The Archetypes of Dysregulation™
A Body-Based Guide to Understanding Your Triggers

by Damien & Katie Tælos

You know you shouldn't react that way.
You know you don't want to say those mean things, or raise your voice, or storm out of the room, or shut down in that deafening silence of the silent treatment.
You know that what you really want is connection, empathy and understanding.
But in that critical moment, your body takes over before you can stop it, and even though you know better, you still end up reactive when your partner says that one thing.
And it's killing your relationship.
You've probably tried talking endlessly about the patterns, letting each other know how much what THEY are doing hurts YOU.
You might have read about attachment theory, or the nervous system, and while you know what's happening… it doesn't seem to stop it from happening. Because your triggers aren't happening in your mind. They're happening in your body. When your nervous system perceives threat (even subtle emotional threat like feeling you might be rejected or judged) your protective parts take over. You don't choose that reaction.
Your body does.
Here's what you need to know:
Everyone gets triggered.
This isn't a sign that you're broken, as triggers are connected to old trauma trapped in the body. They're protective responses that formed early in your life when you didn't have the relational tools to create safety for yourself and didn’t have the modelling on how to create better outcomes.
These patterns were trying to keep you safe. They allowed you to survive. When you were a child and couldn't get your needs met, your nervous system learned to protect you. And in real survival situations these responses are absolutely necessary, they are biologically hardwired into us.
The problem is when these survival responses activate with your loved ones.
Rewiring for Conscious Connection
For example with a romantic partner you’re trying to create a healthy, long-term relationship. Yet your nervous system, unfortunately, is doing what it was trained to do, trying to protect you from what felt dangerous once upon a time.
The problem is: you aren’t a child trying to do the best they could with limited resources and skills anymore.
You are an adult, capable of creating your own safety and, capable of having conversations rather than fights.
You just need your body to catch up and realise this truth.
This guide will help you identify, understand, and give you some simple yet incredibly powerful tools to rewire this old patterning and upgrade your nervous system into a new potential.
Because if what you want is a healthy relationship, a long-term conscious connection, and deep loving intimacy - being able to regulate your emotions is an essential, and non-negotiable, requirement.
As you read through these archetypes though, we'd like to ask you to remember to bring compassion for yourself. These trigger patterns formed out when you were doing the best you could at the time. Also remember to have compassion for your partner when they get triggered too. Because, really, they're not trying to hurt you either.
Both of your nervous systems are trying to protect yourself from a threat that doesn’t actually exist anymore.
The foundation for a healthy long-term partnership starts with learning about your triggers, tracking them, and over time (and it does take time), gently dissolving the trauma, creating more safety in the body and then developing the communication tools to help each other heal.
That's just part of the deeper work of creating conscious relationships that we cover here at Evolve Relating.
But for now, let's start with identifying the predominant pattern that’s running the show...
The Dysregulation Map
Your nervous system has built-in survival responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. When you're triggered, your body moves into one of these states, often in predictable patterns.
Understanding your pattern is the first step to shifting it.
To map this out, we use two axes:
The Fight-Flight Spectrum (Horizontal Axis)
This axis describes the habitual direction you move in relation to a perceived threat:
  • Fight (forward): A tendency to move towards perceived threat. This involves aggressing, attacking, or pushing.
  • Flight (backward): A tendency to move away from perceived threat. This manifests as retreating, withdrawing, or disappearing.
The Dissociation Spectrum (Vertical Axis)
This axis represents how you lose contact with your conscious self-awareness:
  • Mental Dissociation (going up): You OVER-engage with thinking, leaving your body and going into your head. This includes analyzing, rationalizing, and explaining, losing contact with somatic (in your body) and emotional feelings.
  • Somatic Dissociation / Fawn (going down): You LOSE access to your thinking capacity. Cognition goes offline, making it hard to think straight, problem-solve, or make sense of things. You collapse inwards, losing yourself by shrinking, freezing in the body, or merging with the other (fawning).
These two spectrums create a map that reveals
8 distinct Archetypes of Dysregulation.
These aren't labels though. They aren’t something to judge yourself or others by.
Instead, they're caricatures, maps to help you recognize what's happening in your body before you lose yourself in the reaction and, with fine-tuning your awareness, anchors that can help pull you out of a trigger.
Because the first step of coming out of a trigger is ALWAYS realising you are in one!
