Traumatized people usually show behavior that is outside the norm in at least some areas of life. These coping behaviors often get stigmatized as mental illness and dysfunction. But once we understand how a child survives unsafe situations we realize that these behaviors are strictly logical. They can be understood and they make sense. They just seem out of place outside a threatening environment where survival logic is needed.
Before we can change behavior we need to accept and understand it. So let’s take a closer look at the most common trauma-related coping behaviors in an attempt to understand them instead of judging them.
Some of this might be triggering, so take good care of yourself.
Survival seeking behaviors
Attachment seeking behavior
As children we need attachment. We would not survive without it. Attachment seeking is one of our most basic and strongest instincts.
We can observe what is called ‘attachment cry’ in younger parts of our being. That is an expression of the desperate need for attachment to survive. We feel like we will die without the other. Fear of separation, abandonment and loss of the relationship are signs of that and so is a deep longing for another person. It is how we as children made sure that we will not be left without some kind of attachment, even if it ended up being insecure. That desperation made sure we cling to someone to survive. Parts of us might still do that today, regardless of what healthy boundaries would look like.
Attachment avoiding behavior
When we were raised in abusive homes we learned that our attachment figure wasn’t safe. Needs were either not met or they were always connected to punishment or conditions. That is how parts of us learn that to survive we need to avoid attention from caregivers, take care of our own needs, become invisible and independent at all cost. Their care-giving felt dangerous, so we run the moment we feel something similar from other people. Because we ‘know’ that being close is threatening our well-being or survival we push them away before they can come any closer and harm us with their love.
It is extremely common to have both attachment seeking and attachment avoiding parts. One strategy alone was not enough when we were young. We had to get closer and run away depending on the responses we got and our own survival needs. This is usually diagnosed as ‘borderline’ but this pattern alone only reflects developmental trauma. Children learn to behave that way because it is the only way to survive their broken caregivers.
Manipulative behavior
As children we often have to get really clever to get our needs met when the adults in our life don’t care or fail for other reasons. We have to learn how to make someone do things without communicating directly, to avoid a ‘No’. Kids don’t know what manipulation means, they just remember what worked and what didn’t and they learn the tricks that are needed to get their needs met. If that has always been the normal way to do relationships at home we might not even know that there are other forms of communication. We have learned that manipulation is the way to get our needs met and to survive, and that other ways don’t work. No wonder we still act that way when we are older. And no wonder that learning to communicate directly can feel like a threat to our survival.
Submissive behavior
Submission is another smart move kids learn quickly to survive in an abusive environment. We can’t fight back, we can’t be assertive, that would only increase the amount of violence against us. We have to do what we are told and if we are really smart we do it before we are told, to avoid any negative attention. We don’t share our opinion, we never speak up and absolutely never speak up for ourselves. We learn not to have any healthy boundaries and allow others to do with us as they please because that is still the smallest amount of abuse possible. Everything else would cause serious harm. Learning to express anger or to be assertive can bring up this fear later in life. We ‘know’ we are not allowed to do that, but there are no logical reasons, there is just this sense of fear.
Do yourself a favor and don’t call this ‘fawn’. That word is a disgrace for everyone who was forced to learn how to survive.
Safety seeking behaviors
Over-controlled behavior
Safety is a fundamental need. When our environment doesn’t seem safe or even just predictable we need to create our own safety by increasing our sense of control. We do that by creating rigid routines of how we do things, by keeping our own set of rules or by trying to control our environment as much as we can. It doesn’t just restore our sense of agency, the conviction that we are powerful, it also makes us feel safe in the world we created around us. Everything is as it should be, at least in the little kingdom we control. In a chaotic world we create order, stability and predictability. Over-control is a logical way to cope with a world that is illogical or out of control. We meet one of our basic needs and we have to take care of it ourselves because nobody else helped us with that need.
Abuser-loyal behavior/ Stockholm Syndrome
When we are stuck with a situation where it seems to be
The Abuser vs. Us
and we are in a hopelessly inferior position, it is a smart move to simply change sides. Then it is
The Abuser + Us vs. ___? Who knows, at least not us!
Loving abusers, helping them, supporting them and even encouraging them makes us less of a target and therefore, safer. They are less likely to hurt someone who supports them. Parts of us will convince themselves that they are good and loving and that is where loyalty meets attachment seeking behavior to increase the positive effect for us. Whatever is necessary to get through this.
Abuser-imitating behavior
Another smart survival strategy is to imitate the abuser. When they see themselves in us they are less likely to hurt us. Getting imitated is even kind of flattering and we have definitely moved us to their side and away from being a target.
We adopt some of their behavior, possibly against others, but certainly against ourselves. And that too is a smart move for the whole system. When a part of us keeps repeating the rules and insults and punishments of the abuser it keeps the rest of us in line. If we are intimidated enough we won’t do things that ‘deserves’ punishment and the system as a whole is safer. We have our own guard that keep us from getting into trouble with the abuser, we put ourselves down before they can do it. The result is low self-esteem, but at least we are safe with our low self-esteem.
It can also be smart to adopt abusive behavior because when living in an ocean full of sharks, the safest thing to be is the biggest shark. We didn’t pick our shark-infested ocean to live in, we just try to survive it.
