Paradoxically, this behaviour leads them to being isolated, feared and misunderstood. The Fight Type (the Narcissistic Defense) is often the child of narcisstic parents who has learnt that through power, demanding and strength, the need for attention and care can be met. These dichotomic needs are often not seen by the victims themselves, just as it not seldomly takes psychoeducation to make them aware of that their behaviour is actually rooted in unprocessed trauma they had to enduare in their past. At the same time, all have a strong need for love and care. All four types have the goal to avoid the perceived threat of abandonment, hurt, neglect, rejection and abuse. The four types of trauma response are, as above mentioned, fight, flight, freeze and fawn. So a healthy instinctive response to a threat has first become a constantly used survival strategy and continues to be a huge part of who someone is even when not in the traumatic situation anymore, it becomes a type of personality and behaviour, rather than a strategy to survive or handle a real threat. Their whole personality is rooted in the trauma they had to endure. When getting out of the trauma (often when being adults after childhood trauma), the kind of response they had to use, has become who they are and how they behave in relation to others and in all parts of their life. The traumatic situation is all they know, and the trauma response is all they do. Victims of complex trauma are stuck in the situation of perceived danger and using one of those responses becomes a way to survive emotionally and physically. But healthy people use them in a healthy way. These responses are instinctive and all human beings use them when being in a situation that they perceive as dangerous. Victims of complex trauma adapt to the traumatic situation by responding to the constant threat they are under with predominantly one of the four common automatic responses to a threat: fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
I have discussed the four types of trauma response to a threat and danger in previous posts.
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