Part 1 of a 3 part article on Dysfunctions of Power The Wisdom of Three Thousand lives: Dysfunctional Power and a New Paradigm for True Empowerment
by Barbara J. Gilbert, Ph.D.
Introduction
Whether manifesting as dysthymia, personality disorders, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse or other symptoms, dysfunctional power practices seem to be at the core of many people’s difficulties in creating the lives they want. As a therapist for over 25 years and a clinical supervisor for over 20 years, I have had the amazing honor of being involved in the treatment of more than 3000 individuals. Among these widely diverse people, ineffective attempts to be powerful have emerged as a nearly universal difficulty. Any difficulty so common cannot really be called pathological. I found myself wondering what forces were at work to create this nearly universal problem with power.
My quest to understand the difficulties with power I saw in these 3,000 and more lives led me to increasingly more fundamental aspects of the human psyche. Through two of my specializations--work with trauma survivors and with convicted violence offenders--I saw pronounced, severe examples of passivity and aggression. This dual lens brought into full 3D vision the disturbingly pervasive dominance-power paradigm underlying most human interactions. I also saw how obviously and completely ineffectual such dominance-based power practices were and how even the passive were attempting to be powerful in a way. It puzzled me how so many did not self-adjust when their actions did not lead to the outcomes for which they longed. They continued the same ineffective dysfunctional practices, sometimes with even more vigor. Eventually I could see that of course I also did this in certain areas of my life and that indeed everyone I knew anything about did as well.
I recall how disturbing it was to realize that there is no such thing as effective power in the reigning power mindset, which I call the Dominance Paradigm. If there is no way to “win,” I thought, how can we be healthy? Then the answer came to me: Don’t accept the paradigm. From there I began to look for the essential components for building a paradigm for true power – that is, power practices that lead to effective outcomes. Such a paradigm, I knew, would have to offer power practices that would be effective even when others were using dominance-based “power”.
Fortunately, I did not have to build the new paradigm from scratch. Many others—throughout recorded history, in fact—have struggled with some portion or another of these issues. I also found much commonality among the ideas of those who have struggled with these issues. When virtually identical insights are discovered in literature from fields as different as evolution and political movements, primatology and spiritual teachings, psychoneurophysiology and theories of economy, such insights likely make solid building blocks. The True Power Paradigm described in this paper, with its empowerment practices, are built from these blocks and from the wisdom of 3,000 lives.
The Threat Response
From reading the wide-ranging literature and learning from these 3,000 lives, I have drawn the conclusion that our unique human neurology has given us built-in responses to threat that are extremely vulnerable to distortions and dysfunctional power practices. Furthermore, those specific vulnerabilities to distortion and dysfunction appear to be at the heart of the most common of our psychological and relational problems. Consequently, developing functional power practices and tools for managing our vulnerability to distortion will have far-reaching positive effects.
To understand our vulnerability to distortions and dysfunctional power, then, we need to understand certain aspects of the human brain. The human brain is considered to have three evolutionary layers: the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the neocortex.[1] Each of these makes its own contribution to our dysfunctional power practices. Their interaction creates even more problems.
Reptilian Brain Power Dysfunctions
Humans share a “Threat Response program” that is extremely similar among vertebrates all the way down the phylogenetic tree to reptiles. This Threat Response is mediated by the reptilian brain, which is the most evolutionarily primitive part of the human brain.
Imagine you are leaving a building and as you walk away, you see a mountain lion about twenty feet from you, crouched and tense, with that predator’s look in its eye. What happens in your body? Your muscles constrict—some feel it most in their legs, some in their shoulders and upper arms, some in their upper backs. Your digestive system reacts—some feel a constriction in their stomachs, some feel it in their bowels. Your heart and lungs react—most people are aware of increased heart beat or a pounding pulse; some are also aware of a shift to “chest breathing” rather than "belly breathing." These are all aspects of the Threat Response program. These bodily changes are all ways in which the body prepares for the three possible defensive behavioral responses to a threat: fight, run, or freeze (fight, flight or fright response).
