Metaphorical Fashion Part 1/4 - Brainstorming @APR Project 2/3

What are defense mechanisms? Why do we have them? What do they look like?

Fight

When your fight response becomes activated, your instinct is to cope with the perceived threat aggressively. This response physically affects your body - signs of being in “fight” mode include:

Intense feelings of anger

Urge to physically lash out

Wanting to yell or raise your voice

Hypervigilance or feeling “jumpy”

Feeling easily agitated

*Someone who goes into a fight response might find themselves frequently getting into physical fights or verbal altercations.

Flight

A flight response triggers the urge to run away from the threat to try and save yourself. Similar to "fight" mode, a flight response can lead to a rush of adrenaline and increased heart rate as your body prepares to "run" away. Common signs of a flight response include:

The urge to flee a situation

Fidgeting or having trouble being still

Feeling trapped or as if the room is closing in on you

Avoiding perceived or real threats

Panicking

*For people who often engage in a flight response, this can look like physically leaving stressful situations. For example, during an interpersonal conflict, someone in "flight" mode might walk away from the conversation instead of engaging and trying to fix the problem.

Freeze
While flight and fight are both active stress responses that increase the biological activity in your body, freezing is your body’s way of shutting down. Like an animal might “play dead” while being hunted, people turn to “freeze” when it feels like fighting or fleeing isn’t an option. The freeze response affects your body by causing the following symptoms:

Dissociation, or feeling detached from yourself and your environment

Holding your breath

Feeling emotionally numb or confused

Having trouble speaking or becoming non-verbal

Not being able to take action or make a decision

Lacking focus or having trouble concentrating

Fainting Goats

Fawn

When it feels safer to be submissive and obedient than fight or flee, people may turn to the fawn stress response. Most similar to the freeze response, "fawning" causes someone to please and appease the needs of someone else, instead of prioritizing their own well-being. Other signs that a fawn response has been activated include:

Zingela Z, Stroud L, Cronje J, Fink M, van Wyk S. The psychological and subjective experience of catatonia: a qualitative study. BMC Psychology. 2022;10(1). doi:10.1186/s40359-022-00885-7

Having a hard time saying “no”

Being a people-pleaser

Pretending to agree with someone

Doing what you’re told no matter what

Putting others’ needs before your own

Not being able to set boundaries

What defense mechanisms are these plants or animals using?

 

Brainstorm Session

Write down any thoughts that come up while we talk as a group, you will need these later!

1. What are some of the ways you respond when encountering stressful situations?

 

+ What feels like a stressful situation to you? 

+ Do you have a way you often protect yourself from feelings of stress, anger, fear, shame? 

+ Does it change depending on the circumstances? What dictates the change?

2. What would protecting yourself look like if it was something you could wear, like a jacket? 

+ Based on what you've noticed about how you respond to stress, are there shapes or animal/plant details that felt related to those responses?

+ How do you imagine your fight/flight/freeze/fawn response might feel or look like to other people?

+ If you were to design a protective jacket - what would it need to include, and what might it turn into when fully engaged in protecting you?

Write down/sketch anything you can think of related to these questions and our conversation - just dump your brain onto the page, there is no right or wrong here. Next session we will return to these notes to decide what our individual Metaphorical Jacket themes will be. 

Put your name on this paper!