We Do Therapy: Packing Up My Cigarettes

Therapy Lesson #5: The Baggage of Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Responses

In the introductory posts to this weekly, We Do Therapy series (available to paid subscribers). Scott and I shared both the struggles and triumphs of two young adults who believed they had found someone who would care for them. Our intent in the initial posts and this series of Therapy Lessons is not to offer marriage advice. We are not licensed therapists. We are survivors who hope that what we share about our journey together will help others to be curious about how trauma might be impacting their marriage. Hopefully, far sooner than we did! (Please read the statement at the end of this post.)

AI Image: “I am packing up my cigarettes!”

Therapy Lesson #5:
The Baggage of Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Responses

I was struggling and my second therapist was doing his best to validate my feelings. Those particular feelings were based on trauma responses. My trauma responses fit into several different categories; one of those was a flight response that often overwhelmed me with a desire to leave when I had no reason to leave nor did I ever really consider doing so. Yet some part of me was often triggered to feel this way.

The therapist said, “So do you feel like you want to pack up your cigarettes?”

His question was certainly unexpected. He looked uncomfortable and said, “I have no idea why I just said that, I don’t even smoke.”

I laughed and answered, “Neither do I!”

Once our laughter subsided, I began to unwind the feeling. I realized I often felt trapped when there was no danger of that being true. This overwhelming urge came over me when sitting in restaurants, church pews, classrooms, my home, etc. With my trauma history, there were likely many valid reasons but none of them were currently occurring. Yet, internally my body was still trying to flee. Occasionally I did leave a room but most of the time I controlled the urge—at great harm to my nervous system.

As I began to recognize what was happening internally, the overwhelming urge lifted. Whenever it returned, I would tell myself, “I don’t think we need to pack up our cigarettes today.” The humor of that statement always grounded me.

Understanding that the flight response didn’t necessarily mean that I wanted to run out of the house encouraged me to consider how my fight, freeze, and fawn responses might be playing out internally. Basically, fight showed up when I would over explain myself because it felt dangerous to be misunderstood. Freeze resulted in my vanishing from reality—something I had had always called spacing out. Fawning showed up when I volunteered to do something I had no desire to do.

The important point is that these were autonomic reactions that I did not consciously recognize. They were the ways that my dysregulated nervous system had learned to manage itself. (Note that I did not say regulate itself.) All these strategies created a low vibration in me that felt like a car was in my garage with its engine running. Since I was a teenager, my heart rate had been elevated and this was why. Healing has lowered the rate to a healthy level.

Having explained all this, it is time to get to the marriage part.