Survival Mode and Relationships
Before “survivor-mode” became part of our vernacular, it was a term animal behaviorists used to describe when animals were forced, by starvation or risk of death, into more risky behaviors. Sometimes this works. They survive. The problem is, is that when it works the same animal is more likely to repeat these behaviors in the next time of extremis. We do the same thing. We feel forced into risky behaviors in the name of avoiding risk. Out of fear we choose the more dangerous behaviors that, while they have a short-term survival value, they have little value in living life. Though when we get into survival mode, it negatively affects what to us is a survival trait, the ability to enter relationships with others. This is much more visible in romantic relationships, though it affects non-romantic ones as well
In general, when we are in survival mode, We become more vulnerable to negative emotional states. Being more vulnerable, the impact of those emotions is greater. The denial or rationalization or even transference of these emotions becomes greater. Frustration becomes anger quicker, Anger becomes rage or depression. Depression becomes apathy. We have fewer unnecessary interactions with people. Our correspondence becomes shorter, or chats fewer unless they are to complain, and our face-to-face time with others curtailed. The very relationships that can help us cope with this chronic fatigue are the ones we put off, afford fewer resources and time to keep active. We become myopic in our perceptions and decisions. When we hit what is called “Survival” mode, our priorities become self-centered. This is not totally bad, as we do need to take care of ourselves. But, if they are to the exclusion, the unnecessary exclusion of all other external avenues (friends, family, etc.) of emotional expression, then we are the Mythical World Snake eating its own tail, never being fed and always empty. There are feedback loops that start to form between the mind and the body. Thinking becomes centered on relief of symptoms, and failing that, focus on symptoms. We feel bad emotionally because we feel our bodies. Feeling our bodies, we feel bad emotionally. It becomes a self-reinforcing pattern of perceived misery. We “feel” exhausted, so we become exhausted causing us to think about how exhausted we feel.
There are other ways we get into survival mode. Traumas. Chronic grief. Abuse. They all contribute to the mode in which we measure all decisions and actions by the level of risk to our safety. When most of those decisions become based on fear. One of the first casualties of survival mode are relationships.
What does being in survival mode do to relationships? It changes the order in which we address our needs within a relationship. The first relationship need in survival mode is stability. This may surprise some, that I did not put safety, connectedness or love ahead of stability. A life in survival mode feels like it doesn’t have stability, predictability, or consistency. Those are the three things that build both trust in ourselves, and in what we can trust ourselves to address, work through, and overcome. Without this central trust of self, self-assuredness, the rest becomes so much more difficult. Not Impossible!!! but difficult.
It takes time in one place, in one emotional environment, to address problems as they come. It takes long enough to identify, prioritize, address, and process life changes that happen. Often in survival mode, we have a lack of this critical time.
Anything, therefore, that looks like a long-term or even a medium-term solution is very attractive to us. Sometimes to our detriment. Because that which is stable and predictable may not be healthy nor safe.
A long-term relationship is attractive because if we have a consistent, predictable and stable source and partner in love, that will go a long way to help us address life changes and develop a greater sense of self-efficacy, self-assuredness, and self-confidence when facing the next storm, the next problem, the next “insurmountable obstacle.”
Our need for stability colors our perceptions of everything else in our life. This need automatically, and subconsciously, grades everything in terms of risk and gain. For example, we may be asking ourselves if it will be good enough to have a stable relationship while we know some things are and perhaps will ever be lacking from it? In searching for relationships, we may see only the stability, consistency, and not delve into what it lacks in other areas.
Is the need for stability enough to override our desire for more than just a place to lay our head, or in which our body stays? Is it too much of a risk to look for and even demand more than just stability from a relationship? Will we be risking stability by placing ourselves and our needs and desires in front of the other? The answer is yes, it’s a risk. And yes, our needs and desires must have a seat at the table of the relationship.
Yet, we are always drawn to that which we have not had, or over that which we have failed to have. The thing is, within that kind of stability-first and sometimes stability-only relationship, we cannot grow. All our energies are involved in just surviving. Just keeping things at the status quo while our life stagnates. It becomes lived for someone else and not lived for us.
Why do we think the perceived risk of being ourselves, advocating for ourselves, our needs, our dreams, our life is so much more risky within a romantic relationship than in any other part of our life?