The 8 Archetypes:
Which One Feels Familiar?
  1. Read through the following descriptions reasonably quickly without trying to think about it too much.
  1. Notice which ones create a sense of recognition in your body.
  1. You might identify with 2-3 of them.
    That's normal.
  1. Then click on any of the buttons that you resonate with to go deeper into understanding that particular archetype, and exploring the unique solutions you can use to support you in breaking the pattern.
1. The Exploder (Fight + Dissociation)
Rage that takes over. Throwing things. Raising your voice. Losing control. You might even black out parts of it. The anger floods you as you lose contact with the ability to stop yourself.
Body cue: That first flash of heat, tightness in your jaw, the feeling like you're about to burst.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Exploder
The Exploder
2. The Provoker (Pure Fight)
You're not physically out of control, even though you can’t seem to stop yourself. You poke. You push. You say the thing that you know will hurt, that is going to get a rise or reaction from them. You control through a more calculated form of aggression. You protect yourself by going on the offensive.
Body cue: Forward energy, tension in your arms and shoulders, the urge to "win" at all costs or that backing down is not an option.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Provoker
3. The Stonewall (Fight + Fawn)
"Fine. You win." But you're not really giving in. Belligerent silence. Single word responses. Heart completely closed. Withdrawn but still resisting. You give up the fight but you give them nothing as you sink into heaviness, collapse or indifference.
Body cue: Sinking down, jaw clenched, the moment you decide "fuck it, I'm done" even though you're still there physically, you’ve mentally and emotionally checked out.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Stonewall
4. The Fawn (Pure Fawn)
You'll do anything to make sure they're okay. You shrink. You accommodate. You people please. You lose yourself in them to keep yourself safe. If you can be what they need, or who they expect you to be, then they won't hurt you.
Body cue: Body collapsing inward, feeling small, the moment you abandon your own needs to keep the peace.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Fawn
5. The Freezer (Flight + Fawn)
You can't move. You can't speak. You can’t form an adequate defence. You're frozen but you're also backing away internally. You're trapped between "please don't hurt me" and "I need to get away."
Body cue: Paralysis, numbness, the moment when words won't come out and your body locks up. You might feel like you are falling inwards.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Freezer
6. The Ghost (Pure Flight)
You disappear completely. Silent treatment. If you are still in the room, you are emotionally gone, like a ghost. Or you literally leave. Full retreat. “If you can't feel me, or know where I am, I can't be hurt.”
Body cue: Pulling back, distance, the overwhelming impulse to leave (physically or emotionally).
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Ghost
7. The Mentalist (Flight + Dissociation)
You go up into your head. You rationalize. You analyze. You mentally defend. You have ALL the logical arguments and examples. You try to control the situation mentally while keeping emotional distance. You can't feel much because your mind feels like the safest place to be.
Body cue: Disconnected from your body, overthinking, narrating the fight instead of feeling it.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Mentalist
8. The Dissociator (Pure Dissociation)
You leave your body entirely. Memory gaps. Floating above yourself. Completely checked out. You don’t know what is happening and the only thing you can do is get the hell out of here. This is often a last-ditch survival response when everything else has failed.
Body cue: Blank spaces, feeling like you're watching yourself from outside, losing time.
Go Deeper: Learn How to Work with The Dissociator
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About the Authors
Damien and Katie are the founders of Evolve Relating, where they guide individuals and couples in creating conscious, embodied partnerships.
Damien brings years of experience in coaching and facilitation, alongside training in counselling and psychotherapy. He has a gift for weaving together attachment theory, nervous system science, masculine/feminine polarity, and developmental psychology into frameworks that make complex relational dynamics accessible and practical.
Katie, trained as an Art Therapist and in the Gene Keys, brings a spiritual and intuitive dimension to the work. With a background in energy work and soul embodiment, she has a gift for sensing the wisdom of the subtle realms and translating it into felt experience. She guides people back into their bodies - into their human presence and the innate intelligence that dwells withins.
Together, they live and breathe this work - testing frameworks in their own relationship, moving through challenges in real-time, and holding space for each other's growth. Katie brings the innovative insights; Damien translates them into clear, actionable frameworks in a complementary, co-creative collaboration.
They teach what they live: conscious relationship isn't about perfection, it's about coming back to each other, again and again, with more awareness, more compassion, and more choice.