In addition, during the Threat Response program in humans, thinking processes change. Many describe a narrowing of thought focus, intense awareness of threat-relevant sensory stimuli, rapid threat assessment thoughts, and a sense that time has slowed down. The thoughts people report having during an immediate intense threat are along the lines of, “What can I use as a weapon? I wonder if I can outrun it if I go that way? Oh no, it’s coming closer! I have to make a decision! What should I do?” Alternatively, some report no real thoughts at all but rather “pre-thoughts” that amount to scanning and acting without a sense of having deliberated or made a decision. What we usually don’t think about in this situation is how beautiful mountain lions are, or how glad we are that they haven’t all been killed off--even if those are opinions we usually do hold. Attention is on the mountain lion as the threat, with all our thinking and body resources focused on how to “win” this battle.
Another part of the Threat Response program has to do with situations when “losing” the battle becomes inevitable. I call it the “Shutdown” response. I have seen video in nature films that illustrates this Shutdown response. [2] In one such film, a cougar is chasing a deer. The deer is clearly in the Threat Response, first freezing and then running. When the cougar gets very close and is about to sink its claws and teeth into the deer, the deer collapses but is not dead or passed out; its eyes are open but glazed over. The camera stays on the deer while the cougar is frightened off by the filmmakers. The deer stays down. It remains conscious. Its muscle tone is slack, eyes still glazed. After a few minutes, the deer’s ears perk up and rotate. Assured the cougar is not present now, its eyes clear up and without moving in any other way, it appears to visually check the surrounding area. Then, the deer takes several deep shuddering breaths, jumps to its feet and goes running off in giant leaps and bounds.
This Shutdown response exists in humans as well—in severe cases we call it “shock” (physical shutdown) or “dissociation” (psychological shutdown). It is apparently a mechanism for not having to consciously experience helplessness, intense pain, fear or overwhelm. The Shutdown program includes a process for coming out of Shutdown when the threat has passed, which appears to function to reset the neurological system to a non-threat mode by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. In the deer and in humans who don’t block it, the reset occurs through the deep breaths and the discharge of energy through large muscle exercise. You can probably remember times when a stressful event was finally over—we naturally give a deep sigh or two or three and often want to walk or move in some way. I've been around people who have just been through something difficult and noted how hard it is for them to sit. I have a friend who is a fireman who has been part of rescue teams and he told me that he always has to watch out at car accident scenes because the crash victims want to walk. He says sometimes the compulsion to walk is so strong they don’t notice injuries or don’t pay attention to where they are walking.
Clearly, evolutionarily speaking, having a hard-wired Threat Response, with both Defensive and Shutdown mechanisms, and a neurological reset mechanism must have created a species survival advantage. But when, in a human’s life experiences, would any of the hard-wired reptilian Defensive or Shutdown Threat Responses be the best response, the most effective response? In our example of leaving a building to find yourself face-to-face with a mountain lion, the reptilian Threat Response program offers fighting, running, freezing, or shutdown. But our experts on wildlife mention none of those as the most effective response to a mountain lion encounter. They tell us we should make ourselves look as big as possible, and without crouching, slowly back away leaving the mountain lion an open path out.[3] They go on to say that running—one of our hard-wired Defensive Threat Response behaviors—would be the worst thing to do because a cat of any type will chase what runs. Most of us don’t run as fast or as agilely as mountain lions can. Thus, even in the case of potentially life-threatening encounters with wild animals, this reptilian-brain Threat Response program would not serve us well.
What about with dangerous humans? If a human is threatening our physical safety, would the reptilian Threat Response program serve us well? Most self-defense experts will tell you that good self-defense is mostly mental—that is, the goal is to recognize potential danger and avoid it before an encounter even occurs. But even when the threat is already present, the reptilian Threat Response program is not the best option. For example, in hostage situations, Homeland Security’s advice even to U.S. Marines is: “[D]o not make eye contact with the captors initially. Be polite and cooperate. You may need to reassure your abductors that you are not trying to escape by controlling your emotions, following instructions, and avoiding physical resistance.”[4] Thus, it would appear that our reptilian Threat Response program isn’t the best we can do as humans even when in a physically threatening situation with another human.
With perceived threats that do not put our lives at risk, the reptilian Threat Response program is even less useful. For example, in any type of relationship conflict, whether with a family member, romantic partner, friend, coworker or boss, the Threat Response repertoire of fighting, running, freezing or shutting down clearly are not helpful. Fighting will escalate any conflict. We can run away but the conflict will still be there when we stop avoiding. We can freeze but nothing changes. We can shut down but things likely get worse. Therefore, in any relationship situation, the reptilian Threat Response program will not be effective in creating the change we want. However, our reptilian hard-wiring will lead us to dysfunctional efforts to be powerful in these situations, unless we make conscious choices to do things differently.