I could say that the worst that could happen is that the other cannot or chooses not to compromise, work with us, acknowledge our needs and desires as of equal validity to their own, and then they might choses to end the relationship. Or we get to the point where basic self-preservation against ego-dissolution cause us to end the relationship. But the worst that could happen is we compromise our health, welfare, and enjoyment of life by staying in a relationship that takes away from our health, welfare and life.
Let’s talk about some of our other needs besides stability we need in survival mode. We need security. What this boils down to is that we need an environment, including all others within that environment, whereby we can live without undue fear.
Undue fear means feeling fear beyond the times when a real and present danger is present. Or if a real and present danger need goes away. If the danger and risk never go away, we do not have security. We have chronic fear.
Stability doesn’t equate to security if to get that stability we still fear. Stability means things are not changing faster than we can adapt, address, and integrate the changes. Security with stability means we have the emotional resources to address those changes, adapting to those changes, and integrating those changes that happen in our lives. Because we are often in survival mode, we fail to provide for a physical, mindful, emotional separation between who we are and who others react to us.
We lose our boundaries. Even in primary relationships there is a need for boundaries. There is a need for individual privacy. There is a need not only for shared ways of meeting one another’s needs and desires, but that individual ways of meeting our needs and desires is not put on hold, or enfolded in the “we”. We need both. We need our own life separate from our partner. We need our own sense of self to be sheltered. We need a place and space for ourselves just as much, if not more, than we need a space and place for our relationship.
Another assumption about relationships is that someone needs to “complete” us. No one is the other side of our heart, our soul, our self. No one. I know we know this cognitively, but perhaps do not feel in our hearts. The pattern I see is that whatever is emotionally unresolved in our life, subconsciously or consciously, we desire our partner to help fill that void. Complete that in-completeness. It never works out that way. Part of the hope we should allow to die. The hope that having the perfect romantic relationship will fix everything in our life. It won’t. It may add richness. It may open new possibilities. It may be a catalyst for we to grow individually and together. But none of these things complete something incomplete. We can survive and thrive without a romantic partner. To the extent we feel we cannot, is still the extent to which we need to do self-work. Preferably with a therapist or professional.
The other assumption I want we to challenge is that we are broken. Being broken means we cannot auto correct. We cannot change direction. We cannot operate any longer. This is untrue. We are under tremendous stress. Some decisions are affected by previous trauma. Some ways we see the world are colored by these traumas and unfulfilled needs. But we do change. We do grow. We changed jobs more than once. We change locations more than once. We have made decisions and our life has changed. We are not broken. We work. Can we work better? Yes? We all can. Do we make mistakes. yes. But we can change when we choose to change. That is the point I wish to bring across. We can change when we decide to change.
So the real questions is, if we see that others add to us, but do not define us, do not become some necessary part of our life and living of it, then why do romantic relationships seem to be treated differently?
No romantic relationship is worth someone’s happiness, health, wholeness, future or life. Recognize I said romantic relationships. Not the life of someone in the relationship. For we are dealing with the assumptions, perceptions, and patterns of behavior that come up in a romantic relationship. Would we rush into a burning building to save a partner…sure. What I am saying is that to sacrifice ourselves out of fear, in that relationship, is not the same as having love enough to save someone with our own life.
Relationships are worth sacrifice if and only if the sacrifice is two-way. Again, I am saying relationships and not beings. Not individuals. If we somehow lost a friendship, even a deep one, our life would continue. The relationship would end, but we as individuals go on. This is for everyone in our life. Lover, romantic interest, partner, spouse, whoever in whom we are in a relationship.
Yet somehow, romantic relationships are different. We tend to compromise more, and sometimes compromise ourselves far more than in normal relationships.
If we are the compromiser always out of fear, the peacekeeper, the stabilizer, the one who smooths things over all the time, then we are preventing ourselves from growing, and preventing the other from needing to grow.
So what are we compromising? Do we ask ourselves if it better to go ahead and be drawn to certain types of people and manage our expectations of them? I mean, the same kinds of people will give us no surprises. They will be predictable, right? The devil we know is better than the devil we do not. Do not settle for what feels to us a partial relationship, a settling for something that doesn’t meet some of our goals or causes us to grow.
