Actually I'm having more thoughts and feelings about how traits of surviving abuse are just so heavily hated and stigmatized by the general population.
If you are someone who freezes, fawns, or just in general has difficulty speaking up for yourself people will hate you for that, brand you a coward, say it makes you weak, and say that any abuse or bullying that happens to you is your fault for being too weak to do anything about it. (The catch 22 is that people also hate people who assert their boundaries and speak up for themselves, you really can't win!)
But again, freezing, fawning, flinching at mean/rude behavior instead of speaking back, these behaviors can become so heavily ingrained in you after years of abuse, and can be so, so hard to untrain yourself to even years after you've escaped the abuse.
That's because our brains and bodies are hardwired to do what it takes for us to survive any given situation. When you're trapped in an abusive situation, you probably did try fighting back and standing up for yourself at some point. Maybe dozens of times. Maybe even hundreds of times. And chances are every single time, or almost every single time, that you tried standing up for yourself and fighting back this just made the abuser dial up the abuse even more, so fighting back only put you in more danger. And at some point, in a pavlovian manner, a very primal part of your brain began to understand that fighting back and standing up for yourself was only putting you in more danger, endangering your safety, possibly even endangering your life. So your brain, which is evolved to keep you safe and more importantly alive, changed its wiring down to the very primal core to make you do what it would take to keep you safe during abuse, which often is freezing or fawning, but certainly not trying to fight back or stand up for yourself (after that only put you in more danger the first 10 or 50 or 100 times). Freezing and/or fawning is often the only reaction that will please an abuser who's actively lashing out at you, and get them to calm down and back off, or at least not hurt you more than they were already planning to.
So as a survival mechanism, these behaviors become very, very hardwired into you, because they were the only things keeping you safe, possibly even alive, for many years. That's why once you leave the abuse you can't just switch off these behaviors. The more severe the abuse, the more hardwired these are. That's why it can take years working with a therapist, preferably one who specializes in trauma recovery, to hopefully re-wire your brain a little bit. But not everyone has access to a therapist specializing in trauma recovery.
When I see someone who freezes, fawns, has trouble speaking up, who flinches and backs down when someone raises their voice, I don't see a coward. I see someone whose brain was re-wired to keep them safe and alive in a very horrible situation.
And yet, people are so quick to judge these behaviors as "weak" "cowardly" and "pathetic" because society hates abuse survivors so much, and surviving abuse is still so heavily stigmatized.
But if you want to make the world a little kinder for abuse survivors, don't be so quick to judge behaviors common in abuse survivors, like freezing, fawning, flinching at loud voices or mean words, struggling to speak up, etc. Instead of being so quick to judge them as weak or cowardly, or saying it means they deserve to be bullied and/or mistreated for their "weakness", maybe ask yourself why they are the way they are. Chances are they're that way because they've endured something more horrific than you could imagine, so the least you could do is show a little kindness and understanding, maybe even stand up for them.
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
