Not Just Fight or Flight: 4 Reaction Types Explained

• four reaction types. I’m going to name them, but I want to tell you something important. Um, so here we go. The exploder that blames others, the exploder that shames herself or himself, the stuffer that builds barriers, and the stuffer that collects retaliation rocks. Okay. So, when I was writing my book, Unglued, which is where all of this is written out, I was actually sitting at a bookstore, and I would go to this bookstore every day, and they had a little cafe in the bookstore, and I would write, and it just became like
• my spot. So, there was a lady one day that came to my table and she said, “Lisa, um, no, she didn’t say Lisa, she said, hi, my name is blah blah blah.” I introduced myself as Lisa. And then um she said, “I see you here every day. What what are you working on?” And I said, “I’m writing a book on reactions.” And I said, “There’s four different reaction types and I know if we have better reactions, you know, quite possibly we’ll have better relationships.
• ” And so I’m really working on my reactions and I’m writing about that. And I said, “And right now I’m writing out four reaction types so I can help people identify which one of the four are you?” And then I told her, I read the four reaction type. The exploder that blames others, the exploder that shames herself, the stuffer that builds barriers, the stuffer that collects retaliation rocks.
• And then I asked her, “Which one do you think you are?” Oh. And she paused and she said, “You know what’s interesting is I shift my reaction type based on who I’m having a reaction with.” And it completely changed the course of how I wrote this book because she’s right. I will have one reaction with my pastor and I’ll have a different reaction with one of my kids.