Yeah this makes sense, and we're preparing a video on the more social panic topic, so it's very timely (and helps us to get more thoughts together on this topic).
So, we have the basic what we are now calling "Dino brain" panic reactions: fight, flight, freeze & flop. These are the most "ancient" parts of the autonomic nervous system and most concerned with staying alive in dangerous situations. We didn't have anything to do with developing these -- they're recognized in literature sometimes by different names (like in polyvagal theory) but they're all accounted for.
Then the more social-connections-based panic reactions - fawn, follow, fabricate, fitting and flocking. We have a hypothesis that they developed during times our ancestors (early mammals through primates & early humans, etc.) banded together (or "buddied up") into flocks, clans, pods for group survival benefits. This part of our ANS which we've started to call "Buddy Brain" monitors threats to our belongingness, inclusion, rank, and status in survival groups. We did come up with some of these. Tend & Befriend we read about long ago and we tweaked them into f-words fawn & follow. (We don't really have the nurturing instinct portion as a distinctly separate f-word here as we think that's more part of caregiving instincts rather than panic reactions — so one might be placating an abuser or more powerful figure under "fawn", and there's still the nurturing instinct as well.)
Fabricate is seen in the deep need to rewrite one's own reality such as "I can't bear to think my caregivers are dangerously neglectful, so it must be something about me…" — pairs well with fitting "…and if I tie myself into knots, they will finally be able to properly care for me." (or "…finally be inspired to care for me.") This can start quite young and the same survival mechanism of "it can't be them, it has to be something wrong with me" (a deep carried shame New reaction) can continue into adulthood. Thus fitting (in) is often a partner reaction with fabricate: "I will self-edit the unique parts of me that are objectionable until I am worthy of the care & attention I need" — hiding and repressing parts of myself. Flocking is a strong desire to conform, fit in with the crowd, not stand out, blend in — to not draw negative or positive attention — pretty easy to see how that might work in a tribal survival situation and fold in with the others.
So, I'm sure Stephen Porges (author of polyvagal theory) would object to all of those, as he only acknowledges the basic "dino brain" 4 reactions — but then he's also admitted in training videos [NICABM training on Shame] that he doesn't feel shame, we're ready to fire him from any trainings on the topic.
We've been giving it some thought recently — and we're starting to think about where fortify & facilitate fit in and perhaps those are more frontal brain, later-in-human-development reactions. They require more planning, thought, patience or craftiness/foresight. Some forms of fortify may be a branch off "flop" -- i.e. shut down and just endure, but less "play dead", but it can also like the "build a blanket fort" — it's neither running away, nor fighting, nor feint/flop. It's hunker down, sheild/wall off, be quiet, endure. Less "social conformity hunker down & don't draw attention" than flocking…
Facilitate is "We'll worry about how we feel after we put out the fire." It's almost like the nervous system goes into a freeze and frontal cortex goes into problem-solving hyperdrive. "Someone muzzle Dino Brain, placate Buddy Brain, shit's hitting the fan and we have to do something about it right now." Facilitate grabs the fire extinguisher, puts out the fire, then goes away and we have a meltdown after the smoke clears. "Do the thing, then feel the fear." So it has some squelching of immediate panic similar to fortify reaction, and it may seem pro-active on the outside. The autonomic nervous system may still form a PTSD reaction about the fire & events leading up to it (triggers) later (especially as most folks we're talking about already have a tendency towards PTSD & C-PTSD in the first place).
So -- why did we come up with the idea for facilitate? Because that's one of our go-to reactions. And it may come from a deep need to not be a burden, to be hyper-independent, and we then end up looking super-capable on the outside. People call us "brave" etc. -- but we're still collecting trauma & PTSD in the meanwhile, locking people out from helping us, etc. We were trying to do facilitate even as a young teenager -- we'd "Handle" things, problem-solve even though we weren't the wisest person around. It was always accompanied by throwing a blanket over the fear -- "out of sight, out of mind" -- and holding back panic or anxiety attacks til later. Not saying this is a bad thing, but acknowledging that there's a bounce-back pending.
