Response Flexibility

What if we don’t respond to stressful situations with anger (fight response), fear (flight response) or shutting down emotionally (freeze response)? What if instead, we could stand back from the situation and look at it objectively, i.e. without emotions? That would mean our response is flexible.

According to psychologist Rollo May, “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.” (Maté. The Myth of Normal. 2022. Pg 29) Maté, however, asserts that trauma robs us of that freedom of choice. He points out that response flexibility is located in our brain’s cerebral cortex and no human infant is born with that flexibility option. The freedom to choose develops as we develop. Instead of being able to choose our responses, traumatized children become adults who are stuck in predictable, automatic defensive reactions to stressful situations.

Rollo May was clearly aligned with Viktor Frankl when Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning).

Personally, I have long believed in Frankl’s and May’s points of view on this subject and I am dismayed and disappointed at Maté’s assertion that childhood trauma negates our freedom to choose our response to stressful situations in adulthood.

What is your thought on this topic? Do you believe that Frankl and May are right and we can simply reason our way to a responsible response to a traumatic situation, or do you believe that Maté is right and we are doomed to repeat our childhood response behaviours?

Leave your comments below.