Integritus Prime

As a person who thinks about and works on behavior change daily, I am sometimes flabbergasted by what people choose to do and not do, even when faced with serious consequences. It’s the head in the sand approach that has me baffled: people will dig their heels in and refuse to budge. One analogy is that they are on a collision course but refuse to take their foot off the accelerator, and instead are pretending nothing is wrong. Perhaps they are in denial, afraid, or failing to understand the long-term consequences of their actions. They may also refuse help. In this post, I discuss two examples based on real cases. Needless to say, these behaviors often have their roots in trauma.

1. Ignoring Critical Needs: A person may prioritize everyone else around them, and get everything else done, but the things they urgently need to prioritize and do for themselves are abandoned. There is no action to support the self, even when the situation is dire, for instance the person needs to seek urgent medical care, or focus on how to earn an income or face going broke. This choice to do nothing for the self is a form of self-sabotage, an avoidance of self. Placing a priority on themselves might be too uncomfortable, and feel unsafe, because they carry shame, hurt, and trauma from adverse childhood experiences. They may have a history of the freeze response and people-pleasing (fawning), which are trauma responses in which we stay in harmful situations because we are trapped, and we try to please the perpetrator in order to avoid more harm to ourselves. What served as survival tactics now become huge barriers in taking charge of one’s life as adults.
2. Avoiding Self-Care: A person may refuse to take care of their physical health, even when the right solutions are readily available. Their refusal may stem from denial of their reality or the discomfort of adopting new habits, or a misunderstanding of the facts. In the process of refusing to do self-care, they may be jeopardizing their long-term wellbeing. For example, hearing loss is linked to cognitive decline and dementia, and yet many aging people do not wear hearing aids. In some cases, this choice may have to do with the freeze response or staying stuck. In the past, such a person may have coped with abuse and trauma by staying and remaining stuck in the situation, so any hardship is now met with the same default response. Another possibility is that the person doesn’t want to hear something – perhaps verbal abuse that they continue to live with in their daily lives.

To break out of these chronic behavior patterns, it is important to use somatic or embodied approaches – be in your body. For example, practice deep breathing, grounding, and other exercises. For a full set of exercises that can potentially be life-changing, read this book: The Secret Language of the Body: Regulate your Nervous System, Heal your Body, Free your Mind. It is a Bible of resources and wisdom on how to heal.

It is possible to break out of these patterned behaviors that come from trauma. We are not stuck creatures, we are creators with the capacity for profound change. Share with me how you have overcome your trauma patterns or what holds you back.