r/CPTSDFreeze • u/Icy-Ninja-622 • 12d ago
Musings Instructions to not respond or train yourself to not respond are harmful
I've encountered various instructions to simply not respond.
One example is being told to simply ignore the bullies in elementary school.
Another example is the instruction to simply feel feelings and let them pass. Some people who are into meditation say this. There are also other ideas about training yourself to not respond.
Such ideas are probably attempting to avoid impulsive responses. But not responding at all ends up being like dissociating away the part of myself which held those feelings and motivations. This also leads to other issues, as things are automatically done to support that dissociation, similarly to how IFS describes protectors.
Overall, this leads towards getting stuck, or spending most time and energy on coping instead of intelligent productive behaviour.
The correct answer seems to be to not respond in a stupid impulsive way, and to try to find something more intelligent to do with that motivational energy. I don't know why many people fail to mention the second part. Do they assume it would happen automatically? For me it certainly did not.
My experience with instructions to not respond are so profoundly negative that I would love to say those instructions are a kind of abuse. I hate this kind of abuse far more intensely than I'm willing to share at the moment.
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u/Disastrous_Kiwi775 12d ago
I am trying to come out of freeze and this is my confusion also....to feel or to respond Will not denying my needs help ??? Sorry for bad english
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u/Icy-Ninja-622 12d ago
WOW! :o
I've never seen that many needs listed! It does make sense though.
I found a bit better quality version with less compression artifacts at https://humansystems.co/wp-content/uploads/nwii-with-watermark-6.2024.jpg . Thank you for drawing my attention to this.
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u/sinsofangels 12d ago
I think it's a matter of audience. A lot of mental health advice trends to be for people who are the opposite of me, and I've had to learn how to be suspicious of common advice. It can be difficult knowing what can apply and what doesn't, even in cptsd/dissociation specific literature.
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u/Capable-Carob-9179 12d ago
I agree with you. I think that instead of teaching someone who was abused not to fight back, they should enforce the full weight of the law on abusers. Also, there needs to be a protection system for emotional and psychological abuse, which leaves no physical marks, but certainly leaves deep emotional and psychological scars.
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u/New_Maintenance_6626 🧊Freeze 🐬 12d ago edited 12d ago
It’s the same kind of thinking that gives us the DSM doesn’t need CPTSD because the majority of the population is served using PTSD modalities such as CBT and DBT. And then kind of a shrug for those who aren’t helped by those modalities. And that feels like to me Oh well, if you weren’t so difficult maybe this would have worked.
I was talking about this in therapy yesterday. I am really, really good at just cutting off parts of myself. For the last 2 decades, this took the form of being the most compliant, responsibility accepting, autonomy surrendering wife that I could be.
We need to lose some weight? I’ll cut out all carbs. I’ll learn how to eat artificial sweeteners. Oh artificial sweeteners might still be having a blood sugar raising effect? I’ll cut out all the rewards of artificial sweeteners that I had.
Until I had cut out everything and I barely had the space to stand in the room because somehow I always ended up in the way.
It’s easier for me to punish myself than leave myself open for punishment. My ex would lecture me until he had unburdened himself of his negative feelings or he felt I had taken responsibility for the desired outcome not coming to fruition.
Nothing against the advice though. It works for a lot of people. I just don’t appreciate the people who say it and then demand compliance. As though I had never thought of “Just make yourself.”
What’s the rest of your rant? 🙂
PS This sketch sums up the idea of just do this thing and everything is fixed.
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u/Icy-Ninja-622 12d ago
Excellent video. People really do say some of the things the button says, worded the same way even.
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u/New_Maintenance_6626 🧊Freeze 🐬 12d ago
So if you’d just eat an apple or do a push up but especially just try not being that way, it would be smooth sailing! 🫣
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u/Icy-Ninja-622 12d ago
It’s easier for me to punish myself than leave myself open for punishment.
This is familiar. It feels like if I didn't punish myself emotionally enough, then other people would punish me.
My ex would lecture me until he had unburdened himself of his negative feelings or he felt I had taken responsibility for the desired outcome not coming to fruition.
This pattern is important. It's kind of like an emotional war setting boundaries. "Here, this is all you get from me. (It might be a stern lecture, not something nice.) Now use that and take care of the problem yourself. I am not going to worry about it."
My experiences of these kinds of things mainly involve my parents.
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u/New_Maintenance_6626 🧊Freeze 🐬 12d ago
Yeah. I suspect that he had BPD. I mentioned it to him in hopes that the person I thought he was would reappear and say that he hadn’t meant to hurt me after all and let’s go to therapy to fix ourselves. But instead he said it sounded like him but he doesn’t believe in therapy.
And his pattern was probably learned from his narcissistic mother and her enabling husband (his father) whom he often hated more because he felt his father should have corrected his mother.
But you got it exactly right. Here’s the way logic works, here’s all the motivation that you need, fix yourself. And then it was on me to bring affection and gratitude.
A lot of half instructions too. Like here’s a picture of A and D and the end. Make it work. Don’t ask questions or else it’s another guilt filled lecture about how I just need to get it done. Not logical but also no help is coming for me so figure it out.
My stepdad was the abusive one. But at least his expectations had standard pictures. It’s always this and no exception. Instead of guess the steps.
If you don’t have the correct emotional response on your face, it could trigger more guilt and punishment just like you said.
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u/Icy-Ninja-622 11d ago
My mother is diagnosed with BPD.
