Fight, flight, freeze, fawn-the trauma response
Fear is a very real and core human emotion. It is the emotion that ensures our survival. It does whatever it needs, in that moment, to ensure you live to see the next day. In that split second, your brain makes all kinds of calculations and decides if what will ensure survival is going to be fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Lets continue using this analogy with the lion as we talk about these responses.
Fight
With this response often comes anger. The option chosen with fight is that the best way for me to get through this is to use my strength to overpower it. Let’s say the lion has spotted you. You don’t think to yourself, “hey, let me lunge at this thing and conquer it”. Nope, you will probably choose a different option at that point. But, lets say that it has decided to make you it’s lunch and jumps toward you, you will not sit there and smile at it. No, you will fight. You will claw and yell and hit it and do whatever is needed to get it to back away from you. But we often do not run into a lion on a daily basis and need to fight it off. So, fight can instead look like yelling, throwing things, blaming, pointing out flaws….and on and on it can go. It is doing whatever you need to to get the threat to back off.
Flight
Flight is used to escape the danger, to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible. Thinking of this lion, you notice it spotted you and it is starting to walk toward you. Do you run at it? That is a no…horrible idea. But maybe, maybe you can escape. So you back away and find your escape path, moving further and further away from the danger. Again, we do not typically encounter this in our daily lives. So, flight may look like excessive worry, needing perfection, focusing on work. In the moment it can look like avoiding, withdrawing, shutting down, even yelling with the goal of shutting it down…and on and on. Flight is doing whatever you need to do to escape the danger
Freeze
Freeze is helpful in those circumstances where the best option is to just be still and quiet until the danger moves on. I think of having this type of response when others are angry at me and I feel like a statue…cause if I move it may set off the bomb inside them. Essentially, there is a sense of panic that causes stillness. With this lion, if it spots you, and you see it, you could run…but then it may run after you. You could jump on it…but that is just stupid. So, maybe you just stand still…freeze…to avoid continued detection by the lion so that it will just move on. In daily life, this looks like giving up, isolating yourself, difficulty making decisions, feeling dead inside….and on and on. In the moment, this can look like numbing out. Freeze is your body’s way of avoiding continued detection so the danger just moves on.
Fawn/Friend
Fawn is the brains decision that “if I make myself look like not a threat, the bad thing will not occur”. So, we try to make whoever is creating the danger calm or happy. If the lion approaches you, you could fight, run, or stand still…but then who is to say that would work. What if you gave the lion your snack? Tossed it a little beef jerky. Spoke in a calm and kind tone to it. Maybe then it will decide you are no threat and leave you alone. This is the same with fawn in daily life. This may look like having a high reliance on others for decisions, feeling helpless, people pleasing (that is a big one), difficulty with boundaries. In the moment this can look like placating or using humor. Fawn is how the body removes you as a target. Also, it contains the belief that “if i take care of you, maybe you will take care of me”.
So, what can you do about these response? Well, not much in the moment. Your brain is making the decisions, not you. However, you can recognize when you may be having a fear response and work to reduce the chances of you reacting in a way that is not congruent with your values. That just looks like noticing what is going on in your body, recognizing the thoughts in your head, and knowing when you still have control over your responses…taking advantage of that before it is too late.
