is probably more of a fight response, just based on what comes up in my body, my body tends to be more feelings of like annoyance, anger, aggression, things like that and often, that's connected to a fight response, not always but often. I don't know, I think it's all over the place because I've definitely also been in situations where it's 100% fawn.

I think that, especially at this point in one's life when you've had a good 30 years or so of being in a lot of different potentially threatening situations, both in very major ways and maybe very minor ways, you do learn that sometimes depending on the context, very different things come out of you.

Emily: Yes, that's very true. That's a really, really good point.

Dedeker: I also think, I know I've had this personal experience and I've also heard experiences from other people where sometimes you can think, "Oh yes, if X, Y, and Z were to happen. I would totally respond this way," and then when you're actually in the situation, something totally out of left field comes out of you. You find yourself fighting, or freezing, or flying, or fawning. Then sometimes, there's a weird shame about that afterwards.

Jase: Yes, that's something that, the research on that aspect of how we think we would act in certain situations compared to how we actually do is super fascinating because basically what the research shows is that, one, we're actually very bad at accurately guessing how we would react in certain-

Emily: We don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.

Jase: -in stressful situations specifically because when we're thinking about it, we're thinking with our logical brain, but when we're in the situation, that's not the brain we're using, whether that's stressful, like an actual frightening, scary life-threatening type situation, or it's stressful like a job interview, or it's stressful like you're going to have sex with someone and you're trying to decide what sorts of safer sex conversations to have, anything where the stakes are raised.

Basically, yes, that we're really bad at predicting how we're going to act and not only that, but if we've gone through the experience once, we're not any better at predicting how we're going to react the second time. In fact, sometimes it can even make us worse at it because we're like, "Oh, well now I know, so next time I'll react this other way." It's because this stuff is much deeper level than that intellectual brain that we're thinking with when we think these things.

Emily: Doesn't Stan Tatkin say the lizard brain or the primitive brain or something, that part's--

Jase: I've heard of those terms, yes.

Emily: Yes, that part of you that is more of this knee-jerk reaction, so that is interesting. It's something to think about, how can I deal with these reactions? Is it something that one needs to control? Maybe in some situations, yes. Maybe in some situations, no. It might be helpful, again, if it is coming up in a way that is unproductive for you and that seems to continue to not help you make progress in your relationships. We're going to talk a little bit about that after the break, but first, we're going to discuss some ways that you can keep this information and this show coming to everyone out there free.

Dedeker: Let's talk about ways to cope with these responses and a couple of disclaimers to piggyback off of what Emily was saying before the break, I have noticed that as more and more people, just like the general public become more trauma-informed, more aware of PTSD, more aware of these trauma responses, what I have noticed is sometimes, there's a little bit of a shift of talking about regulating your nervous system, or even co-regulating with your partner your nervous systems, which is good, but there is, sometimes, this line drawn where regulating equals calm or having a regulated nervous system equals having a calm nervous system, which is not necessarily the case.

The whole point of this is not to scrub ourselves of these survival responses because we do need them still. They do protect us. Basically, having a nervous system that's more regulated means that your nervous system is reacting appropriately to what's going on. Sometimes, wanting to run away, wanting to fight, wanting to freeze, wanting to fawn can be a very appropriate response in a situation. It can be the thing that you do need to do.

Basically, the question is, and I'm going to steal a Diana Fosha question, which is, "Can you feel, and can you deal?" is what she calls it. She's a psychotherapist who wrote books about trauma, and shame, and all those classic topics. It's can you feel, and can you deal? I really like that phrase because it does set up this container of the stuff that's coming up in my personal experience. Can I let myself feel it? Am I capable of feeling it, and can I deal with the situation?

That doesn't mean you don't feel anything, that doesn't mean you're calm all the time. That doesn't mean you never get triggered or threatened. It's just, am I capable of feeling and responding and reacting appropriately? That's the tricky thing because all of us are just floating around in the world, just little amoebas in this Petri dish coming up against all these different situations and different stimuli, and we all have our own history and our own baggage that have led us up to this very moment right now.

Sometimes, we react very appropriately, and sometimes, we don't react very appropriately because of baggage. Sometimes, that's okay, and sometimes, that's really not okay. I'm really painting these with a broad brush here.

Just to say that if it feels clear to you that having really, really big knee-jerk responses that are of these survival responses if they're occurring in your life with a frequency or in such a way that it is robbing you of your well-being, or robbing you of your ability to connect with people, or robbing you of your ability to live a fulfilling life, then it might be time to seek out some help, seek out a trauma-informed therapist, or if that feels like too much right now, even just starting to educate yourself about some of these things. Psychology Today has a great tool that can help you find specifically a trauma-informed therapist in your area. If you just search for Psychology Today trauma and PTSD, they have a search function.