Mammalian-Brain Threats
The next evolutionary layer of human neurology is the mammalian brain. The mammalian brain mediates our ability to mate, to bear and raise children, and to live in groups (among other functions). The mammalian brain functions also present corresponding new “threats,” such as mate jealousy, offspring protection, and status challenges. These threats feel like survival threats. In extreme circumstances, they can be threats to survival, though mostly they are threats to genetic survival not personal survival. The reptilian Threat Response program is “designed” for immediate physical threats to personal survival. However, a mammalian “threat" will frequently mistrigger the reptilian Threat Responses, at least to some degree. Humans’ (and other mammals’) responses to mate jealousy, status challenges and offspring protection threats appear very similar to the reptilian Threat Responses. We use fight aggression, running, freezing and shutting down in these situations too. Once again, fighting, running, freezing and shutdown are not the most effective, powerful responses in those situations.
Placating. In addition to adding new threat possibilities, the mammalian brain also adds another possibility to the Threat Response repertoire. I call it the placating response; it is also known as the “tend and befriend” or affiliative response. The placating response to threat appears to be “soft-wired” as part of the social engagement system.[5] When an attachment figure becomes more frightening, females in particular tend to approach the frightening attachment figure with affiliative behaviors rather than with fighting, running or freezing responses. In my work with domestic violence, I saw this pattern repeatedly among the children and partners of violent men: The previously violent man starts to get tense and his partner and children say or do soothing things. While this response might have increased safety in the immediate situation, it was not the most empowered choice for the women and children in the longer term and did not reduce their threat of violence from the men beyond the immediate moments. In other situations, such as with a distressed child, such soothing would be a very effective response—but we don’t always discriminate such situations well and Placating responses can be mistriggered in situations where boundary-setting would be much more effective.
Neocortex “Threats”
Our fancy human brains have a third evolutionary layer—the neocortex. The neocortex is a learning brain. It makes associations and generalizations. It is capable (at least in the higher primates) of symbolism and abstraction. It comprehends the concepts of future and past. These capabilities are clearly very advantageous in many circumstances. However, these capabilities also create nearly endless “threat” possibilities—albeit none of them truly physically threatening. We humans can feel threatened by something we think of, by an idea mentioned by someone else, by an image on a screen, by the unknown future, by our own insignificance in the big universe, by things that happened in the past, even by the threat of a threat. All of these perceived threats can activate our reptilian or mammalian Threat Response programs, yet none of these situations are effectively dealt with through fighting, running, freezing, shutting down, or placating. It’s pretty tough to do combat with a test or job demand; it’s impossible to run to avoid the future; the past cannot be placated. But our mistriggered reptilian or mammalian Threat Responses will compel us to try—unless we use conscious volition to override these programs.
The Persistence of the Ineffective Threat Responses
One question arises in all of this: Although we can understand how these dysfunctional responses arise, why do we humans so universally continue them despite their ineffective outcomes? Behavior theory tells us that ineffective responses extinguish after a time of persistent non-reinforcement. Therefore, something must be reinforcing these responses despite their apparent lack of effectiveness.
The simple answer to the persistence of two of the defensive reptilian Threat Responses--fighting and running--with their consistently poor outcomes, is the fact that engaging in them is gratifying. It feels good to hit someone who has frightened us—or to watch Jack Bauer beat up the terrorist on “24”. It feels good to successfully escape from someone or something that feels threatening. This gratified good feeling becomes confused with power or effectiveness—and we keep doing what feels good, but doesn't work. In fact, I would say that the more powerless someone feels in his or her life, the more alluring the gratification can be. We’re practically junkies for this kind of gratification when life is rough.
A man with low self-esteem feels jealous and worried about his ability to maintain his relationship with his partner, fearful she will leave him for another. So he becomes controlling through angry displays and punishes her for any perceived disloyalty. These actions feel good to him and he might even believe he is in control. But the real effect he’s had is to destroy her trust and make being with him so unpleasant that now she actively does want out of the relationship, whether she ever considered it before or not. A more effective response when he felt jealous and insecure would have been to discuss his feelings with his partner and seek some shared understanding that might have given him cause to trust more. Alternatively, if his fears turned out to be warranted, he needed to determine whether he wanted to invest more to improve the relationship or invest less given what it was.
