Fight/flight/freeze/fawn—the nervous system and comparison
Picture this…
You’re holidaying on the beautiful island of Ilha da Queimada, around 20 miles off the coast of Brazil, sipping your cold beverage of choice—pina colada, mai thai… or if you don’t drink alcohol, maybe a nice, refreshing lime and soda.
The sun is kissing your skin, the wind caressing it too… you feel peaceful, calm, relaxed, like you’re in paradise…
...until all of a sudden you’re being approached by 793 snakes. You didn’t realise it was home to thousands of them and not a lot else, or that the vipers, which grow up to half a metre long, are among some of the venomous snakes in the world—so poisonous they can melt your flesh - yikes!
Immediately, your brian’s limbic system, a.k.a. the primitive part of it that’s wired for survival and protecting you from risks like starvation and predation, kicks into gear and makes you fight, flee, freeze or fawn.
And so in this blog post, I’m going to dive into each stress response in more detail, and consider the ways in which each of them are related to comparison.
My hope is that, by the end of this blog post, you’ll be able to identify which of the four stress responses is your default setting right now, as once we know how our body is programmed, it is much easier to know how it unconsciously operates and take conscious action before it does!
Stress Responses: a breakdown
Make no mistake, these stress responses don’t just occur in a hypothetical snake attack situation, or way back when in the Ice Age when it was pretty common to encounter a sabre tooth tiger, they happen in the modern world, in our day to day lives as well when we’re going about our business none the wiser.
It’s also possible to have a stress response, for example, if you have post-traumatic stress disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, but as I am by no means a psychological expert I won’t be diving into detail about that. If you are diagnosed with either of these conditions or think you should be, I’d gently encourage you to talk to a medical professional who’ll be able to support you with the care you deserve,
The Fight Response
This response usually shows up for people who believe, unconsciously, that asserting their authority over others (to ensure they have the power and are in control) is the only way to get the acceptance they feel has been lacking in their lives. Used to rejection and challenges, they believe that having the upper hand is necessary to ensure their safety and security…
...but the fight response isn’t necessarily verbal or physical aggression. Fighting refers to any action a person takes to face a threat head-on, like:
Posting publicly on Facebook or Instagram after their partner has cheated on them to let everyone know how badly they’d been treated
Angrily confronting a friend or family member who let something slip accidentally that they had wanted to keep private
Spreading a rumour about a colleague who they were in competition with at work to try and bring them down
The Flight Response
People who flee, unconsciously believe that they are too ill-equipped to deal with stressful situations at all, and so that the only way to regulate their emotions is to remove themselves from the situation entirely.
For the, handling of difficult situations might look like:
Throwing yourself into your work or studies to escape your thoughts or feelings—or even hobbies, interests, excess, shopping, gambling, etc.
Ending relationships prematurely after you experience a bit of a wobble, to avoid the possible pain of someone breaking up with you
Leaving your job when the going gets tough, or you think you’re going to fail
The Freeze Response
The freeze response is actually what comes first, according to some experts, so before you decide to fight or flee, you freeze to make that choice. When neither fighting (because you don’t feel assertive enough, or don’t want to cause conflict) nor fleeing (because you’re needed in some way and it doesn’t make sense to abandon ship) seem optional, you then may just stay there, in freeze mode.
Freeze mode serves as a stalling tactic… but for many, that pause becomes a complete and utter stop, they’re immobilised entirely.
This route to ‘safety’ can manifest as:
Putting off difficult conversations you know you need to have, ‘til the next day or the day after that
Sitting still and staying silent when people are going off on one, eventually becoming completely tuned out to what’s going on/being said
Dissociating from a situation altogether, feeling like you’re outside of your body watching it play out as if you’re the spectator of a movie
The Fawn Response
Closely related to the freeze response is the fawn response—a route to safety people take that involves pleasing and appeasing others. This often stems from experiences in childhood where we needed to diffuse situations that have become sensitive or negative…
Neglecting your needs to meet those of other people
Making yourself as useful or as helpful as possible
Giving thanks or praise people don’t actually deserve
Stress Responses and Comparison
Comparisonitis, as you’re probably well aware by now, is a socially transmitted disease in which people obsessively and compulsively compare what they have and do, as well as who they are, to others. The more they compare, the more inadequate they feel, and the more inadequate they feel, the more they compare—it’s a vicious cycle!
I’d actually argue that comparing oneself to others is a response to the pain of feeling not enough and that the habits and behaviours people engage in is coloured by their typical stress response—fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
So let’s unpack that concept a bit, shall we?
Fighters
As I explained earlier, fighters feel the need to assert their authority when their love and acceptance is threatened, and so after comparing themselves to others, tend to compete with them as well. They might look for ‘clues’, a.k.a. try and figure out people’s secrets to success so that they can outperform them, and after getting ahead, might continuously pit their progress against that of others to ensure they stay in the lead.
Fighters may also engage in bitchy behaviour, behind people’s backs or to their faces. If someone posted good news online, for example, and it triggered them, they may screenshot the image/caption and send it to their friend and start a thread of malicious gossip. If they’re even bolder, they may even call their accomplishment into question, asking someone who’s just gotten a fancy handbag or pair of shoes, for example, whether their husband bought them it to try and undermine them.
Fleers
Fleers, on the other hand, are more likely to throw in the towel than try and compete with another person. For example, if they had a business idea and saw someone else was doing something similar, they’d probably preempt failure or defeat, and give up before they’ve even really begun.
Similarly, if a single fleer was to walk into a room at a party and they had a story that they weren’t pretty or clever enough. When surrounded by peole they wish they looked like, who were more attractive or more sexually appealing, in their eyes, they may be more likely to leave early so they didn’t have to deal with feeling less than try to compete with the other girls for attention.
Freezers
Freezers—the type who stop in their tracks when facing a threat, recall—usually become totally and utterly preoccupied with the people they compare themselves to. They may find that time escapes them when they land on someone’s Facebook or Instagram page, or that their phone gets hotter and hotter as they scroll and scroll and scroll. They may watch their stories over and over, or dig deeper and deeper into the archives worried they’re going to accidentally like something and get found out.
Or, in person, freezers might find themselves stuck to their seat when they hear someone share good news. If a coworker gets a promotion they were hoping for, for example, they might be lost for words, unable to congratulate them or celebrate their success.
Fawners
Finally, fawners might find themselves abandoning things they want to do so as not to anger and upset someone they’ve put on a pedestal. For example, if they are a junior graphic designer at a marketing agency and look up to their boss a lot, and feel less than them comparatively, they might stop working on their freelancing side-hustle so as not to anger or upset them.
Or, speaking into putting people on pedestals a little more, fawners might have a tendency to hero-worship people rather than see them as role models to be inspired and motivated by. They might make efforts to impress them, or make deferential comments online, like ‘wow, I would never be able to achieve/accomplish that, you’re amazing!’.
What do you think, babes? Are you more of a fighter, a fleer, a freezer or a fawner? The more aware you are of how your comparisonitis shows up, the more you’ll be able to preempt your default reaction and get in there with a happier, healthier, proactive response.