As for development of system members -- we have ideas, theories, and a lot of information about our & others systems in the research library in our brain. But this stuff is not really documented anywhere but here. We suspect that there's something of a panic reaction round-robin if we go through similar traumatic scenarios enough times, and we start trying different ways to handle the same adversity. If fight fails, let's try flight. If those fail, freeze. If that still fails, what about flop. There's a chance that each time we pair Adversity A with Panic Reaction Y we get a new potential headmate AY who may stick around and continue developing. But that's just one potential way amongst many ways headmates might form. And maybe that fits for some headmates (or subsystems!) and not others. Consider "subsystem that handles school adversity" and various headmates tuned to trying various panic reactions - and that subsystem is closer to front (state dependent memory) while at school. Now our rolodex of headmates tuned for school situations is ready to tackle school situations. Once home, they're towards the back and the subsystem that handles home adversity is more front. One of the many possible ways that polyfragmented systems might be organized -- but definitely not the only way.
As to when these panic reactions (and any potential headmates that might be affiliated with them) might form -- you might be right that some panic reactions may be developed along the way as we mature. Or the panic reactions may change & become more elaborate as our skills, abilities, knowledge change — some are definitely overlapping or have a chain-reaction "affinity" for each other, like one may lead to another in a progressive manner. We're not a researcher or psychologist. We are pretty well-read and a deep thinker, and pretty skilled at taking a lot of disparete information and coming up with some possibly useful or novel information from it.
So we don't know if any of this is "true" as in provable in a laboratory situation. However folk definitely do seem to subjectively relate to this stuff -- and have offered up ideas to add to the list of F-words, which we added to the possible additions (beyond the first 8 we came up with). And so from a self-help point of view, if these are ideas y'all relate with and help y'all to make progress in healing and encourage y'all to be more compassionate & understanding with each other -- please use them! If they don't work -- discard with prejudice LOL.
In some ways, it's a bunch of labels/taxonomy to help folks describe potential shared experiences (in system & out), and not a diagnostic system or meant to box people or headmates into cubbies. There's a chance some of this stuff is important, and maybe some researchers will discover more instincts & panic reactions in the wild that mesh well with our observations. And maybe these are more complicated than instincts or panic reactions and the "only real ones" are the "Dino Brain 4". Some researchers (Porges etc.) reject the idea that fawn is a "real" panic reation, for example. Or maybe we're right and they're neglecting a whole additional layer of social panic reactions (in part because one of the researchers lacks those panic reactions LOL).
Thanks so much for the questions, sorry this is long LOL
Yeah this makes sense, and we're preparing a video on the more social panic topic, so it's very timely (and helps us to get more thoughts together on this topic).
So, we have the basic what we are now calling "Dino brain" panic reactions: fight, flight, freeze & flop. These are the most "ancient" parts of the autonomic nervous system and most concerned with staying alive in dangerous situations. We didn't have anything to do with developing these -- they're recognized in literature sometimes by different names (like in polyvagal theory) but they're all accounted for.
Then the more social-connections-based panic reactions - fawn, follow, fabricate, fitting and flocking. We have a hypothesis that they developed during times our ancestors (early mammals through primates & early humans, etc.) banded together (or "buddied up") into flocks, clans, pods for group survival benefits. This part of our ANS which we've started to call "Buddy Brain" monitors threats to our belongingness, inclusion, rank, and status in survival groups. We did come up with some of these. Tend & Befriend we read about long ago and we tweaked them into f-words fawn & follow. (We don't really have the nurturing instinct portion as a distinctly separate f-word here as we think that's more part of caregiving instincts rather than panic reactions — so one might be placating an abuser or more powerful figure under "fawn", and there's still the nurturing instinct as well.)
Fabricate is seen in the deep need to rewrite one's own reality such as "I can't bear to think my caregivers are dangerously neglectful, so it must be something about me…" — pairs well with fitting "…and if I tie myself into knots, they will finally be able to properly care for me." (or "…finally be inspired to care for me.") This can start quite young and the same survival mechanism of "it can't be them, it has to be something wrong with me" (a deep carried shame New reaction) can continue into adulthood. Thus fitting (in) is often a partner reaction with fabricate: "I will self-edit the unique parts of me that are objectionable until I am worthy of the care & attention I need" — hiding and repressing parts of myself. Flocking is a strong desire to conform, fit in with the crowd, not stand out, blend in — to not draw negative or positive attention — pretty easy to see how that might work in a tribal survival situation and fold in with the others.
So, I'm sure Stephen Porges (author of polyvagal theory) would object to all of those, as he only acknowledges the basic "dino brain" 4 reactions — but then he's also admitted in training videos [NICABM training on Shame] that he doesn't feel shame, we're ready to fire him from any trainings on the topic.
