Have you ever found yourself doing something you promised yourself you wouldn't do again? Maybe you agreed to help someone when you already had too much on your plate. Perhaps you avoided a conversation you knew you needed to have. Or maybe you found yourself apologizing for something that wasn't your responsibility.
Later, you wondered why you did it. You knew what you wanted to do differently, but when the situation presented itself, you responded the same way you always have. There may be more to that behavior than you realize.
Some Behaviors Begin as Survival Responses
Our experiences influence how we learn to respond to people and situations. When those experiences involve trauma, instability, rejection, or other difficult circumstances, we may develop behaviors that help us protect ourselves or manage what is happening around us. Over time, some of those responses become familiar ways of navigating relationships and everyday situations.
Consider someone who learned early in life that disagreeing with others resulted in conflict. Agreeing with people may have helped reduce the likelihood of an argument or other unpleasant consequences. Eventually, saying yes became a familiar response, even when the person wanted to say no.
Years later, that same person may find themselves taking on responsibilities they don't want, avoiding disagreements, or prioritizing other people's preferences over their own. Their circumstances have changed, but the response remains familiar. The behavior may continue because it once served a useful purpose.
Understanding Defense Mechanisms
In The Trauma-Informed You, we examine defense mechanisms and the ways people adapt to difficult experiences. Defense mechanisms can help us manage uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and situations. Some operate outside our conscious awareness, making them difficult to recognize while they're happening.
Avoidance is one example. Someone may avoid a difficult conversation because they anticipate conflict or discomfort. Avoiding the conversation may provide immediate relief, but the underlying concern remains unresolved.
Understanding these responses gives us information about how we protect ourselves. We can begin examining what we're responding to, whether the behavior remains useful, and how it influences our relationships.
Understanding Yourself
Recognizing survival responses and defense mechanisms is part of renewing your relationship with yourself. Examining how our experiences have influenced our behaviors can help us understand why certain responses feel familiar, even when we want to do something differently.
Renewing Your Relationship With Yourself, the self-paced training based on The Trauma-Informed You, provides guided reflections and interactive workbooks to help you explore these concepts and apply them to your own experiences.