A college student, who has come to believe that her worth is in her grades and the length of her resume, takes on too many courses and extracurricular activities. When the stress becomes too much, as it inevitably will, she “fights” her way through the fatigue to get her A’s because “fighting” feels good and “giving up” would feel bad. Before long, however, she becomes depleted and is less and less able to perform. But she keeps “fighting” and eventually fails. A more effective path would have been to acknowledge she had overextended herself and make adjustments by reducing her obligations and stress load, while also reworking her sense of what makes her worthy.
The answer to the persistence of the shutdown and placating responses despite their ineffective outcomes is that they are reinforced by the fairly immediate reduction of tension in the situation. Numbing out means you don’t feel as distressed as you were even if the situation is not improved. Placating, to the extent that it reduces the agitation of the possible aggressor, feels effective and may even be effective for the immediate moments. So the short-sighted “solution” is reinforced at the expense of more effective actions.
A man hates his job but spent many years in college to have this career and is in serious debt, with a partner and children who have come to expect the lifestyle that comes with the income the job brings. Every morning he feels how much he hates his job and doesn't want to go into work. One day, when taking the Vicodin prescribed for minor oral surgery, he notices the medicine gives him some escape from this feeling. He doesn't have to be aware of how distressing his life has become. He finds himself making up pains to get more Vicodin. But numbing out or shutting down his feelings isn't a precise endeavor. When he is numb to work distress, he is also numb to everything else in his life. He becomes more and more removed from his relationships with his partner and children. To manage the new level of distress this brings, he takes more Vicodin, or drinks more wine, or spends more time surfing the internet. In the immediate sense, he is escaping his distress and that feels better. But each escape removes more and more of his life from him. Soon he feels his life has become crushingly empty. He does more of what gave him relief. A more effective and powerful path would have been to take his own initial distress seriously, as a signal that his life wasn't working for him, to begin to communicate his distress to his partner, explore possibilities for change and prepare for those that could lead to the life he now knows he really wants for himself. The pain and effort of having to make these changes would have been manageable whereas the pain and effort of pulling out of an addiction and repairing deeply neglected relationships would be exponentially more difficult.
The woman whose partner has been violent before sees him getting tense. She offers to massage his back to help reduce his stress, makes his favorite meal, and tells him she will put the kids to bed so he can just relax. Sometimes this reduces his tension and the evening goes on smoothly enough. The times when he doesn’t relax and the evening ends in abuse to her or the kids, she believes she just didn’t find the right combination of soothing things to do for him. She believes she has power through the soothing. But the same behaviors that placate him also create a dynamic between them that sets her up as the one managing his emotional and mental state—something none of us can truly do for another--and sets her up as subservient to him. This dynamic contributes to a higher likelihood that he will act out aggressively in the future. A more effective path would be for her to address what it is like for her when he gets tense and ask him to manage himself and learn skills to communicate effectively, for her to set and enforce boundaries about his mistreatment and possibly to leave the relationship if he is not reliable in refraining from violence.
We can see the appeal of the Threat Response choices, but such short-sighted gratification of ineffectual responses and the impulse to reduce immediate distress at the cost of long-term effective action is at the core of a great many problems with which clients present for treatment. These are all dysfunctions of power—people trying to have power over something distressing in their lives but making misguided choices over and over again, which arise from and are maintained by primitive aspects of neuropsychology.
[1] For example: MacLean, P. D. (1973). A Triune Concept of Brain and Behavior. University of Toronto Press: Toronto.
[2] I viewed these films as part of a training workshop for Somatic Experiencing—a trauma recovery treatment founded by Peter Levine. However, I have drawn slightly different conclusions about the Threat Response than did Peter Levine, mostly regarding distinguishing “shutdown” from “freezing”.
[3] For example: http://wildlife.state.co.us/wildlifespecies/livigwithwildlife/mammals/lioncountry1.htm
[4] For example: US Marine Corps (9/18/2001). The Individual's Guide for Understanding and Surviving Terrorism.
[5] Especially see:
Taylor, S. (2006). Tend and befriend: Biobehavioral bases of affiliation under stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 273-277.
Porges, S. (2003). Social engagement and attachment: A phylogenetic perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 108(1), 31-47.