The good news is that there's a lot more trainings out there for therapists to become trauma-informed. It's becoming much more of a thing in the cultural zeitgeist. I think that's a really, good development. Hopefully, we'll keep growing from there that we'll start to have more resources, more professionals who are trauma-informed so it's not so hard to find somebody who understands all this stuff.

Emily: Much like jealousy, I think that these responses can act as a barometer for you to look at what is happening in your life, what do I need? What is this telling me? Is it appropriate? Is it not? In certain situations, it might be helpful for you, especially maybe if you're constantly doing fawn, for example, it might be helpful for you to start setting personal boundaries, learning to say no, something I struggle with very much, even setting boundaries with people in your life.

We have done deep dives into boundaries. Oh, have we. We did, let's see Episode 178 was the Basics of Boundaries. Then, 227 was Rules versus Agreements, featuring boundaries. These are a little bit more relationship and polyamory-specific, but there are certain nuggets of advice in there that may be helpful to you if you're looking to set some personal boundaries or for other people in your life, or even letting relationships go sometimes, that may be what you need to do. If someone is truly harmful in your life, it may be time to say, bye, bye-bye.

Dedeker: Bye bye-bye, as it were, it isn't no lie.

Emily: Exactly, that's the one.

Jase: Also, training in some skills like meditation and relaxation, breathing techniques, things like that can come in handy. When you feel your trauma response, beginning to manifest, deep breathing, guided meditation practice, or self-soothing techniques like a hot bath or using a heating pad can be helpful for just actually addressing the nervous system's excitement itself.

Dedeker: So many good hacks for this. Let me, I can't even. We got to do a whole other episode just on polyvagal nerve theory because it is fascinating, let me tell you. Long story short, your vagus nerve is the biggest nerve in your body. It goes through your entire body. It starts in your brain and goes down your throat and just literally everywhere in your body, vagus means wandering. It's the wandering nerve. It's wandering everywhere. It's a real rambling man, this nerve.

Your vagus nerve is a part of your parasympathetic nervous system. It's what slows your breath rate and increases your digestion. It's all the stuff that your body does when it's calm. You can stimulate the vagus nerve by doing things like humming or singing. They theorize that this is why oming can feel so good or why in yoga, the ujjayi breath can feel so good is because it stimulates that part in your throat or your vagus nerve runs through.

Jase: In a calming way though, not activating.

Dedeker: In a calming way. Putting an ice pack on your chest, same thing. These are all great hacks. I found for me that especially if I'm just like amped up in some way or super anxious for some reason and I really need to not be, that doing some humming or some ohming or things like that actually really does help. Sometimes, it just doesn't even make any sense, just humming some nonsense tune or just humming a single monotone note does help to at least.

Jase: I'm going to try that. That's cool.

Dedeker: I definitely recommend trying it for sure.

Jase: Sure. I do like this. If that Dedeker's ever especially prickly some morning, I can just go grab an ice pack and just be like, "Here."

Dedeker: Just slap it on your chest.

Emily: Put this on your chest, sit down and om.

Dedeker: It's not going to go well.

Jase: I'm going to have to resort to my flee response after that one. Let's talk about another particular technique for this. This is something called RAIN. Purple Rain. I wasn't sure which rain song was going to come to mind first. That was the one. Great. The RAIN is an acronym, R-A-I-N. This was created by a psychologist, Judson Brewer, an expert on anxiety and addiction. The R of RAIN is to recognize or relax. Recognize the feelings that are beginning to occur inside of you and try to mindfully relax the tension away that may be occurring in your body.

Then the A is accept or allow. Be present in your experience of the feelings that you're having. This is like when Dedeker talked about the feel and-- What was it? Feel and focus? Feel and process, feel and do it.

Dedeker: It rhymes.

Jase: Feel and heal, no. Feel and deal, deal. That was it.

Dedeker: Yes, correct.

Jase: Took while. This is the feel part of that, right? Accept or allow is yourself to accept the feelings that you're feeling. Don't try to run away from them or change them, just let them exist as they are, sit with them and experience them

Emily: Next is investigate. This is when you can check in with yourself, maybe contemplate why these emotions are coming up, recognize your own triggers, employ curiosity and absolutely empathy for yourself. Also, maybe ask yourself what it is that you really are looking for in this moment. Just try, investigate, what's going on.

Finally, note/not attach. Note what is occurring. This can help you be aware of your triggers for the next time that these feelings arise. Your emotions are valid, but sometimes, emotions and reality, they're two separate things. You might not always be having emotions based on what is actually happening in the situation. It might not be a response that is particularly suitable for the particular situation that you're in. Just recognize that and you don't stay attached to the emotion, just allow the other three steps to help you see the reality of the situation.

