You’ve probably heard of Stockholm Syndrome. It’s the “tend and befriend” stress response in action. You start to care for and protect the same person who is also your biggest threat. It’s one thing to see this play out in a hostage situation movie, but what about the everyday closer-to-home?
We women especially tend to make use of the “tend and befriend” approach in stressful situations. Let’s face it, there are just too many situations where we are the physically weaker one and so, fighting is pointless. Running away may equally be impossible. Freezing doesn’t help anything. Dissociating helps you cope and keep on keeping on, but it doesn’t change anything for the better. So, what is left? Tend and befriend.
It’s like being on a scary skateboard
Tend and befriend is like being on a skateboard, tied behind an out-of-control truck. Take a moment to really visualize this. You have no control. All you can do is try to keep your balance and not fall. The person behind the wheel has all the power.
Deep down it’s terrifying. You’re going too fast to be able to safely jump off. You have to stay present and focused or else you’ll fall (so no freezing or dissociating possible). There is nothing to fight.
The only hope you have is that maybe, if you can get through to the the crazy driver, if you yell the right thing, if you do the right thing, then all this madness will stop. He’ll see how recklessly he’s driving and gently slow down to a halt. You can safely get off the skateboard. Maybe you can even go and have lunch at a nice little family diner. All’s well that ends well!
Now imagine you’re on that skateboard, you’re tied to the truck, but the rope is invisible. You’re connected and out of control but nobody else can see that. You can feel that you are being pulled along, you feel that the driver has all the power, but you can’t pinpoint how it’s happening.
It’s terrifying, but you also wonder if maybe you’re just crazy? Maybe your take on things is wrong? So you push away the fear and try to pretend that you can take that skateboard in any direction you choose.
When something in your life feels out of control
I recognize the skateboard metaphor is far from perfect. Yet, I think the terror of being stuck in a situation and in a direction that is not of your choosing… hits a lot closer to home for most of us than being kidnapped.
I mean, kidnapping seems over the top, even as a metaphor, right? That’s something horrible that other people go through. People who end up in the newspaper. People who end up in documentaries. People who talk about that moment when they decided, or realized or stumbled upon the realization that befriending their kidnappers was a smart strategy.
Most of us are never in that situation, thankfully. Yet, how many of us have been in situations where we tend and befriend because deep down we’re terrified? We know something is very very wrong, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. The whole situation feels unsafe.
Empath Energy Ties
For empaths especially, there are many complicated energetic ways that you can be bound to and influenced by unsafe people, without an obvious way to make it stop. Energy is not limited by space or time so if you are stuck in an overwhelming psychic tie-up with someone, physically running away won’t save you.
Without the skills or know-how to identify what is happening, and what you can do about it, the only thing left is to try to help the person who is hurting you so that they’ll hopefully change and let you go.
This is a kind of walking on eggshells, on steroids. Every move you make now is not about where you want to go and what you want to do. Rather, you’re calculating how your actions will affect the person you’re energetically tied to. You avoid making any moves that will upset them, that will make them lash out.
Like a battered wife, you’re doing what you can to avoid making things worse. Meanwhile, you become more and more invested in the fantasy that you can somehow heal the situation and make everything o.k.
The attempt to heal, to “tend and befriend” is both a hopeful and soothing response (it feels better to love than to fear!) as well as – unfortunately – a delusional one.
Is Tend and Befriend completely pointless?
No. In true hostage situations, tend and befriend can save your life. There are even stories from WWII where people were taken to the woods to be shot by people they knew, and in some cases, tend and befriend got through to the shooter.
“Hey, hey Willy, it’s me! Remember how we used to play in the schoolyard together? Remember that one time when Tim jumped out of a tree? Hahaha, that was so crazy! We used to be good friends then, remember? I know you don’t really want to shoot me! You wouldn’t shoot people you cared about, you’re not that kind of person…” Some people saved their lives that way.
However, if you’re not in a hostage sitatuation, but you’re energetically held hostage somehow, tend and befriend works out differently. While it’s intended to help you “get out” of a situation, it can actually end up drawing you in deeper.
How? Because as you try to make the other person change their ways, you take on a whole slew of “empowering beliefs” that deepen your bond and your investment in the other person.
How trying to get out, draws you in deeper
You want them to let you off the hook, so you try to understand them. You try to understand why they won’t do what you need them to do. Then you start to see their pain, their problems. To soothe your own terror, you need to believe that you have influence. These beliefs then slowly get you to believe that you truly can change the other if only you just keep investing time and energy in them and their issues.
You slowly start to believe that you can heal them and you become invested in their healing. In doing so, you lose sight of your own needs and your fears. The reason you got into all this in the first place – to save yourself! – gets buried under layers and layers of “unconditional love” and “forgiveness” and “endless understanding”.
What’s worse, the person you are somehow bound to and stuck with, is learning that their atrocious behavior gets them loving rewards. While you’re trying to heal the monster, you’re actually feeding it and making it get bigger.
The reality of empath energy ties
I’m not writing this to scare you. I’m writing this to give words to a deeply confounding situation where you may rationally know that you need to just “get out of this and set boundaries” but at the same time, you know that doing so will have very scary yet hard to identify repercussions that you fear will just completely overwhelm you.
Something inside of you has learned to be on guard and tread lightly. That same part feels scared and hopeless. You’ve tried to manage this situation for so long, and it’s not getting better. Yet at the same time, you know you can’t just up and leave without some decent preparation. Except, you’re not even sure what you’re meant to prepare for, let alone how!
The need for energy boundaries
Sometimes setting boundaries has to start with learning more about the energetic realities of the situation. How are you tied to this person energetically? What is their hold over you? How can you effectively defend yourself against the ways they will likely lash out?
When you learn energy skills first, you can start disconnecting energetically, before you need to put new boundaries to the test in a more visible and obvious way.
Empaths often have a deep fear of the way some people will psychically lash out. When you don’t know how to handle that energy, and you don’t know that there even are ways to handle that energy, you can end up frozen in place.
You’re not crazy for feeling that way! Some folk truly have some very creepy and very dark skills.
A client of mine even considered packing up and leaving her town, because the psychic energy from her ex (who lived there too) was so difficult to handle. Learning how to identify what was happening, and what she needed to do to psychically separate from his ish, made all the difference though. She no longer felt threatened or anxious driving around town.
The psychically scary people who don’t believe in “psychic stuff”
A shocking number of people are very active on the psychic planes. These are often people who don’t even “believe” in energy and the paranormal. Yet, just as you don’t need to believe in apples, for apple trees to grow, and just as recycling all your paper waste doesn’t cancel out the impact of spraying your lawn with endless chemicals to keep the weeds at bay… things are what they are and they do what they do, regardless of what anyone believes or thinks “should” happen.
So, if you have a deep scary instinct that you need to get away from someone, but you’re equally terrified that doing so will create more problems… you’re not crazy. This may well be your intuition telling you that there is more at play than you can logically map out.
In all cases though, there is a way out. It may just be that you need to learn some real energy skills first so that you can recognize the fallout for what it is, and so you can deal with it in a way that keeps you feeling clear and moving forward.
If this rings true for you, you can set up a Clarity Call with me here so we can investigate the energy dynamics at play, and the skills you need to be free. I’ve developed a bunch of specialized reading techniques over the years to identify the complicated ins and outs of the energy at work in relationships.
Things are often not what they appear. If other people think “it’s fine” but something feels very off to you, it’s worth investigating so you have clarity and a way forward.
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