We've been giving it some thought recently — and we're starting to think about where fortify & facilitate fit in and perhaps those are more frontal brain, later-in-human-development reactions. They require more planning, thought, patience or craftiness/foresight. Some forms of fortify may be a branch off "flop" -- i.e. shut down and just endure, but less "play dead", but it can also like the "build a blanket fort" — it's neither running away, nor fighting, nor feint/flop. It's hunker down, sheild/wall off, be quiet, endure. Less "social conformity hunker down & don't draw attention" than flocking…
Facilitate is "We'll worry about how we feel after we put out the fire." It's almost like the nervous system goes into a freeze and frontal cortex goes into problem-solving hyperdrive. "Someone muzzle Dino Brain, placate Buddy Brain, shit's hitting the fan and we have to do something about it right now." Facilitate grabs the fire extinguisher, puts out the fire, then goes away and we have a meltdown after the smoke clears. "Do the thing, then feel the fear." So it has some squelching of immediate panic similar to fortify reaction, and it may seem pro-active on the outside. The autonomic nervous system may still form a PTSD reaction about the fire & events leading up to it (triggers) later (especially as most folks we're talking about already have a tendency towards PTSD & C-PTSD in the first place).
So -- why did we come up with the idea for facilitate? Because that's one of our go-to reactions. And it may come from a deep need to not be a burden, to be hyper-independent, and we then end up looking super-capable on the outside. People call us "brave" etc. -- but we're still collecting trauma & PTSD in the meanwhile, locking people out from helping us, etc. We were trying to do facilitate even as a young teenager -- we'd "Handle" things, problem-solve even though we weren't the wisest person around. It was always accompanied by throwing a blanket over the fear -- "out of sight, out of mind" -- and holding back panic or anxiety attacks til later. Not saying this is a bad thing, but acknowledging that there's a bounce-back pending.
As for development of system members -- we have ideas, theories, and a lot of information about our & others systems in the research library in our brain. But this stuff is not really documented anywhere but here. We suspect that there's something of a panic reaction round-robin if we go through similar traumatic scenarios enough times, and we start trying different ways to handle the same adversity. If fight fails, let's try flight. If those fail, freeze. If that still fails, what about flop. There's a chance that each time we pair Adversity A with Panic Reaction Y we get a new potential headmate AY who may stick around and continue developing. But that's just one potential way amongst many ways headmates might form. And maybe that fits for some headmates (or subsystems!) and not others. Consider "subsystem that handles school adversity" and various headmates tuned to trying various panic reactions - and that subsystem is closer to front (state dependent memory) while at school. Now our rolodex of headmates tuned for school situations is ready to tackle school situations. Once home, they're towards the back and the subsystem that handles home adversity is more front. One of the many possible ways that polyfragmented systems might be organized -- but definitely not the only way.
As to when these panic reactions (and any potential headmates that might be affiliated with them) might form -- you might be right that some panic reactions may be developed along the way as we mature. Or the panic reactions may change & become more elaborate as our skills, abilities, knowledge change — some are definitely overlapping or have a chain-reaction "affinity" for each other, like one may lead to another in a progressive manner. We're not a researcher or psychologist. We are pretty well-read and a deep thinker, and pretty skilled at taking a lot of disparete information and coming up with some possibly useful or novel information from it.
So we don't know if any of this is "true" as in provable in a laboratory situation. However folk definitely do seem to subjectively relate to this stuff -- and have offered up ideas to add to the list of F-words, which we added to the possible additions (beyond the first 8 we came up with). And so from a self-help point of view, if these are ideas y'all relate with and help y'all to make progress in healing and encourage y'all to be more compassionate & understanding with each other -- please use them! If they don't work -- discard with prejudice LOL.
In some ways, it's a bunch of labels/taxonomy to help folks describe potential shared experiences (in system & out), and not a diagnostic system or meant to box people or headmates into cubbies. There's a chance some of this stuff is important, and maybe some researchers will discover more instincts & panic reactions in the wild that mesh well with our observations. And maybe these are more complicated than instincts or panic reactions and the "only real ones" are the "Dino Brain 4". Some researchers (Porges etc.) reject the idea that fawn is a "real" panic reation, for example. Or maybe we're right and they're neglecting a whole additional layer of social panic reactions (in part because one of the researchers lacks those panic reactions LOL).
Thanks so much for the questions, sorry this is long LOL