I also saw this step in some articles called nurture instead of the note or the not attach, it also included nurturing as this last step. You can definitely self-soothe in this step and tell yourself that everything's going to be okay. We're going to be okay here.

Jase: RAIN is to recognize the feeling, accept the feeling, investigate the feeling and then to note the feeling or nurture yourself and just let it go. That's cool. Let's try that sometime.

Dedeker: I have a client who shared with me, I'm going to try to be as non identifying as possible. Basically, they were sharing with me about how they had recognized that fawning was their dominant response that they tend to fall back on in a lot of threatening situations. As a part of this, they actually drew a picture of their little fawn. It was actually a fawn, like a baby deer.

Jase: Like an imaginary fawn.

Dedeker: That they hold a point of nurturing or of compassion instead of a point of frustration of, "Oh gosh, I always fawn my way out of these things. I do these things that I don't mean," but actually offering this gentleness and care toward that part of themselves, which I think is a great thing to do. Something that was really important in my own trauma healing work was, again, coming to that acceptance of all these things that happen in your nervous system are adaptive and they are trying to keep you safe.

Even though it can be so frustrating if stuff's happening in your body or in your emotions where it's like, "I don't want to be feeling this right now. I don't want to be reacting in this particular way," but sometimes, it can be helpful to instead of shaming yourself or shaming that part of you to try to offer a little bit of that, sometimes gratitude, or gentleness, or compassion, or even love, or even sometimes neutrality if that's the closest that you can get towards those parts of you.

Jase: Love that.

Dedeker: How does this apply to our romantic relationships? We've definitely given some examples up to this point about how this can show up in both your platonic and romantic relationships. Again, these responses can be our body and brain's way of telling us that something is wrong or there is a potential danger here, or it could be letting us know, "This almost feels like something really painful that happened in a past relationship. We got to make sure that that doesn't happen again." In any type of relationship, it can be beneficial to explore if some of these responses are coming up for you over and over again, we can explore why that might be happening.

Jase: This brings us to one of our classic Multiamory Aphorisms, which it's okay to break up, that might be the right thing to do, that that's okay, that maybe these reactions are an indicator to you that this is not the right relationship for you, at least right now, that that's a completely valid and okay solution, especially if you find these things recurring. Just keep that in mind, traditional relationship advice tells us that breaking up somehow means that you failed but unfortunately, that can actually push us into doing things like the fawn response or even the freeze response and just isolating ourselves from our partner or just always trying to placate them.

That's not actually going to lead to you having a happy relationship. I would argue even though it seems on the surface, it's making your partner happy, that it's ultimately not making them happy or putting them in a good relationship either. Just something to keep in mind there that we can learn lessons from this and it doesn't always have to result in staying together because that might not be right for you two.

Dedeker: Yes, sometimes, these responses come up and it's 100% appropriate and an indicator that maybe this isn't the relationship for you, or maybe just not right now. If you're having a lot of these deep survival responses coming up, but you generally have, or at least in your experience, it's a pretty healthy relationship or relationship that you want to continue to cultivate, it may be beneficial to think about, how are these responses affecting you and how are they affecting your partners as well?

If you've identified that, maybe in certain situations, you default to a fight response, look at how you feel and also how your partner reacts. If you're doing things like bringing a lot of aggressive action and aggressive tone, shouting, slamming doors, raising your voice, does your partner retreat or withdraw? Do they also try to fight back in some capacity? Are you able to bring yourself down to resolve conflict or does that fight response stay pretty strong for quite a while? Again, great time to practice halt, take time to stop a conflicted conversation before it gets out of hand. Again, it's a good opportunity to examine what comes up in you and how it lands on your partner.

Emily: If you're someone who is more flight-oriented, maybe check in with how you tend to respond when conflict arises. Do you do things like leave the room? Do you withdraw? Do you try to avoid difficult conversations or questions? Also, ask yourself if you ever allow for time to resolve conflicts with your partners, do you just let it bubble underneath the surface, or do you really sit down and have very specific, dedicated time to speak with your partners about challenging situations? Conflict is necessary.

It needs to happen, and it allows for growth to occur within relationships, so it is necessary in healthy relationships. The thing that you can do is take the time to check out our many, many communication tools, things like Radar, the Triforce of Communication, and hopefully, those can help make your communication with your partner more effective and easier. If you have those kinds of scripts in place, then you might not be as quick to just run from the situation and instead, trying to maybe face it head-on and it might feel a little bit safer to do that.

Jase: Then, if you're someone who tends to have more of a freeze response where during conflict, maybe you just stay silent or even sulk when those conversations get tough, saying nothing can lead to resentment and cause things to bubble up later on, or ultimately make arguments more heated or potentially make it so your partner doesn't even know that these are concerns for you. Something like using the Non-violent Communication script as a way to give you more of a structure to bring up things can be a way to help do that and help guide you in that process. I think Radar-

Emily: To make it neutral.

