Chapter 6 - Uncovering the Original Grief | Eden's Flaming Sword
In the last chapter, we identified your most commonly used survival pattern. Now, we can explore where it actually came from.
Our survival patterns activate when any of the three seeds, belonging, control, or identity, feels threatened. Each pattern, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, can form as an attempt to survive danger. And for many of us, the deepest danger was separation.
We have a main survival pattern because it worked when we were children. It gave us a sense of safety, and what works, we keep returning to. But this becomes the trap. We become unconsciously controlled by the very patterns that once protected us. To move past inner pain, we must move through it, not constantly defend against it. I will go into this more later in the book.
Your survival pattern shows you what I call your original grief.
Original grief?
Survival patterns are not random behaviors. They are the body’s attempt to manage unresolved threat. And when the threat involved the loss of safety, belonging, control, or identity, that unresolved threat became grief.
Original grief is the earliest unresolved loss the body adapted around.
We enter the stages of grief when we experience the loss of any of the three seeds. Chronic activation of a survival pattern is a sign that we may be carrying grief we haven’t faced. Grief literally means mental or emotional suffering caused by loss or regret. We tend to think grief only comes with big events, like losing a loved one, but we overlook the quiet losses. The ones that shape our choices and control our lives from the background. This is where many of us suffer.
Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified the stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
In this framework, these stages are not just emotional reactions after a loss. They can also help us understand how the body organizes itself around unresolved loss.
Fawn often mirrors denial: “If I become what they need, if I deny my needs, maybe nothing is wrong and I’ll be safe.”
Fight often mirrors anger: “I feel threat and danger constantly, so I push back. I fight to overpower the threat.”
Flight often mirrors bargaining: “If I keep moving, achieving, intellectualizing, or figuring it out, I can escape the pain.”
Freeze often mirrors depression: “If nothing works, I will go numb and disappear.”
Now that we understand the link between grief and survival patterns, we can begin to trace our pattern back to the childhood wound where our original grief first formed.
I created two ways you can trace it.
One is the manual way, which I will show you first. The other is the AI way, which I recommend because it can be more detailed. I hope you don’t hate or fear AI. It is a tool, not a living thing. It only has the power we give it. If you use AI for self-gain and deception, that is one thing. But if you use AI as a tool for reflection, truth, and the advancement of humanity, it can help us. AI can see your survival patterns clearly once you answer some questions truthfully.
You can pick which one you want to do: manual version or AI version.
Let’s start with the manual version.
Let’s find your survival patterns and your hidden architecture. Remember, this isn’t to relive your pain, but to understand it. To see how it began, and why it stayed.
So slowly inhale, and slowly exhale. Bring curiosity, vulnerability, and compassion with you.
Are you ready? Let’s trace it back.
Look at your survival pattern. Which seed does it guard most fiercely?
FIGHT often guards control: “If I stay strong, I will be safe.”
FLIGHT often guards control and identity: “If I keep moving, keep achieving, keep intellectualizing, I’ll stay safe.”
FREEZE often guards identity: “If I go numb and isolate, I will be safe.”
FAWN often guards belonging: “If I become who they need, I will be safe.”
All survival patterns protect the self, but each one tends to guard a different wound.
Now ask yourself: “What loss am I trying to prevent by staying in this pattern?”
FIGHT: What would happen if I stopped fighting? What would I lose? Control? Power? Safety from feeling weak? Protection from being overpowered again?
FLIGHT: What am I running from, and what am I trying to stay ahead of? Helplessness? Failure? Worthlessness? Feeling trapped in a life that doesn’t feel like mine?
FREEZE: What would happen if I let myself feel? What do I believe would destroy me? The overwhelm? The grief? The aliveness? The truth I haven’t been able to face?
FAWN: What would happen if I stopped giving? Who would stay? Would anyone choose me? Would I still matter if I wasn’t useful? Would I be loved if I stopped adapting?
Write freely. Whatever comes up, that may be the loss you’ve been running from.
Now let’s trace it back.
Ask yourself: “When was the first time I remember feeling this way?”
Let a memory surface. I know it’s hard. It might be a specific moment, or it might be a general feeling from childhood. Whatever comes is worth noticing. Write it down.
Then ask: “How did my body respond?”
Did you freeze? Want to run? Fight back? Make yourself small? Write what you notice. Your body remembers.
And finally: “Where in my life right now does this same feeling show up?”
When do you feel like that child again? What situations trigger the same response? Write it down.
This is your map. Look at what you’ve written.
Last question: “If you could speak to that younger version of you, what would you say?”
Write it down: “I want you to know…”
This is to see where you are now.
Okay, done. You don’t need to do anything else right now.
The survival pattern tried to keep you safe, and now you know where it came from.
The next way we can trace your survival pattern is through AI. I made an AI-guided reflection that asks you seven questions and shows you the following - your core wound, primary seed threatened, main survival pattern, frozen grief stage, and what regulates or dysregulates your nervous system.
For the AI-guided reflection, you can scan the QR code or go to the URL below. Copy the text as described on the site, and paste it into any AI chatbot. It will help you see your survival patterns clearly.
Try it whenever you’re ready.
Seven questions.
www.theflamingswordattheeast.com
If the site is not working, refer to the manual reflection.
The manual or AI-guided reflection is meant to help you see your survival patterns clearly. If you feel activated during or after the reflection, try deep breathing. Inhale for four seconds, then exhale for four seconds until your body begins to settle.
Once we see our wound clearly, the control it has over us can begin to weaken.
As I mentioned earlier in the book, birth was the first threat to all three seeds at once. It was the first great separation. The body left the original environment of safety and entered a world where warmth, nourishment, regulation, and connection had to be found outside itself. In this way, birth created the first imprint that separation can mean danger. Later childhood wounds activated our survival patterns when we experienced separation again.
Separation does not always look like abandonment. Sometimes it appears as the loss of agency, which wounds control; the loss of real connection, which wounds belonging; or the loss of attention and acceptance, which wounds identity. Every later loss can echo the pattern birth first introduced.
In modern social life, fawning may be the most rewarded survival pattern. It is a social survival pattern, so of course it can appear more acceptable. It looks polite. It looks cooperative. It looks harmless.
Fight, flight, and freeze are not tolerated as easily.
Fight is seen as too aggressive. Flight is seen as avoidance. Freeze is seen as weakness or laziness. Mostly, this comes from ignorance. But then again, it usually starts that way.
So what happens when we realize our survival patterns are not going to save us?
What happens when you fight, but you cannot overpower the threat?
When you flee, but you cannot outrun the pain?
When you fawn, but you are still left alone?
When you freeze, but no safety ever comes?
What happens when nothing works?
That’s when you begin to awaken. You begin to enter the original grief you’ve been running from.