Hypersexual/masochistic behavior
When we experience sexual abuse regularly and there is no way to prevent it, it takes a great effort to turn things so that we can still hold on to a sense of safety in the world. A part of us needs to turn everything upside down and treat what is happening like it is their own desire. If we make ourselves like it, it means we are somehow in control and nobody is breaking our will. Continuous torment can break people to the point that they give up on life and die. The only way out is to create this sense of control through approval. Those who try to survive sexual exploitation need to find a convincing way to give the abusers what they want while maintaining a sense of control. Yielding and taking on a willing role is the only safe way here and one part can take that burden for the whole system.
Along the same lines, we might need to find a way to manage ongoing extreme pain, often in combination with sexual abuse. It benefits the system tremendously when a part can perceive the pain as if it was pleasure and go with it. They protect everyone else from breaking under the pain.
Chronically suicidal behavior
Once we understand how we need to twist ourselves out of the helpless and powerless position and adopt behaviors that make us feel in control of our life, it makes perfect sense to feel chronically suicidal in an effort to feel safe in this world. We need to remind ourselves that we could end it all any time we want to, need to feel that certainty that we can control our life and our death. To the point where we might have occasional suicide attempts to make sure we can still feel our strength. That is the only way to feel safe enough to face life. Some part of us might take this role of the final protector, the one who is ready to help us a last time, to ultimate safety. It is a huge burden and an unhappy existence, but it is also extremely powerful, in the midst of a helplessness that could have overwhelmed us otherwise.
Regulation seeking behaviors
Self-harming behavior
Self-harm is rarely attention seeking. Usually we experience something that is too big for us to handle: emotions, dysrgulation, inner pain, flashbacks etc. Self-injury helps to interrupt that or to release some of the tension. Our body produces hormones that numb pain and make us feel better. It physiologically makes sense to self-harm in an attempt to regulate what is otherwise too big for us to regulate. In that, it helps us to survive our extreme inner experiences. It isn’t suicidal behavior, it does the opposite: it helps us to live for a little while longer and prevents more traumatization caused by overwhelming experiences.
High risk behaviors/ promiscuity
When we can’t regulate our arousal levels it helps to enter situations that come with high physiological arousal. We create a situation that matches what we are already experiencing and when the experience passes, our body will regulate itself just the way it would naturally do. We might be stuck in hyperarousal, then engage in high risk behavior, the stress response gets attributed to that behavior and when we finish it our brain becomes aware that the reason for hyperarousal is gone now and we calm down. The same is true for a release in sexual interactions. There is a clear goal of regulation behind them and not a moral problem.
Disordered eating behaviors
It doesn’t matter if we binge, binge&purge or restrict. All disordered eating has something in common: It affects our body and nervous system in a way that numbs us. We move ourselves out of sympathetic activation into parasympathetic pastures, we regulate ourselves down to something that is easier to endure or might even feel good. It numbs emotional pain and anxiety. One could claim that it is less about eating and more about regulation. Since we usually didn’t learn any good coping skills as a child this is the effective way to regulate that part of us learned to use. Like with all coping behavior, we can’t just take it away, we have to replace it with better skills for regulation.
Addicted behavior
Drug are also a very straightforward way to help ourselves when we are dysregulated and can’t cope. Those who experience chronic hyperarousal usually go for drugs that are calming and relaxing, those who are chronically shut down will go for something stimulating. There is a logic behind this. Our traumatized body is not regulated, so we take something that will help us with that. The bonus is that emotional pain is usually numbed as well. Since it works and is easily achieved it can become the go-to method when we don’t know how else to regulate and there is no help available. An addiction based on the need for regulation is hard to treat because the regulation is actually needed and new skills to cope have to be learned. Withdrawal alone is not enough, without better regulation skills we will relapse.
In DID
Some traumatized people experience only one or a couple of these survival behaviors because that was enough for them to get through and survive.
In DID we often see all kinds of parts with all kinds of different survival behavior. They can feel strange, scary, repulsive or freak us out. It helps to understand why they became that way, that it is logical and makes sense and that the way they are is one piece of a complex strategy that helped us all to survive.
Understanding our own survival can help us not to reject, maybe even accept, parts of us who seem difficult or dysfunctional. They once were absolutely functional, but that was during extreme conditions that we don’t experience anymore. That is why their behavior is anachronistic, it doesn’t fit into our life today, but we owe our life to our ability to be that way and do these things when it is needed.
Knowing that helps to make peace with these parts of ourselves. To embrace them with gratefulness instead of fighting a war against their behavior. When they arrive in the Today, they might realize certain behavior is not needed anymore. It is not about survival anymore.
People don’t consciously choose their coping behaviors. When we take certain roles, we do it out of necessity, not because we have analyzed everything and thought it through. We do what we can and we cope however we can, I am sure we did our very best. Fighting for survival isn’t pretty and I think that we shouldn’t hold it against ourselves when the behavior we ended up with isn’t socially accepted or nice. There is a stigma around survival behaviors that shows a deep lack of understanding of what they really are.
It is bad enough when other people don’t get it, but at least we could show some grace toward ourselves. Didn’t we endure enough? Do we really have to judge how we managed and give ourselves ratings like we are a jury and surviving is ice-skating? We did well. And we can know that because we are still here. And after surviving successfully we can move on to learning how to live now.
More
Integrating abuser-imitating parts
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