A Coaching Power Tool By Clara Zawawi, Transformation Coach, FRANCE
Shutdown vs. Liberation: Fight; Flight or Freeze?
The body’s natural response to danger – fight; flight or freeze – is the result of hormonal and physiological changes that allow a person to act quickly in order to protect themselves from perceived threats. Fight or flight are active defensive responses, where the heart beats faster, sending more oxygen to the muscles; perception of pain drops; and hearing sharpens – all designed to maximize your physical ability to respond to the danger.
Freezing puts you on hold; able to further prepare yourself to respond (McCabe & Milosevic, 2015, p. 180). It’s also called reactive immobility, attentive immobility, or shutdown and while your body goes through similar physiological changes to preparing for flight, including increased production of hormones you remain still and get ready for the next move.
The action begins in the amygdala, the part of the brain that perceives fear; which then sends signals to the hypothalamus, which regulates the autonomic nervous system. This consists of two parts – the sympathetic, which drives the fight or flight response; and the parasympathetic, which drives freezing. Every reaction depends on which system dominates the response at the time. (Sutton, J Positive Psychology https://positivepsychology.com/fight-or-flight-response/ 9 Jan 2022 and Harvard Health 2020)
When you’re faced with a perceived threat; your brain thinks you’re in danger. As a result, your body automatically reacts with the fight-flight-freeze response to keep you safe. Freezing is actually the most common response to rape (Selby, 2020).
But it’s not necessary for such threats even to be real in the moment, their perception may be triggered by anxiety or trauma. Seemingly inconsequential things can trigger a response that may be inappropriate in its severity (Nunez, 2020). Many people are pushed into shutdown by societal or cultural expectations of behavior.
Shutdown can express itself in a variety of ways. There are a great many nuances around shutdown; from a lack of reaction that leads others to think that you accept their behavior; to a full emotional shutdown. The first can be assisted through coaching; the last is the province of the therapist.
When shutdown prevents the person from reacting appropriately to achieve clear communication about their position or needs it can be counter-productive to career or personal development. For example, in fraught personal situations, certain people may not express their valid views or points of view at all, leading to ongoing issues of misunderstanding and resentment. In a work situation, it can lead to dysfunctional teams where valuable contributions are not made and indeed over time, resentment builds up breaking cohesion and leading to turnover. The person who suffers shutdown finds their career stymied as they cannot properly communicate their point of view in stressful situations. Life becomes limiting. Explosions are possible and can be extremely damaging. Relationships that could be salvaged are lost.
Learning to deal with these responses is a recognized part of positive psychology. The best strategies and techniques are the ones that fit our lifestyle; suit our personality and provide us with the confidence that we can manage an existing or future situation.
In physical terms, they are strategies that allow the higher (and slower) brain functions the time to kick into gear to overcome the primitive shortcut and respond directly to and from the amygdala and the limbic brain (Goleman 2006, 236). Creating new neural connections through conscious practice soothes the reliance on the initial reaction of the limbic brain and allows growth.
In order to help clients identify and develop their own best strategies I use the power tool
Shutdown vs. Liberation
I’ve chosen Liberation as the flipped perspective because of the definition of the word; which is very ACTIVE – the ACTION of seeing someone free from imprisonment; slavery; and oppression. Liberation describes the process by which freedom (the power or right to act as one would want) is achieved.
In the coaching setting, Liberation is a process that enables honest and considered communication and response; and allows expression and constructive dialogue. The person moves from feeling disempowered and unheard to becoming a more active participant in their own life. Relationships improve and life flourishes.
CASE STUDY – Ursula.
Ursula is a fellow coach who presented with the issue that she allowed other people to impose their views on her by not responding at the moment – shutdown. She rationalized this by telling herself that if she responded in the moment the situation would escalate out of control in a negative way.
She then found herself unable to deal with these situations even later on; not knowing how she might respond in a way that might be productive (an indication that indeed she was experiencing shutdown). This would end in her dismissing the situation entirely and not dealing with underlying negative issues because of a feeling that ‘now it’s too late’ – avoidance.
She recognized that this subsequent lack of engagement with the original issue was in itself also an excuse not to deal with the situation/issue/conflict and therefore equally unsatisfactory. She was internalizing these conflicts or issues and never adequately resolving them. Moreover, she was finding herself in situations that she did not want to be in as her lack of a response in the moment was being taken as acquiescence or agreement, when this was not actually how she felt at all. She understood that this was not how she wanted to act or feel and was looking to make a substantive change.
When questioned, she acknowledged feelings of overwhelm but also identified that she simply did not trust herself to respond in an appropriate way at the moment. She was afraid that a response ‘would be taken the wrong way’ or ‘escalate the situation’. Safety was in doing nothing –shutdown.
She needed to find a strategy that would give herself space to allow her ‘thinking brain’ time to respond.
Further questioning provoked a realization that what she was seeking was to communicate in a non-judgemental way, exactly as she might do if she was coaching. She connected immediately to the fact that she had no issues coming from non-judgment – and communicating that – while in her coaching mode. She just didn’t trust herself to do so in the course of her daily life; with family and colleagues.
Having made the link to coaching she understood that if she were coming from the coaching mindset then she would have no lack of confidence in communicating in a non-judgemental fashion. As soon as she started to think of herself as a coach, she entered into the mindset of being innately non-judgemental and moreover reliable in terms of managing a relationship or possible conflict situation. This gave her a huge boost of clarity and confidence in her ability to communicate clearly and effectively.
Now that she knew what she SHOULD do, the remaining piece of the puzzle was to work out what she COULD do to ‘flip’ her own brain into the coaching mindset at the very moment when she would normally have gone into shutdown. Her very own, unique strategy.
She identified that it would be to ask a coaching question – open, non-judgemental, powerful. This was a perfect solution because she realized she could use an existing learned response (the coach response) – that was easily accessible even in the heat of the moment.
When she started to think of herself as a coach, her confidence to remain non-judgemental – or not to express judgment; to communicate in such a way that would avoid the appearance of judgment – by asking ‘what’ questions – changed her attitude towards herself. She understood that she could use this learned response (the coach response) which immediately forced her to use her thinking brain to overcome the lower brain freeze response … allowing her to take action if not immediately then very soon after; with the full confidence that she would succeed.
Realizing that she had both the ability to communicate non-judgementally as well as having the tool with which to begin such a conversation or response was extremely liberating for her.
For me as a coach, this was a completely unforeseen progression of the session. She wanted a strategy but neither of us had any clear idea of what that strategy might be. In any upcoming session I would utilize the power tool; first exploring how the client felt in the situations in which they felt flooded; using the flip to liberation to explore the paths by which they might get there. That should give the client the ability to formulate the strategy and the steps that would need to be taken towards liberation.
References
McCabe, R.E. & Milosevic, I. (2015) The Psychology of Irrational Fear, Bloomsbury Publishing, London
Sutton, J. (2022) Positive Psychology https://positivepsychology.com/fight-or-flight-response/ 9 Jan.
Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing, London
Goleman, D. (2006) Social Intelligence. Arrow Books, London
Selby, J, (2020) https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/03/9547973/freezing-up-response-rape
Nunez, K. (2023) https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/fight-flight-freeze 23 Feb.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response