That is really the way to see whether a relationship is healthy or likely to be healthy, is if we feel like we are growing more than being held back, or likely to continue growing as a person or likely to be held back from growth. An unhealthy relationship has fewer perceived emotional risks. No need for self-reflection. No need to dream of better.
In addition, for those in survival mode, we are attracted to people who have a powerful sense of direction, future, self. Who put their needs first. Who know what they want to do. Who have a strong sense of command, and seem to control parts of their life that we personally find very hard to control in ours..
These are also the people who can override our sense of self, replace their sense of what a relationship will be, and what needs to be done with what they think, they feel, they expect. Are all such self-confident people bad? No. However, a confident powerful ego-self is much more likely to impinge on us, re-writing our self-image, because we crave stability and predictability and consistency, to dominate. This domination brings comfort in survival mode. This is the tendency we have. We are not subservient because we are less than they.
We fear more losing the “chance” of love, which is just a manifestation of the need for some emotional stability in our life. The “healthy” relationships require some things to be in place before and during the relationship. Areas in which we have stability need to be there. For example, having a home already established. Having dear friendships active and flourishing. The self-work and growth already happening in our life. These should be there before and should continue through any additional romantic relationship. This includes things like going to therapy. Addressing our patterns of behavior, our traumas. It also means that if we are willing to work on us, but the other partner is not willing to work on themselves, in order to know how to meet, in a healthy way, their needs and desires, then that should be an impasse, the relationship should end. If they are willing to do the work on themselves with a professional and we fail to do the work on ourselves, that is an impasse, and the relationship should also end.
We have it within ourselves to trust, but it will take work. We have it within ourselves to love, but it will take work. We have it within ourselves to be ourselves, fully, To be connected to someone romantically, to add to the richness of our life, and our growth.
In survival mode, we also feel an overwhelming need to connect with others. We have a need for connections, which some call intimacy. I like to call them connections and a sense of connectedness, because we can have intimate connections with pets, friends, strangers, the post lady, the bus driver, our friends, our family, and our romantic partners. Intimacy is the connection with others where we feel attached, feeling part of a group or community. Having that connection tells us we are valued, seen, heard, that we matter.
Now different depths of connection, and types of connection do this in different ways. But the goal of being connected is that deep understanding that we are accepted for who we are. Every type of intimacy is ultimately for us to understand and feel we are accepted for who we are. Connections happen regardless of what we wish to get from them. That’s the reality of things. We make friends with toxic individuals. Or we feel connected to people who take from us, rather than giving. All connections have risks. Yet, even those who choose to actively reject connections with others are still connected with others, just on more negative and negating terms than the rest of us.
One test of whether a connection is good for we or bad for we is whether we are validated more for ourselves, rewarded more for being ourselves, than if we are punished for being ourselves, don’t feel free to be ourselves. This is for any connection. If the post lady has a beef with us and deliberately stuffs our mail so the mail is torn and crumpled, they get rained upon, then that connection we have needs to be modified or another connection (i.e. complaint filed against a postal worker) needs to happen. This may seem silly, but part of insisting on a healthy emotional life is reviewing the connections in our life for those that do validate us, our value, our presence, our worth, and those that no longer do this.
If we have stability, we have an environment in which there is time to review, modify or find other attachments. If we have security, we can change these connections without being paralyzed by fear of doing so. All three work together.
Let me give we a real-world example. I had a house, a group of friends, a few close friends, a job, a direction, a future, a purpose, a vision. With all of these, I had a failed relationship. The only way that I recovered from those failed relationships (modification of the connections and intimacy needs met or not met) is that I had all these other connections in my life that validated me. That accepted me for me. I also had the stability that having certain things in play gave me. That having a house and home gave me. That having a community gave me. In all these other ways my needs for valuing myself, and giving myself worth, or seeing worth in myself were enough to offset the loss of the same in the failed relationship. It was not a binary thing. The lost relationship did not equate to lost hope. To lost life. To lost love. Now emotionally I felt this way. Oh yeah did I!!! For a long time. Yet, it wasn’t the truth of my life. That relationship was not the end all be all of my life.
