How Do You Handle Rejection and Criticism?

Even when intended to be helpful, criticism can feel like rejection. This triggers the stress response. The four physical/emotional responses to stress are: fight, flight, freeze, and faint. You learned to react from the ways you were treated when you were a child. These patterns are deeply engrained. The following quiz can help you find the pattern of automatic reactions that you may want to change. It will also help you appreciate the growth you’ve made in breaking painful childhood cycles. To find your current pattern, be curious, not critical, with yourself as you consider each statement below.
To make it as accurate as you can, recall a recent situation when you thought someone was angry at/rejecting of you, or you felt betrayed.

What is My Protective Style?

Any break in belonging or trust triggers our automatic and powerful Stress Response. Whenever we feel threatened--even in a misunderstanding with someone we love and trust--our brain chemistry goes on high alert, just as if our very life were threatened. No one can stop the initial response, but we learned from childhood to model what to do with the impulses that come.

It is possible for the same situation to evoke an immediate reaction of fight, flight, freeze, or faint in different people. Each response is designed to protect you from harm, even if you don't want to react in that old way. You probably have experienced each of these responses at various times--sometimes coping with a single event. But everyone has a predominant style.

This determines our individual Protective Style. Some get angry easily, others get anxious, many shut down, others leap for the ice cream, alcohol or TV! We all feel some of these, even at the same time.

    The good news is that it can change with conscious effort, and as we improve our relationships and grow in self-awareness.  To find your current style, recall a recent situation when you felt someone being angry or rejecting you. Examples: unfair blame, perceived disrespect, a feeling you had been betrayed. Mark 0 (low) to 5 (high) to reflect how descriptive each is of your response.

FIGHT RESPONSE

____ I get angry so fast, I can’t control it. I feel like I want to break something or hit someone.

____ My heart instantly hardens against them. I obsess about how I’m right, they’re wrong.

____ I KNOW I am angry. My body gets hot, I may jump up and yell, or sit and seethe.

FLIGHT

____ I’m out of here! It's over. Don't bother calling.

____ I want to just walk away. I think never want to see them again.

____ I do anything to avoid a fight. I’m willing to say I’m wrong even when I’m not.

FREEZE

____ My mind is a blank. I’m afraid to speak, or I echo what was said.

____ I feel punched in the stomach, unable to take a deep breath.

____ I can’t move. My mouth is dry. Sometimes I feel like a robot.

FAINT

____ I can’t remember what is said when people are angry. Sometimes I get dizzy.

____ My body feels like jello. My knees buckle or I can’t stand up.

____ I just wait until the bad part stops, then act like nothing has happened.

Scoring: Add up the scores in each of the four categories. Rank your Protector’s stress response to stress from most common to least frequent for you presently. Notice how it may have changed from your childhood pattern, and again as a younger adult. How would you LIKE it to flow?

Example: I often saw anger lead to violence when I was a child. I made a choice to never get angry. I used food to numb me into faint. The pattern that resulted was: 1 faint; 2 freeze; 3 faint, and never, ever fight.

Now I can admit when I'm angry, having learned how not to hurt other people. My present order of reaction is: 1 freeze; 2 flight; 3 fight; and I seldom escape to faint.

In The Courage to Trust you'll find many ways to assess what you are feeling and learn how to create a new pattern of trust, rather than your old automatic responses.

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