The 5 F’s are NOT our BFFs. They’re our Frenemies. But, how can we break up with them?
In my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT☕️🍵, we’re doing a deep-dive into our Book Club selection! This week is Chapter 3 of BEYOND ANXIETY: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose by Martha Beck.
In Chapter 3: When Anxiety Creatures Get Stuck, we learn about the Defense Cascade:
The 5 Fs
- Fight
- Flight
- Freeze
- Fawn
- Flop
These 5 often knee-jerk responses might’ve served our survival in our evolutionary history, but they now fail to serve our best interests.
How Familiar Are the 5 Fs to YOU?
I’d heard of the first 4 before, but “Flop” was new to me. The idea of just doing nothing. Laying on the couch. Avoiding tasks altogether. Giving up early or before you even start. Not trying as an (ineffective) safety mechanism. I considered them all different forms of avoidance, but I love knowing that they’re good examples of “flop.” The term’s a quick mental reminder that inaction can be a stress response, too.
Meanwhile, “Fawn” reminds me of the common scenario when we suddenly morph into a proverbial “doormat,” saying yes when we really want to say no, and doing whatever people ask of us when, really, we’d rather impale our eyes with a hot poker. Just so we don’t “hurt anyone’s feelings.”
Some people spend their entire life learning how to get rid of unhelpful patterns of behavior like that.
Seeing MB describe many different examples creates some distance, helping us to see how Defense Cascades don’t serve us — despite the false stories our Anxiety Spirals might be telling us.
The 5 F’s Are NOT our BFFs. Most of the time, they’re our Frenemies.
Defense Cascades can take over in unhelpful situations — situations where we need to show up for ourselves and others — when we’re on the job, dating, and/or navigating relationships with our friends and family.
But, when the Defense Cascades take over, it prevents us from handling life’s challenges.
Worse, our Defense Cascades can turn into full-blown Anxiety Spirals, where the left hemisphere of our brain tells us a story to justify our unhelpful behavior (the Defense Cascade itself).
As we learned in Ch. 2, the Anxiety Spiral tells us a false story that frightens our amygdala even more, and the left hemisphere of our brain not only weaves this story with “logic” that sounds true, but also fails to acknowledge facts that can disprove the false story.
As MB puts it, our left-hemisphere loves to “fight” both real and imagined threats in these two ways: “(1) [coming] up with explanations that justify our feeling of fear, and (2) [figuring] out ways we might take control of the situation.”
Overall, the Anxiety Spiral makes it more likely that we’ll fall into the same unhelpful pattern (the same Defense Cascade) in the future.
How can we break up & back away from our Frenemies?
We can “decode” our false stories in a “safe place” with “safe people,” whether that’s with a therapist or with our own introspective practice, like Journaling with our Highest Self.
Take a Mindful Minute to reflect on your life:
⭐️ For our private Journaling, let’s describe a Defense Cascade of our own. Describe one scenario that’s been troubling you.
⭐️ What’s your typical response: fight-flight-freeze-fawn-or-flop?
⭐️ What’s the story that your Anxiety Spiral tells you, to “make sense” of your Defense Cascade?
⭐️ Is that story accurate? Is it true? Or could it be false?
⭐️ If you continue to believe in that story, are you more or less likely to exhibit the same Anxiety Spiral in the future?
Do you want to abandon your Defense Cascade?
Do you have a “safe place” and/or a “safe person” who can help you to decode your triggers, and /or to release your unconscious dependence on a Defense Cascade?
👭 If you want to enlist the help of a Fellow Creative, to be a safe person to help you…
Our CHAT can be a safe place to tell us what you’d like to accomplish, so we can all support & cheer you on.
Let’s TRUST in our ability to create safe places & be safe people.
Together, we can support each other in our healing journeys.
Together, we can abandon our unhelpful Defense Cascades & avoid Anxiety Spirals.
The Safety in me honors & respects the Safety in each of you,
Marisa
⭐️ Remember, we don’t have to figure everything out, all alone. ⭐️
We can find solutions, together!
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