David, D. & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2005). Differential attachment responses of male and female infants to frightening maternal behavior: Tend or befriend versus fight or flight? Infant Mental Health Journal, 26(1), 1-18.
by Barbara J. Gilbert, Ph.D.
Introduction
Whether manifesting as dysthymia, personality disorders, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse or other symptoms, dysfunctional power practices seem to be at the core of many people’s difficulties in creating the lives they want. As a therapist for over 25 years and a clinical supervisor for over 20 years, I have had the amazing honor of being involved in the treatment of more than 3000 individuals. Among these widely diverse people, ineffective attempts to be powerful have emerged as a nearly universal difficulty. Any difficulty so common cannot really be called pathological. I found myself wondering what forces were at work to create this nearly universal problem with power.
My quest to understand the difficulties with power I saw in these 3,000 and more lives led me to increasingly more fundamental aspects of the human psyche. Through two of my specializations--work with trauma survivors and with convicted violence offenders--I saw pronounced, severe examples of passivity and aggression. This dual lens brought into full 3D vision the disturbingly pervasive dominance-power paradigm underlying most human interactions. I also saw how obviously and completely ineffectual such dominance-based power practices were and how even the passive were attempting to be powerful in a way. It puzzled me how so many did not self-adjust when their actions did not lead to the outcomes for which they longed. They continued the same ineffective dysfunctional practices, sometimes with even more vigor. Eventually I could see that of course I also did this in certain areas of my life and that indeed everyone I knew anything about did as well.
I recall how disturbing it was to realize that there is no such thing as effective power in the reigning power mindset, which I call the Dominance Paradigm. If there is no way to “win,” I thought, how can we be healthy? Then the answer came to me: Don’t accept the paradigm. From there I began to look for the essential components for building a paradigm for true power – that is, power practices that lead to effective outcomes. Such a paradigm, I knew, would have to offer power practices that would be effective even when others were using dominance-based “power”.
Fortunately, I did not have to build the new paradigm from scratch. Many others—throughout recorded history, in fact—have struggled with some portion or another of these issues. I also found much commonality among the ideas of those who have struggled with these issues. When virtually identical insights are discovered in literature from fields as different as evolution and political movements, primatology and spiritual teachings, psychoneurophysiology and theories of economy, such insights likely make solid building blocks. The True Power Paradigm described in this paper, with its empowerment practices, are built from these blocks and from the wisdom of 3,000 lives.
The Threat Response
From reading the wide-ranging literature and learning from these 3,000 lives, I have drawn the conclusion that our unique human neurology has given us built-in responses to threat that are extremely vulnerable to distortions and dysfunctional power practices. Furthermore, those specific vulnerabilities to distortion and dysfunction appear to be at the heart of the most common of our psychological and relational problems. Consequently, developing functional power practices and tools for managing our vulnerability to distortion will have far-reaching positive effects.
To understand our vulnerability to distortions and dysfunctional power, then, we need to understand certain aspects of the human brain. The human brain is considered to have three evolutionary layers: the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the neocortex.[1] Each of these makes its own contribution to our dysfunctional power practices. Their interaction creates even more problems.
Reptilian Brain Power Dysfunctions
Humans share a “Threat Response program” that is extremely similar among vertebrates all the way down the phylogenetic tree to reptiles. This Threat Response is mediated by the reptilian brain, which is the most evolutionarily primitive part of the human brain.
Imagine you are leaving a building and as you walk away, you see a mountain lion about twenty feet from you, crouched and tense, with that predator’s look in its eye. What happens in your body? Your muscles constrict—some feel it most in their legs, some in their shoulders and upper arms, some in their upper backs. Your digestive system reacts—some feel a constriction in their stomachs, some feel it in their bowels. Your heart and lungs react—most people are aware of increased heart beat or a pounding pulse; some are also aware of a shift to “chest breathing” rather than "belly breathing." These are all aspects of the Threat Response program. These bodily changes are all ways in which the body prepares for the three possible defensive behavioral responses to a threat: fight, run, or freeze (fight, flight or fright response).
In addition, during the Threat Response program in humans, thinking processes change. Many describe a narrowing of thought focus, intense awareness of threat-relevant sensory stimuli, rapid threat assessment thoughts, and a sense that time has slowed down. The thoughts people report having during an immediate intense threat are along the lines of, “What can I use as a weapon? I wonder if I can outrun it if I go that way? Oh no, it’s coming closer! I have to make a decision! What should I do?” Alternatively, some report no real thoughts at all but rather “pre-thoughts” that amount to scanning and acting without a sense of having deliberated or made a decision. What we usually don’t think about in this situation is how beautiful mountain lions are, or how glad we are that they haven’t all been killed off--even if those are opinions we usually do hold. Attention is on the mountain lion as the threat, with all our thinking and body resources focused on how to “win” this battle.
