INTRICACIES OF THE SURVIVOR
A healthy survivor
Surviving is so inherent and innate to our experience, that most of us don’t even know that we are doing it. While it might consciously register from time to time that we are surviving, mostly it happens automatically in the background of our awareness. If something arises where we feel our survival at threat, then the fact that we are surviving might heighten, but outside of this we don’t give it much conscious thought. Why is this important? It’s important because we all have a survivor, that aspect of ourselves whose job is to keep this body alive. Even when we aren’t aware that we have a survivor, we still have one. This means that our survivor is operating unconsciously without our direction, guidance or insight most of the time. Why is this an issue? It’s an issue because while our survivor has an incredibly important job, it also has an extremely limited point of view. Survival is all it is organized to do, and it will do so at whatever cost. What are these costs? Decreased functioning of certain parts of the body to help other parts stay alive, manipulation or suppression of ourselves or others, and an entire gamut of emotional reactions like fear, hate, lashing out or even “irritation” arising in response to things that threaten it.
Survival isn’t just physical, it is emotional and social as well. It includes keeping the physical body alive, the emotional body safe and the social body in belonging. Without any of these aspects intact it will perceive threat. In response to threat our survivor creates survival strategies. Most of us are familiar with this terminology. These strategies give us safety when it seems like safety isn’t there or when it truly isn’t. Survival mechanisms are imperative to our survival when there is an actual threat. We want a healthy survivor. We need it as long as we need to survive. If we don’t have a healthy survivor we might be sick often, not have vital energy to heal or repair, and might not have impetus to care for ourselves in body, mind or even financially. We might need to be very limiting in our diet choices, strict in our exercise habits or rigid in our routines. These things are indicators that the survivor in us is not resourced and could actually use more energy.
The healthy survivor response is often short in duration and in direct reaction to a situation that needs immediate attention. For example, if someone were robbing us and we instinctively protected ourselves, that would be a healthy survivor response. If we lost our job and still needed income, seeking new work would be the survivor moving us towards safety. If we were in a relationship where severe abuse was happening, leaving or finding a way out would again be the healthy survivor doing its job. This moves us to a deeper question: What exactly leads to an unhealthy survivor response, and how does it form?
THE NON-RESOURCED SURVIVOR
Hyper & hypo vigilant responses
Unhealthy survivor responses can be either hyper or hypo vigilant. We might be on guard most of time, never able to relax and perceiving potential or actual threat around each turn or in every interaction. The opposite can also be true. We might be under responsive and not able to notice when there is threat to our survival. This can also manifest as being able to perceive threat, but not having the energy to do anything about it. What creates these hyper and hypo responses? Much of it has to do with the energy and resources we had available to us during different stages of our development. Other factors such as experiencing a very traumatic event in our lives can also create hyper or hypo survivor responses. Some of it also has to do with conditioning. People tell us to be scared of something so we become scared. We learn to fear things just because people in our life did and they taught us that program. If we are like the majority of humans we got the program that there is always going to be lack. If we believe that program then the hyper vigilant survivor goes to town working itself ironically to death, in order to have enough, and the hypo vigilant survivor checks out of the game completely.
Survivor responses are based on safety and need. The survivor is always asking, “Am I safe” & “Do I have what I need?” If our survivor is not resourced, either hyper or hypo vigilant, it may not be able to accurately discern this. It might think it has what it needs or that it is safe, but it actual doesn’t have what it needs and it’s not safe. Or it may think it doesn’t have what it needs or that it is not safe, when in fact it is completely safe and has everything it needs. Our survivor doesn’t just respond to physical needs, it also responds to social and emotional needs as it perceives them relating to our survival. If for example we are in a relationship with something who we don’t really want to be in a relationship with, we might stay in that relationship because we perceive that person being related to a survival need we have. We might suppress our expression, the things we say or do, because we might perceive that someone won’t like or approve of us if we do. That is a threat to our belonging, and therefore our survival as part of a a familial, professional or collective tribe. The perception is that is we don’t belong so we won’t be taken care and therefore won’t be safe or have our needs met.
Where do we go from here? As long as we perceive that we need to continue to survive we will need a survivor, however we can develop a healthy survivor. With greater self-awareness and self-acceptance we come to source our safety inside of us rather than in the outer world. This doesn’t mean that outer world threats disappear, but it does mean that we are able to navigate them with discernment and respond more consciously from an empowered and stable perspective. There may be a time when eventually we realize that we can’t be threatened, where the need for the survivor is no longer relevant, even the healthy one, but that takes coming to terms with your true need to survive, a willingness to die and the paradoxical recognition that you can’t. There is a lot of complexity there, which may not be relevant for most. What is relevant for most is that a healthy survivor can be cultivated. As your self-awareness, self- inquiry and internal stability increase, you gain the ability to respond to your needs and safety with greater clarity and discernment.
Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, Network Spinal Chiropractic & Somatic Coaching, Boulder, Colorado
Leave a Reply