Mapping my Trauma Exposure Response

I’ve just completed another chapter of Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky about the different kinds of trauma exposure response.
These are...

• Human reactions psychologists have yet encountered in response to an instance of exposure to a trauma
•  a collection of psycho-spiritual engagements that can be different for every person and every interaction with a stimuli
• After chronic exposure to trauma, these responses can and do take on a life of their own, sometimes becoming entangled in foundational constructs and even interfering with the most basic of engagements

In reflection, I am most often triggered in moments where I judge I have not achieved a personal expectation. Often, shame is the most arresting of emotions in response to this realization, that I have failed to best some unreachable bar. Frequently, I am sent through time to revisit every shame I’ve ever felt in succession after it. Some days, I can snap out of it. Others, I cannot and do not. Sometimes for hours. Rarely, for days. Once or twice, for weeks. 

With respect to sympathetic nervous modes (i.e., fight, flight, freeze, or freak), I usually fall with the freezers, although I am historically a flighty flyer. I’ve fought on occasion too but I’m so emotional that I usually get bogged down quickly with my own shame and guilt that I quickly tap out of any verbal arguments. Physical fights? Not a chance in hell. Unless, I was actually threatened with my life. I often envision myself as I fighter, ferocious and deadly but the only thing I get ferocious about these days is breathwork.