Another part of the Threat Response program has to do with situations when “losing” the battle becomes inevitable. I call it the “Shutdown” response. I have seen video in nature films that illustrates this Shutdown response. [2] In one such film, a cougar is chasing a deer. The deer is clearly in the Threat Response, first freezing and then running. When the cougar gets very close and is about to sink its claws and teeth into the deer, the deer collapses but is not dead or passed out; its eyes are open but glazed over. The camera stays on the deer while the cougar is frightened off by the filmmakers. The deer stays down. It remains conscious. Its muscle tone is slack, eyes still glazed. After a few minutes, the deer’s ears perk up and rotate. Assured the cougar is not present now, its eyes clear up and without moving in any other way, it appears to visually check the surrounding area. Then, the deer takes several deep shuddering breaths, jumps to its feet and goes running off in giant leaps and bounds.
This Shutdown response exists in humans as well—in severe cases we call it “shock” (physical shutdown) or “dissociation” (psychological shutdown). It is apparently a mechanism for not having to consciously experience helplessness, intense pain, fear or overwhelm. The Shutdown program includes a process for coming out of Shutdown when the threat has passed, which appears to function to reset the neurological system to a non-threat mode by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. In the deer and in humans who don’t block it, the reset occurs through the deep breaths and the discharge of energy through large muscle exercise. You can probably remember times when a stressful event was finally over—we naturally give a deep sigh or two or three and often want to walk or move in some way. I've been around people who have just been through something difficult and noted how hard it is for them to sit. I have a friend who is a fireman who has been part of rescue teams and he told me that he always has to watch out at car accident scenes because the crash victims want to walk. He says sometimes the compulsion to walk is so strong they don’t notice injuries or don’t pay attention to where they are walking.
Clearly, evolutionarily speaking, having a hard-wired Threat Response, with both Defensive and Shutdown mechanisms, and a neurological reset mechanism must have created a species survival advantage. But when, in a human’s life experiences, would any of the hard-wired reptilian Defensive or Shutdown Threat Responses be the best response, the most effective response? In our example of leaving a building to find yourself face-to-face with a mountain lion, the reptilian Threat Response program offers fighting, running, freezing, or shutdown. But our experts on wildlife mention none of those as the most effective response to a mountain lion encounter. They tell us we should make ourselves look as big as possible, and without crouching, slowly back away leaving the mountain lion an open path out.[3] They go on to say that running—one of our hard-wired Defensive Threat Response behaviors—would be the worst thing to do because a cat of any type will chase what runs. Most of us don’t run as fast or as agilely as mountain lions can. Thus, even in the case of potentially life-threatening encounters with wild animals, this reptilian-brain Threat Response program would not serve us well.
What about with dangerous humans? If a human is threatening our physical safety, would the reptilian Threat Response program serve us well? Most self-defense experts will tell you that good self-defense is mostly mental—that is, the goal is to recognize potential danger and avoid it before an encounter even occurs. But even when the threat is already present, the reptilian Threat Response program is not the best option. For example, in hostage situations, Homeland Security’s advice even to U.S. Marines is: “[D]o not make eye contact with the captors initially. Be polite and cooperate. You may need to reassure your abductors that you are not trying to escape by controlling your emotions, following instructions, and avoiding physical resistance.”[4] Thus, it would appear that our reptilian Threat Response program isn’t the best we can do as humans even when in a physically threatening situation with another human.
With perceived threats that do not put our lives at risk, the reptilian Threat Response program is even less useful. For example, in any type of relationship conflict, whether with a family member, romantic partner, friend, coworker or boss, the Threat Response repertoire of fighting, running, freezing or shutting down clearly are not helpful. Fighting will escalate any conflict. We can run away but the conflict will still be there when we stop avoiding. We can freeze but nothing changes. We can shut down but things likely get worse. Therefore, in any relationship situation, the reptilian Threat Response program will not be effective in creating the change we want. However, our reptilian hard-wiring will lead us to dysfunctional efforts to be powerful in these situations, unless we make conscious choices to do things differently.
