This is to all my parents, or neurodiverse people, or with wild defiant children or both – with love ❤️
Everyone is always doing as well as they can within their personal limitations, their personal history, what they know and don’t know and what they’re feeling in that moment. If they could make a healthier decision, they would. This includes you.
Now people with neurodivervisity, Autism, ADHD, Cptsd, PTSD and with many other mental health issues. The smallest little stressors can trigger intense feelings of fear, anger, and even hopelessness.
Defense Mode as a state of overwhelm in which someone with Neurodiversity is scared, frustrated, or angry, as well as shut down and withdrawn.
When you’re in Defense Mode, everything is harder because you’re constantly trying to protect yourself from the overwhelming stress of both real and imagined threats that constantly surround you.
You can even get stressed out just from your own thoughts and beliefs, such as a belief that you’re bad at math, so why bother? You might assume that your parents are tyrants who are trying to manipulate you.
Whenever the stress and overwhelm gets to be too much, Defense Mode will always manifest in one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze.
The person in Defense Mode might get angry and start yelling or they might try to run away, perhaps by escaping into video games or some other distraction. Or, they might shut down as they keep mumbling “I don’t know”, in response to all of dad’s questions, perhaps in the hope that she’ll eventually stop the interrogating and leave.
Day to day, each of us falls somewhere along this continuum depending on the amount of emotional resources we happen to have available. Just like with the Spoon theory. It may even help to think of this in terms of money.
Let’s imagine being in the “Nope state” is like being deep in debt. I’m talking like hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. At the same time, your income is so small that you can’t even keep up with the monthly accruing interest, much less paying down the principal. As a result, you’ll probably stay stuck here drowning in emotional debt indefinitely unless you receive some sort of outside assistance or intervention.
In terms of emotional capacity, this is like the guy who spends 16 hours a day playing video games in his parents’ basement. No job, no school. I mean even the thought of trying to get a job or enroll in school is completely overwhelming. They rarely go outside and if left to their own devices and provided sufficient food, water and wifi, they would probably stay there on that couch forever. Every day they feel exhausted, frustrated and overwhelmed. (I would know because I lived it)
Defense Mode: is a step above that. In stereotypical Defense Mode you’re still somewhat in debt, but it’s not deep enough to the point that you feel the need to shut down completely and just “nope” out of life. You might still be able to handle school or hold down a job, but barely. Stress, anger and fear is still your default setting most of the time. Meltdowns are still happening on a fairly regular basis and it usually only requires a small to moderate amount of stress to send you off the deep end.
Functional: is like the money version of living paycheck to paycheck. You’re finally out of debt, But there is absolutely no wiggle room between your income and your expenses. You managed to get through most days without too much overwhelm and meltdowns are pretty rare, but since your emotional savings account is basically at zero, any major unexpected stressors will instantly upset that delicate balance you’ve achieved sending you spiraling back down into a state of Defense Mode. At that point, you have to begin a new, the slow process of digging yourself out of emotional debt in order to get back to a functional state.
Additionally, since you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you rarely have any extra capacity or resources left over to give to others. You might even feel resentment towards people that ask for your help in the first place. After all, you’re barely keeping your own head above water, so how can you even begin to think about someone else’s needs?
Thriving: is when your income finally exceeds your expenses. It is a state of abundance in which you have plenty of savings in the bank. You still experience stress in life as we all do, but now you have tons of capacity to handle it. You rarely, if ever, get overwhelmed to the point of shutting down or losing your temper.
In fact, since you have plenty of emotional resources to spare, you’re more than happy to give what you can to help others. When you see someone close to you that might need some help or a listening ear, you’re happy to go out of your way to sit with them and support them. You’re capable of holding space for their anger and their anxiety without becoming angry or anxious yourself. Most of the time it feels like stress comes and goes very quickly for you and you’re able to respond to challenging situations with empathy and calm level-headed understanding.
Now Getting Out Of Defense Mode…
2 powerful habits that you can start putting into action right away in order to help yourself or someone else get out of Defense Mode. Now, this is not an exhaustive list, but there’s many techniques. But to start it off!
Number 1 – is decompression time.
Have you ever noticed how you tend to feel more cranky when you’re tired or you’ve had a long day? We tend to go into Defense Mode more when our emotional resources are low, so they need to be replenished in order to come back out of defense mode. Taking time, even just a few minutes away from the business of life to decompress and do some strategic self care is one of the best things you (or your child) can do to reduce overwhelm and increase your capacity to handle stress.
Number 2 – is about building trust. In a close, healthy, parent child relationship, trust forms the bedrock of safety and effective cooperation. Once sufficient trust is present, Defense Mode naturally starts to disappear, and conversations tend to happen smoothly and easily.
On the other hand, when a feeling of trust and safety is absent between you and your child, then the intention behind everything you do or say is suspect. So even the simplest of conversations can quickly spiral down into conflict.
Phoenix Evolution 