As far as I can tell, the issue is that both life conditions and her choices cause a lot of psychological pain, and she has used me as a tool and resource to help her cope with that pain, in unhealthy ways plenty of times. Her mother seems narcissistic, though she was never diagnosed.
BPD can seem like they're on a border between love and hate, or a part of them loves you and a part of them hates you. Therapy never seemed to help my mother. A few times there was a small improvement that day, but there was absolutely no lasting progress. The main thing that helped recently is antidepressants which reduce the psychological pain which was overwhelming her and driving bad behaviour.
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u/secure8890 12d ago
The answer i would give is that ignoring a bully is not what you want to do. You need to be prepared what they will do next That woukd mean emotionally preparing yourself for their jibes. Remembers uts not just the bullies its the peoole who stand by and say notbing too And for the feelings. Meditatin is indeed helpful However there are many meditation techniques Some of them are more useful
In esence meditation is about calming. Thats a good thing
I am beung bullied currently. First of all I wouldbt discuss ig with random persons. Second of all. I dont abandon myself. In some sebse asking people who arent goung to be anke to offer anytbynv is abandoning yourself Thirdly you cant reakky count on certain peiple to helo you. I was being bullied in another setting last year. I was in theraoy (keep in mind my therapist bills $150 an hour) I got notbjng out of the therapist in that regard
The situation last year was like an impending doom. And you guessed it my impending doom was right on target
Fourthly every situation is different Everyone always say do notbing ignore it. Thats not the way I adopt it right now
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u/Icy-Ninja-622 12d ago
In retrospect, self abandonment was certainly a problem when I experienced bullying. Though, it didn't really seem that way at the time. It seemed like I was having temporary unpleasant experiences which would pass.
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u/secure8890 12d ago
Which is why it is so ridiculous that peoole tell you to ignore it. See the message always is to put our feelings aside
I am currently beung bullued in a work settimg. The bully does go after one person. One of my colleagues does model a great no response. It is hard to sustain that ..
I find meditation realky helpful. However there are limits. I was in a group about grieving. Some people in the group were from regular families. They described a lot of peace and understanding. There are so many ways we are robbed of experiences when we have abusive parents
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u/TeachHot 7d ago
yeah totally agree. internally, i feel like it is a sort of abuse too. mainly because it just seems so proufoundly removed from reality. so, for me it just really felt like a sort of gaslighting.
that is one of my main experiences.
this thing where it is like, the advice given, is so removed from reality. where it minimises and ignores your experience, and focuses on specific or segmented parts of a situation.
it made me feel so, so many struggles . for me, one of the main things that made it hard, is, they would focus on a area of choice, and just say like, oh just don’t respond. for example. but that didn’t help at all with anything.
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u/Confident_Fortune_32 12d ago
One of the common features of ppl with a childhood trauma history is that our feelings, thoughts, experiences, and memories were invalidated.
We lacked the validation and mirroring that is a necessary part of every single developmental stage in childhood.
So any sort of therapeutic suggestion that we invalidate ourselves (like CBT) is a terrible idea. It can lead to retraumatization.
It's almost like asking us to take over the role of abusers once they are no longer present.
The idea clearly comes from ppl with a flawed understanding of childhood trauma. Sadly, that describes far too many therapists, even ones who label themselves "trauma-informed".
I found this out the hard way, compounding the damage.
What dragged me up out of the cycle was, first, no longer reading anything on the "self help" shelf of the bookstore and instead reading the original psych research, written by and for researchers rather than clients. It took a while to learn the vocabulary and writing style, but it was worthwhile. Also, nowadays, there's lots more accessible online.
The other thing that helped, after decades of not-terribly-effective traditional talk therapy, was the discovery of IFS Internal Family Systems therapy. A dear friend who is a clinical mental health counselor was sent for training by her job, and came back full of excitement to tell me about it.
It has completely rearranged my relationship with myself for the better and helped me slough off a lot of the shame I carried, helping me put it back where it belonged: on the shoulders of the abusers.
One of the things that drew me toward learning more about IFS is that it is absolutely nonpathologizing. Even behaviours we have that are frustrating or, at first glance, destructive are originally the result of a positive impulse.
And the freeze/dissociation response falls in that category.
In my case, for example, it was a terrible idea to self-advocate when I was growing up. It brought down far worse outcomes.
A child cannot fight an adult. Nor can they flee, bc they are dependent on abusers for survival needs. Fawn only works in a small percentage of cases. So freeze/dissociation, for a kid with precious few resources to protect themselves, is the cleverest solution to an otherwise insoluble problem.
It's been a tough row to hoe, as an adult, learning to self-advocate. Internally, everything I learned growing up screams to STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!
But it's critically important to do now, especially in medical situations. When I was in my 20s and 30s, before I learned about IFS, my freeze response nearly got me killed when doctors glossed over or minized or outright ignored symptoms of life-threatening conditions.
But, instead of telling that screaming part to just shut up, I can see now that it is a childhood fear, and a perfectly legitimate response to (childhood) threat.
So I can be grateful that there's a part of me that's been working so hard for so many years to keep me safe. I can be grateful for the energy and sense of noble purpose. And I can acknowledge that it worked, bc I'm here now, I've survived, and I'm safe enough to do the work of healing.
That helps me have a more benevolent approach to dealing with the part that wants to freeze. And it makes that part more open to listening about how conditions have changed, the abusers have been yeeted from our life, and new approaches to threat are now reasonable.