Mammalian-Brain Threats
The next evolutionary layer of human neurology is the mammalian brain. The mammalian brain mediates our ability to mate, to bear and raise children, and to live in groups (among other functions). The mammalian brain functions also present corresponding new “threats,” such as mate jealousy, offspring protection, and status challenges. These threats feel like survival threats. In extreme circumstances, they can be threats to survival, though mostly they are threats to genetic survival not personal survival. The reptilian Threat Response program is “designed” for immediate physical threats to personal survival. However, a mammalian “threat" will frequently mistrigger the reptilian Threat Responses, at least to some degree. Humans’ (and other mammals’) responses to mate jealousy, status challenges and offspring protection threats appear very similar to the reptilian Threat Responses. We use fight aggression, running, freezing and shutting down in these situations too. Once again, fighting, running, freezing and shutdown are not the most effective, powerful responses in those situations.
Placating. In addition to adding new threat possibilities, the mammalian brain also adds another possibility to the Threat Response repertoire. I call it the placating response; it is also known as the “tend and befriend” or affiliative response. The placating response to threat appears to be “soft-wired” as part of the social engagement system.[5] When an attachment figure becomes more frightening, females in particular tend to approach the frightening attachment figure with affiliative behaviors rather than with fighting, running or freezing responses. In my work with domestic violence, I saw this pattern repeatedly among the children and partners of violent men: The previously violent man starts to get tense and his partner and children say or do soothing things. While this response might have increased safety in the immediate situation, it was not the most empowered choice for the women and children in the longer term and did not reduce their threat of violence from the men beyond the immediate moments. In other situations, such as with a distressed child, such soothing would be a very effective response—but we don’t always discriminate such situations well and Placating responses can be mistriggered in situations where boundary-setting would be much more effective.
Neocortex “Threats”
Our fancy human brains have a third evolutionary layer—the neocortex. The neocortex is a learning brain. It makes associations and generalizations. It is capable (at least in the higher primates) of symbolism and abstraction. It comprehends the concepts of future and past. These capabilities are clearly very advantageous in many circumstances. However, these capabilities also create nearly endless “threat” possibilities—albeit none of them truly physically threatening. We humans can feel threatened by something we think of, by an idea mentioned by someone else, by an image on a screen, by the unknown future, by our own insignificance in the big universe, by things that happened in the past, even by the threat of a threat. All of these perceived threats can activate our reptilian or mammalian Threat Response programs, yet none of these situations are effectively dealt with through fighting, running, freezing, shutting down, or placating. It’s pretty tough to do combat with a test or job demand; it’s impossible to run to avoid the future; the past cannot be placated. But our mistriggered reptilian or mammalian Threat Responses will compel us to try—unless we use conscious volition to override these programs.
The Persistence of the Ineffective Threat Responses
One question arises in all of this: Although we can understand how these dysfunctional responses arise, why do we humans so universally continue them despite their ineffective outcomes? Behavior theory tells us that ineffective responses extinguish after a time of persistent non-reinforcement. Therefore, something must be reinforcing these responses despite their apparent lack of effectiveness.
The simple answer to the persistence of two of the defensive reptilian Threat Responses--fighting and running--with their consistently poor outcomes, is the fact that engaging in them is gratifying. It feels good to hit someone who has frightened us—or to watch Jack Bauer beat up the terrorist on “24”. It feels good to successfully escape from someone or something that feels threatening. This gratified good feeling becomes confused with power or effectiveness—and we keep doing what feels good, but doesn't work. In fact, I would say that the more powerless someone feels in his or her life, the more alluring the gratification can be. We’re practically junkies for this kind of gratification when life is rough.
A man with low self-esteem feels jealous and worried about his ability to maintain his relationship with his partner, fearful she will leave him for another. So he becomes controlling through angry displays and punishes her for any perceived disloyalty. These actions feel good to him and he might even believe he is in control. But the real effect he’s had is to destroy her trust and make being with him so unpleasant that now she actively does want out of the relationship, whether she ever considered it before or not. A more effective response when he felt jealous and insecure would have been to discuss his feelings with his partner and seek some shared understanding that might have given him cause to trust more. Alternatively, if his fears turned out to be warranted, he needed to determine whether he wanted to invest more to improve the relationship or invest less given what it was.
