Styles of Coping

Power is a very curious thing. Often, we equate it with the masculine. However, in its essential nature, power or Shakti is feminine. She drives nature. She is our life force or prana. She is kundalini. She is mantra.

The reason we confuse where power comes from is that it expresses through the masculine as well. For example, that kundalini Shakti expressed through the masculine solar plexus chakra. But without that Shakti, no power, no chakra, no life.

To the article, when we have an overwhelming experience of any type, our body goes into one of several modes to cope.

For example, we see a tiger. The natural first instinct is to prepare to fight or to run away (flight).

Yet if we don’t feel that’s possible, we may fall deeper into the stress response and “play dead” (freeze) or shift into a submissive, fawning mode.

Fawning is more active than the freeze shutdown and includes elements of fight. This energy is used to appease a threat.

For example, some predators relish the chase and will lose interest in a weaselly groveling. Or they like fresh prey, not an apparently dead thing. Similar dynamics can play out in human interactions.

Often, our parents didn’t know healthy ways of expressing some emotions, especially anger. As a result, children were not allowed to be angry. We learned to suppress it until this was automatic and subconscious. We may not realize that we do that. But that anger is our power and ability to defend ourselves. If it’s suppressed, we lose access. Overwhelm will then take us past fight and into a freeze or fawn mode.

Spiritual communities are often full of people playing the nice guy/girl, doing the right thing “for the planet.” Yet often, they’re acting out their coping mechanism of avoidance, denying how they feel. I remember once years ago, a friend gave me a small book on processing anger. I denied I experienced anger, which was a good sign it was suppressed. When I read the book, I could see signs of it.

Certainly, meditation had calmed my reactivity. But it didn’t help with coping habits. Those have to be made conscious so they can be healed.

A flip side of “nice guy” we call toxic masculinity. This is where someone is stuck in “bravado” or fight mode. Ironically, this is just another style of coping mechanism, another style of trauma response, another version of the same thing.

In some ways, being able to express anger is healthier, even if it’s in unhealthy ways. Not to excuse violence or bad behaviour – this is to illustrate a point. At least they have access to their power.

Another related detail with coping strategies: our trauma informs our identity, as I’ve explored previously. And that dominant self-concept influences the state of our nervous system. If our identity says we’re a strong, tough man, we’ll seek ways to affirm and protect that.

If we change states, like relaxing into a more connected state, the identity can experience this as a loss of self or failure. “It’s not masculine to be nice.” “Real men don’t cry.” Shame and self-judgment ensue.

The flip side is also true. The nice guy/girl can feel loss, shame, and judgment if they feel any anger. They often equate anger with its unhealthy forms. And yet, anger is where that power is: when we can learn to direct it in healthy ways, it’s a powerful motivator.

Also, the body is only in the present. It is our mind that takes us into the past (memory) and future (imagination). Our unresolved trauma is in the body and experienced as being present now. This is another way the trauma state becomes sustained: our body experiences that past overwhelm as now.

The key is becoming conscious of our coping strategies and learning somatic healing or working with a related healer so we can resolve the drivers behind them. Then our behaviour becomes driven by how we are, not our habits from how we used to be.

Then we can find our power and its roots and become a veritable force for good.
Davidya

PS: Here’s a related article I ran into after writing the above.