(What many of us are going through right now is stressful. Our bodies and brain react with a set of automatic responses that help us deal with the stressors. One problem: Stress reactions release cortisol into our brains and bodies, and gradually ruin our biological capacities. Four stress reactions are available, and we must choose from among them wisely….)
Fighting, fleeing, freezing, fawning
You already know about fight and flight responses, right? Freezing is like rabbits that don’t run away until the last possible immobile moment. Fawning? Think of smarmy toadies, sycophants who over-praise oppressive leaders, hoping to gain reciprocal favors and power. Which stress reaction(s) might be best suited to our self-care? Let’s review the possibilities….
Fleeing responses aren’t always helpful. Distractions may momentarily take us away from the stressors, or we may think that we can escape to a place or state of mind where the stressors can’t find us. The truth: There may be no realistic escape, and distractions can fool us into imagining that there’s no real danger.
Freezing also has problems: If we’re petrified by fear of the stressors, we’re not going to solve the problem that first created the stress. Our frozen state of mind may make us easy prey for stress-makers whose goals might include destroying our well-being.
Fawning? If we comply with the presumed power of a leader, our self-respect suffers. We become dependent on our disingenuity—fooling a praise-needy superior—and turn into stringless puppets. The stress and stressors are still present, but now covered with a thin veneer of imagined mutual respect. Our loss of personal integrity can pressure us in new ways.
What’s left? “Fighting”—resistance by another name. As we consider all the options available to us as resistors, we can struggle against unrighteousness in a variety of behavior patterns that can accomplish more than raw violence. For example, resistance may also be seen in steadfast immovability—becoming walls or fortresses that don’t succumb to the unrighteousness around us.
In coming entries, we’ll start to see how we can use the fighting response to work against those who are stressing us.
We might even become their stressors…!