A college student, who has come to believe that her worth is in her grades and the length of her resume, takes on too many courses and extracurricular activities. When the stress becomes too much, as it inevitably will, she “fights” her way through the fatigue to get her A’s because “fighting” feels good and “giving up” would feel bad. Before long, however, she becomes depleted and is less and less able to perform. But she keeps “fighting” and eventually fails. A more effective path would have been to acknowledge she had overextended herself and make adjustments by reducing her obligations and stress load, while also reworking her sense of what makes her worthy.
The answer to the persistence of the shutdown and placating responses despite their ineffective outcomes is that they are reinforced by the fairly immediate reduction of tension in the situation. Numbing out means you don’t feel as distressed as you were even if the situation is not improved. Placating, to the extent that it reduces the agitation of the possible aggressor, feels effective and may even be effective for the immediate moments. So the short-sighted “solution” is reinforced at the expense of more effective actions.
A man hates his job but spent many years in college to have this career and is in serious debt, with a partner and children who have come to expect the lifestyle that comes with the income the job brings. Every morning he feels how much he hates his job and doesn't want to go into work. One day, when taking the Vicodin prescribed for minor oral surgery, he notices the medicine gives him some escape from this feeling. He doesn't have to be aware of how distressing his life has become. He finds himself making up pains to get more Vicodin. But numbing out or shutting down his feelings isn't a precise endeavor. When he is numb to work distress, he is also numb to everything else in his life. He becomes more and more removed from his relationships with his partner and children. To manage the new level of distress this brings, he takes more Vicodin, or drinks more wine, or spends more time surfing the internet. In the immediate sense, he is escaping his distress and that feels better. But each escape removes more and more of his life from him. Soon he feels his life has become crushingly empty. He does more of what gave him relief. A more effective and powerful path would have been to take his own initial distress seriously, as a signal that his life wasn't working for him, to begin to communicate his distress to his partner, explore possibilities for change and prepare for those that could lead to the life he now knows he really wants for himself. The pain and effort of having to make these changes would have been manageable whereas the pain and effort of pulling out of an addiction and repairing deeply neglected relationships would be exponentially more difficult.
The woman whose partner has been violent before sees him getting tense. She offers to massage his back to help reduce his stress, makes his favorite meal, and tells him she will put the kids to bed so he can just relax. Sometimes this reduces his tension and the evening goes on smoothly enough. The times when he doesn’t relax and the evening ends in abuse to her or the kids, she believes she just didn’t find the right combination of soothing things to do for him. She believes she has power through the soothing. But the same behaviors that placate him also create a dynamic between them that sets her up as the one managing his emotional and mental state—something none of us can truly do for another--and sets her up as subservient to him. This dynamic contributes to a higher likelihood that he will act out aggressively in the future. A more effective path would be for her to address what it is like for her when he gets tense and ask him to manage himself and learn skills to communicate effectively, for her to set and enforce boundaries about his mistreatment and possibly to leave the relationship if he is not reliable in refraining from violence.
We can see the appeal of the Threat Response choices, but such short-sighted gratification of ineffectual responses and the impulse to reduce immediate distress at the cost of long-term effective action is at the core of a great many problems with which clients present for treatment. These are all dysfunctions of power—people trying to have power over something distressing in their lives but making misguided choices over and over again, which arise from and are maintained by primitive aspects of neuropsychology.
[1] For example: MacLean, P. D. (1973). A Triune Concept of Brain and Behavior. University of Toronto Press: Toronto.
[2] I viewed these films as part of a training workshop for Somatic Experiencing—a trauma recovery treatment founded by Peter Levine. However, I have drawn slightly different conclusions about the Threat Response than did Peter Levine, mostly regarding distinguishing “shutdown” from “freezing”.
[3] For example: http://wildlife.state.co.us/wildlifespecies/livigwithwildlife/mammals/lioncountry1.htm
[4] For example: US Marine Corps (9/18/2001). The Individual's Guide for Understanding and Surviving Terrorism.
[5] Especially see:
Taylor, S. (2006). Tend and befriend: Biobehavioral bases of affiliation under stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 273-277.
Porges, S. (2003). Social engagement and attachment: A phylogenetic perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 108(1), 31-47.
David, D. & Lyons-Ruth, K. (2005). Differential attachment responses of male and female infants to frightening maternal behavior: Tend or befriend versus fight or flight? Infant Mental Health Journal, 26(1), 1-18.
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