Jase: Yes, Radar is also helpful because it makes an intentional space for it, but this in addition, like Emily said, can make it more neutral. A quick recap of that, NVC process begins by just observing what's going on. You then describe your emotions, not positions. You talk about how you feel because of it and not you made me do this thing, or you did this thing to me, but how I feel. You identify what you need, and then you make a request of your partner.

It's this way of moving the communication outside of directly where the conflict is happening and instead circumvents that to actually get to the real roots of how you're feeling and what it is that you need from your partner and asking for that from them as a way to start that conversation, rather than just falling further down that pit of conflict or potentially freezing and running away.

Dedeker: Finally, let's talk about fawning in a relationship. Things like having poor boundaries with a partner and not being able to say no, maybe walking on eggshells, maybe pretending to be happier or more pleased or more fulfilled than you actually are around a partner. I think, especially if you're noticing that you do this with a partner and then later, you're really resentful of it or have a lot of emotions that come up afterwards could be an indicator of a fawn response as well. Yes, that's another area of growth for looking at, are there places where I feel like I can start to erect little tiny boundaries or practice saying no.

This is a great thing, especially if you're in a healthy relationship where this is something that you can actually discuss with a partner to say that like, "Hey, I noticed that just like sometimes, in the moment, before I even realize it, if I'm scared by a conversation or a situation, I just fawn and I don't realize till afterwards that that's what's happened. Maybe, you can help me. Maybe we can come up with a micro-script around me saying no, around me saying what I actually think, or find ways to make that a little bit easier." That if you have a partner who's gentle and loving and willing to hold you compassionately in that, I think that's a great thing to take to them.

Emily: If you're someone who does a fawn response, sometimes you may default to what your partner to do in most situations. This could be a great time to start telling them like, "Hey, I want to go to this place this week with you, or I would love to maybe watch this movie, or eat this food when we go out," as opposed to just saying, "Okay, whatever you want, whatever you want." Even little boundaries like that, or just making your voice heard in a way can really help you move in the direction of making your fawn response not something that harming you as well.

Jase: I think a quick note about boundaries since we've mentioned it a lot, as we said, go back and check out those episodes where we go much deeper on that, but something I've definitely experienced is that the term boundaries and the concept does get misused a lot. We acknowledged that a little bit in our episodes.

It's important to keep in mind that the boundary is something for yourself, that when we talk about like erecting better boundaries is more having this awareness of, this is the point where I need to put my foot down about something, or this is the point where I need to remove myself from a situation, or not engage in a particular type of situation or a particular type of discussion. You might think that sounds a bit like fleeing then, right? Your flight, that I'm just running away from the situation.

A boundary is different from that. It's not, "I'm running away because it's uncomfortable," but it's understanding, "I've identified that this, for me personally, is a boundary of a situation that I'm not okay to be in and that's not acceptable or healthy for me and so I'm going to remove myself." There's a different amount of intentionality there, but we don't mean boundaries to just say, make everyone else do what you say by telling them it's a boundary. A boundary is very much a personal thing and not something to be put on other people like that.

Emily: With all of this, we're going to let Pete Walker have the last word. He has a really good quote here from some of his writings where he talks about all of these responses and what the ideal is. I think many of you out there probably have all of these in small doses when they are necessary and that's totally fine. That's great.

What he says is, "Individuals who experience good enough parenting and childhood arrive in adulthood with a healthy and flexible response repertoire to danger. In the face of real danger, they have appropriate access to all of their four F Choices, easy access to the fight response ensures good boundaries, healthy assertiveness, and aggressive self-protectiveness if necessary.

Untraumatized individuals also easily and appropriately access their flight instincts and disengage and retreat when confrontation would exacerbate their danger. They also freeze appropriately and give up and quit struggling when further activity or resistance is futile or counterproductive. Finally, they also fawn in a liquid plays pace manner, and are able to listen, help, and compromise as readily as they assert and express themselves and their needs, rights, and points of view." Doesn't that all sound lovely. Let's aim for that.

Jase: It's a beautiful fairy tale land.

Dedeker: I love that none of it is, take your trauma responses and throw them in the garbage. They're there with you, but they are helping you instead of holding you back.

Emily: I love that idea just in general with, there are things, trauma responses that I've had in my life that I'm like, "God, I wish I could just get rid of that," but, instead, if we flip that on its head and say, "Hey, how can this be productive towards the situation or to me in my life? Then, yes, I think we could have much more compassion for ourselves, that's ultimately what we all should have.

Jase: I love that.

Dedeker: That's great.