I thought I might write about something I’ve dealt with most of my life. I’m sure I’m not the only one who lived their lives in Survival Mode.
One thing I learned as a child was that I couldn’t depend on anyone and somehow I merged survival behavior into my self-image.
This happens when chronic stress or early trauma caused adaptive survival strategies, like hyper-independence, people, pleasing, or perfectionism. This becomes deeply ingrained in a person’s identity.
In my case, my coping mechanism became my personality. In most cases, it is seen as productive or strong, while feeling emotionally exhausted.
In learning that I couldn’t depend on or trust anyone, I created a false self to gain love, which led me to lose touch with my authentic self and a reliance on a “tough” self-reliance. I put on a mask to cover my feelings of helplessness.
Over the years I’ve learned to recognize patterns of hyper-independence were adaptive survival strategies that were developed to handle past trauma.
Survival mode is a psychological state of chronic stress where the nervous system, stuck in protection mode, is not a personality trait, lifestyle choice, or sign of weakness. It is an involuntary, exhausting, trauma response that turned on when our brain perceived there is constant danger, that leads to elevated cortisol, fatigue, and “survival scars” like hyper-independence.
From Pity to Praise 