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First, there’s some terminology that will be empowering for you to know.
Emotions vs. Physical Sensations
Emotions are feelings that start in the brain and can go to the body.
Physical sensations are feelings that start in the body and go to the brain.
Emotions are created by your thoughts.
Physical sensations are not created by your thoughts, but are your nervous system giving you feedback about what it is perceiving/sensing/communicating.
Stress Response vs. Emotions
Some people will use the word “stress” to describe an emotion they are feeling.
The human stress response is, in fact, different than an emotion. It is a different kind of physiological response.
There is a cascade of biological chemicals that sets off a stress response in response to your nervous system perceiving danger.
The stress response helped our ancestors survive.
It is well-suited for the conditions our more ancient ancestors lived in.
Nowadays, our nervous systems often perceive danger where there is none (from an email, or a test, for example).
And since we don’t move our bodies as much as our ancestors (and we’re even socially pressured to not react in a physiologically helpful way, like sitting still in school for instance), if we don’t do our part, the stress chemicals and stress response can keep firing in our system longer than is healthy.
Emotions can pass in as little as 2 minutes or less.
Stress Responses take longer to pass, depending on how you handle it. For me, it can take 10-15 minutes on the short-end a lot of times. Sometimes it takes me longer.
Trauma vs Stress Response
Unprocessed trauma can be like stress and/or emotions trapped in our bodies.
Until it is allowed to be processed/released, it will remain there.
The body keeps the score (great trauma book entitled this, by the way).
Your brain does much of the processing of trauma for you, as you go about your day, as you move your body, as you sleep/dream.
Unprocessed trauma can set off stress responses, for no apparent reason, until the trauma is processed.
It can feel like you are reliving the traumatic event when this happens.
If the trauma was repeated (ie in an abusive relationship) over long periods of time, it can be more complex.
Healing/Processing From Trauma Happens
The body and brain desperately want to heal and process trauma.
Some trauma will never be processed if we don’t consciously get involved, and select methods that work for that specific individual.
The individual should always get the final say on what method works best for them in that particular moment.
Until the trauma is processed, it can cause numerous/various symptoms, and even disease or chronic injury/pain. I can’t even begin to list them all.
But pretty much any issue with your body you have ever had, has at least a chance of being connected to some underlying unprocessed trauma.
Even unwanted habits (wink-wink) are sometimes (not always) connected to unprocessed trauma and the patterns that we have difficulty letting go of.
A stress response can fire off based off of real-time, in-the-moment perceptions of your nervous system.
A stress response can also fire off as part of a trauma-response, which is your past trauma manifesting in some symptomatic (physical or emotional) way in this moment.
How Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn Might Show Up For You
Whether your stress response is based on new perceptions or a re-igniting of old trauma, here are some versions of the stress response that may show up for you, and what they might look like.
The 4 F’s:
- Fight
- Flight
- Freeze
- Fawn (people-pleasing)
Your nervous system will determine for you unconsciously which version of the stress response it deems as your best option for that moment/situation.
For a child being abused, or a woman being raped by a larger/stronger perpetrator, fighting is not really always an option. So a Freeze response might be utilized by the nervous system instead.
If running is an option, perhaps this version of the stress response will occur.
Fawning is also a version of the stress response that can show up when your nervous system sees fit.
4 F’s Sometimes Helpful and Sometimes Not
Each of the 4 F’s can show up for us in both helpful ways and unhelpful ways.
For a healthy person experiencing a healthy amount of stress, in a healthy range, who healthily completes the stress response cycles as they go. This system can be very efficient. This system, managed skillfully by an informed/conscious person, can be part of a thriving lifestyle.
Some (not all) of the less helpful ways stress responses show up:
- Fight: yelling, physically fighting/attacking inappropriately, verbal abuse, manipulating, trying to control others, bullying, explosive behavior
- Flight: staying over-busy, unable to sit still or slow down, avoiding conflict, can appear as “driven-ness,” workaholic
- Freeze: isolating, shutting down, numbing out, hiding, couch potato, absent-minded or spacey
- Fawn: people-pleasing, groveling, being a doormat, not able to follow through with boundaries as well as planned, maybe perfectionism
How to implement this information:
- As you learn to allow and process feelings, approach a stress response differently than you would emotions. For example, with a stress response you may need to consciously breathe and/or get your body moving in some way and you’ll want to give yourself more time for a stress response to pass than for an emotion.
- As you practice intentionally choosing your thoughts, know that emotions experienced will be directly affected. The way you experience stress will be indirectly affected, but you can affect your relationship with and the way that you experience stress, by learning to think in new ways about your stress.
- You can also learn to not perceive things as dangerous that you used to perceive as dangerous (only when this is wise), which can lessen the situations in which your stress response fires off. You can expand you and your nervous system’s comfort zone over time.
- If you have repetitive stress responses in the same way, in similar situations, in debilitating ways, over and over, maybe explore if there is some trauma behind it for you to heal from and process.
- Explore and learn about other strategies for completing stress response cycles and/or regulating emotions
How to Apply This Information to an unwanted Porn Habit:
When you are using porn habitually to escape the feelings and sensations you’re experiencing (which is a huge part of this for most people in my experience).
If you stop viewing porn suddenly, there will be some emotions and/or trauma/stress/sensations for you to address. If you don’t make room for becoming aware of these feelings, and don’t learn new strategies for allowing, processing, healing, regulating them, you will continue going back to the porn habit, or whatever external thing you are using to buffer with.
So this is a key piece for many people to learn in order to sustainably quit porn once and for all.
Keep going!
Keep practicing!
Next Steps:
If you want more useful information like this, and want help applying a tested system that not only helps you quit porn for good, but helps you make your life so good that porn becomes irrelevant,
Come check out the Life Coaching (Trauma-informed) options we offer.
Schedule a free strategy call right away to figure out your next steps that fit just right for you (you'll know best what that is).
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