This leads me to another need. A sense that we matter. That we both can and do affect things in this world. That we can and do change things. That others recognize we, accept we, are pleased we are part of their lives, and from that the joy that we know we can and do bring to them. we know by the achievements in our life that we can find and hold down a job. That we can find a residence and build a home. That we can have a positive effect on the people in our life. our friends. our daughters. our own life. We matter and the sense of control over those parts of our life come with…no surprise…stability, security, and connections
Now another need is to be able to give and receive pleasure. Yes, I am putting it under intimacy and connections and a sense that we matter, that we can accomplish, that we can plan, implement, and reach our goals. Yet, the ability to both give and receive pleasure, and not only sexual, but sensual, emotional, mental, physical, are tied to our stability, security, and connections. They are directly tied to these.
Why? we may think anyone can give a back-rub and that is giving pleasure, right? Anyone can bake cookies for someone, or receive cookies from someone and that is pleasure, right? Anyone can kiss and receive a kiss. And so forth. Yet, think about this. If we don’t have a sure sense of the security of receiving that cookie (is it from an ex, a toxic friend, an acquaintance who wants to have a relationship with us and is trying too hard,) then it’s not just a cookie and it’s not really receiving pleasure without possibly receiving pain at the same time, or an out of proportion risk. Sometimes the cookie we give and the cookie we receive isn’t just a cookie. A back-rub isn’t just a back-rub.
Also, without the other foundational needs met, of stability and security and connections, we don’t have a sense of the degree to which we give or receive pleasure, or even what kinds of pleasure will be well received, or what kinds are best to give. If our other security needs and connection needs are met, do we have to give all of who we are in the first few months of a romantic and sexual relationship? The answer is NO, by the way.
Do we have to unload, unpack our entire life, and place it in the hands of the other in the first few months? NO. There is no need to “go all in” because we have shared ourselves across several people. we have stability and predictability and that means we don’t need to search for those through acts of extreme connection (i.e. giving ourselves totally to someone before knowing them or ourselves well enough). we don’t have to sign the dotted line on a house before we have read the fine print, or really shopped around for the best property. Why, because we have stability and security needs that are being met in other ways.
Having stability, security, connection (intimacy needs) being met by others gives us the space and perspective to really figure out how we want some (SOME not ALL) of these needs met in a unique way with one individual. This then allows boundaries to be made right away. Because we don’t need this other to completely satisfy our emotional needs, we can take necessary risks to advocate for ourselves and our emotional needs in that relationship. Because we don’t need this other to fulfill all our financial needs, we can advocate our own financial life, career, etc. without being paralyzed by the fear of where we will be if they break up with us, or uses the financial insecurity we have to manipulate us.
Finally, the need that cannot be fulfilled if all these other needs are at least in the process of being fulfilled in some way. The need to grow. THE NEED TO GROW. We all need to be able to change, to expand, to become that which we were not until we ARE that. We have the need to increase our ability to love and be loved. We have the need to become better at acting toward our best self, best goals, on our best path. Ironically, we need others to help us to grow. But others within our own stability, security, and connection with others.
We grow by facing the uncomfortable, the sometimes-painful patterns of behavior, feelings, limitations, assumptions, perceptions and working toward changing those aspects of our lives. Without the security, stability, connections, community, sense of self, we become paralyzed by fears and do not grow. We become stuck in survival mode because our basic emotional survival needs have not been met and therefore, we only see continued survival or death as the choices ahead. There is nothing of growth in this. Just like taking chances with a relationship, we must take chances on ourselves.
Some people find they can do this with a certain group or community supporting them. Some do this through religion, faith, communities of like believers. Some do this through dear friends. Some try without enough connections, enough stability, enough safety and fail and then blame only themselves, and berate themselves, and see themselves as NOT BEING ABLE TO GROW.
Is there any hope for relationships when we are in survival mode? Yes, there is. It comes from trying and succeeding in any amount at all, in any way, in finding and building stability, security, connections, and growth in our life. If we work on the smallest part of we we have hope that we can work on the next smallest part of we….and so forth. Hope also comes from the connections that are rock-solid in our life right now. For me that is with God and among family, and a few dear friends. For we it may be one other person who encourages we always that things can change. That we can grow. That we are not broken but rather finding our way.
Even the smallest hope allows us to move forward. And even the smallest hope allows us to start healing.
My Two Emotional Cents
