It's natural to go into survival mode when confronted with
traumatic events or unpleasant triggers. Each person may react differently to
these circumstances, but the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses are by
far the most common. Discover more about these instinctive reactions to real
and perceived threats.
What Does Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn Mean?
"Fight," "flight," "freeze,"
and "fawn" are the most common trauma responses to high anxiety or
stress incidents.
Others flee the scene, while others fight or become
aggressive. On the same note, some people may feel trapped in their situation
and attempt to flatter or please the aggressor in order to escape (freeze)
(fawn). Each of these responses can be useful in certain situations, but they
can also go haywire.
People suffering from anxiety disorders frequently
experience heightened, misguided, and even debilitating versions of these acute
stress responses. For example, someone suffering from complex PTSD
(post-traumatic stress disorder) may use any of these techniques in response to
nonthreatening scenarios if a related trigger reminds them of a traumatic
event.
What Is the Fight Response?
A threatening situation may provide an opportunity for some
people to confront their fears with rage and aggression. As your blood pressure
and heart rate rise, you may become more argumentative, cruel, or even violent
in order to defend yourself. This can be useful in a life-threatening
situation. However, there are many other situations in which the fight response
causes more harm than good for everyone involved.
What Is the Flight Response?
When you enter flight mode, you attempt to flee potentially
dangerous situations as quickly as possible. This becomes problematic when your
memories of past traumas begin to incorrectly color your current reality. For
example, you may have experienced unhealthy conflict as a child, which caused
you to withdraw and flee the situation. This same behavior may prevent you from
navigating conflicts with loved ones in healthy, understanding ways as you get
older.
What Is the Freeze Response?
While fight or flight responses are probably the most
common, freezing up is also quite common. You may experience dissociation or
detachment as a result of your inability to act in self-defense or flee the
situation. Freezing can sometimes buy you enough time to fight or flee, but it
can also put you in greater danger.
What Is the Fawn Response?
When confronted with threatening individuals, some people
resort to people-pleasing. They might try to flatter or calm down the person
who is threatening them, or they might try to lighten the mood with
self-deprecating humor. People who grew up with narcissistic parents frequently
rely on the fawn response because it helped them navigate their own difficult
upbringings.
Why Do the Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn Responses Happen?
When these stress responses work properly, they can help
keep you alive, but they can also reduce your quality of life if they occur at
the wrong time or to an excessive extent. These are just a few of the causes:
Biological processes: To keep you alive in dangerous
situations, your brain and autonomic nervous system have evolved. When faced
with a real or perceived threat, your amygdala sends a fear signal to your
hypothalamus. When you go into defense mode, your adrenal glands release
adrenaline and cortisol into your system, causing you to fight, flee, freeze,
or fawn.
Preferred coping mechanisms: People can choose their own set
of coping strategies. Genetic factors and conditioning may lay the groundwork
for what causes you to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn, but you will also develop
a subjective preference for what works for you over time. Self-evaluation will
assist you in determining whether your responses to stressors benefit or harm
you.
Preliminary conditioning: Past trauma influences current
behavior. For example, if you were abused as a child, you'll still gravitate
toward the stress response that helped you escape or alleviate that pain the
most effectively. In adulthood, this can sometimes lead to the development of
unhealthy or codependent relationships.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn Example
Assume you're in a crowded bar and an aggressive person
approaches you. They clearly want to start a fight. If you immediately argue or
engage, your fight response is activated. In contrast, if you rush for the
exit, you are more likely to succumb to the flight impulse in dangerous
situations. If you freeze during a conflict, you may feel unable to move or
even respond to the aggressor. Fawning would be attempting to talk your way out
of a bad situation.
How to Manage the Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Responses
When it comes to your overall sense of well-being, the
fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses can be beneficial or detrimental.
Keep the following tips in mind to help you manage them with wisdom and
clarity:
Exercise mindfulness. When the sympathetic nervous system is
activated, it is easy to let your emotions take over. Mindfulness allows you to
take a breather and assess whether your responses are accurate or are causing
you undue stress.
Recognize when they serve you. These survival instincts can
either help or hinder you in meeting your own needs. Consider how these
reactions affect you. Consider times when they have kicked in and whether they
accurately reflected the situation's true threat level. This type of
self-evaluation will assist you in determining when they are beneficial and
when they are detrimental.
Speak with an expert. If you believe that any of these responses is wreaking havoc on your life, consider speaking with a licensed therapist or mental health professional. It's possible you have an anxiety disorder, in which case you're fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning far more often than you need to.
For more great content, please visit New York Time Wordle
