Fight-Flight-Freeze Response
The brain’s functions in protecting people from danger becomes overactive when traumatic events interfere with daily life functions. A clinician who understands the function of the body’s limbic system has a higher chance to help clients walk the healing path of awareness.
The brain is a fascinating organ. The brain controls body functions to a precise and high standard of workmanship. Thousands of electrical charges are sent throughout the circuitry of the brain, and returns messages from receptors in a magnificent loop of high demand. When working without mental or physical limitations, the brain provides the individual with memory, thinking, and processing needed to move through life.
However, if there is anything in life, which hinders its processes such as trauma, brain injury, of mental health disorder, the brain struggles to maintain itself; homeostasis is threatened. The concept behind the Triune Brain helps us understand the effects of trauma and memory within individuals.
In addition to the study of the Triune Brain, the reactionary functions of the brain, firing neurons through the dendrites, are messages sent to warn of danger. These natural functions for the survival of an individual include the Fight-Flight-Freeze model of trauma responses.
Clinicians need to stay current on research of the brain, its functions under trauma and stress. Clients are provided a safe place to learn what their emotional states are, face their trauma-based emotions, and begin the healing process.
The Concept of the Triune Brain
Our brains develop in the womb, cell by cell, until the amazing organ is complete. The concept of the Triune Brain, come from those who view the brain in evolutionary aspects, rather than Creation. However, the concept is interesting and deserves to be understood in relation to how we survive under trauma and other experiences based on survival. The Triune Brain is separated by three quadrants:
- The base: Reptilian Brain, encompasses the command center for the brain. It regulates sleep, waking, breathing, our temperature guide, and other basic autonomic functions. It also provides the avenue for sensory input. (Ratey, 2001).
- The middle: The Paleomammilian Brain: This area includes the limbic system and encourages survival. This part of the brain also controls how we respond in the social society, and it helps prepare for movements by the limbs in order to move in whichever direction the body needs it to move toward. (Ratey, 2001).
- The final aspect: The Neomammalian Brain developed into the cortex. All of the lower functions are developed and allows individuals to plan, adapt to various challenges, and to develop the abstract thinking needed to plan or strategize. (Ratey, 2001).
The idea of these three segments of the brain as separate entities takes away from the concept of how the brain functions in unity. Each separate area also has a dependent function within the whole.
According to Ploog, (2003), “ Although it is heuristically helpful to categorize different aspect of brain function, it does without saying that each part of the triune brain is dependent on the combined working all three systems, each of which makes its own contributions” (p. 489).
Furthermore, as one studies the developmental aspects of children, the brain and the child’s behavior parallels the growth of the brain. It is orderly, the functions are predictable, and the maturity levels of development with brain growth are interrelated. (Ploog, 2003).
The history of the study of the brain helps clinicians to focus their work on growth and advancement in the studies of neuro-biology, neuro-psychology, and neuro-pathology. The brain, especially the brain infused with traumatic events, is one where the study in ongoing.
New insights, validating old studies, and furthermore, old studies, resurface and explore deeper into the psyche of the human brain help provide a solid foundation when treating mental disorders, brain injury, and trauma in clients.
The Fight-Flight-Freeze Concepts of Trauma
The brain’s limbic system comprises of the hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, pituitary, and the prefrontal cortex. The five systems interconnect in order to protect the individual from harm, navigate life experiences, and retain information from past events in order to make faster choices in future situations. A basic emotion, fear, is captured within the fight-flight-freeze model in order to protect the individual.
“Fear manifests in flight (if escape is available), freeze (which constitutes a more passive form of avoidance, as elicited by threats that need not be approached, or fight (if escape is not an option and defensive approach is required” (Maack, Buchanan, & Young, 2015, p. 117).
The alert system starts with the fear or threat. The endocrine system alerts the body and the hypothalamus secretes its hormones and awakens the pituitary and the adrenal glands.
Adrenal glands set in motion by releasing the stress hormones. The two hormones are epinephrine and norepinephrine. The rapid releasing hormones bring about fast movements and thinking, to help someone face a stressful situation.
The hormones are released and help the motivate the individual to find safety, fight for their lives, or freeze in order to stay safe from someone or something stalking, scaring, or hurting them.
After the alert system is relieved (the stressors or threat is abated), the body sends out a fresh hormone called cortisol. The hormone is released by the hypothalamus as well.
Cortisol flows into the blood stream, settling down the nervous system. It signals the hippocampus to cease producing the chemicals adreno-corticotrophic hormone (ACTH) and corticotrophin (CRH).
The body system is set to regulate the overwhelming fight or flight mechanism which sets in motion in order to survive. The chemicals ACTH and CRH help release glucose, which the body needs in order to defend against stress. Too much hormone released creates more problems for some individuals.
When an individual recovers from their stressors (exhaustion stage), the body replenishes the needed reserves for the next onslaught. However, if the body is faced with chronic stress or chronic repeated traumas, the body systems become weakened.
The hippocampus may become exhausted and is unable to produce the cortisol to stop the overwhelming stress hormones. Clients may begin to have autoimmune diseases, such as fibromyalgia and some types of arthritis (Straub, 2007).
The Body Keeps The Score, is in fact a reality (Van der Kolk, 2015).
The memory of the trauma or stressors in an individuals’ life experiences adds up within the brain. The responses can prove to be re-traumatizing for individuals who struggle with PTSD, C-PTSD, General Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and other Anxiety disorders. The list here, is not exhaustive.
Stress and trauma affect the body functions, prompting the release of hormones, which set in motion the fight-flight-freeze mechanism within the brain. How a person overcomes and reduces their traumatic experiences is only one way, which is helpful for clinicians to understand. They can best assist a client in making better, healthier choices for their recovery of trauma once they have a strong handle on the limbic system’s response to stress.
Application of the topic and counseling clients
Understanding of the sympathetic nervous system is only one aspect the clinician needs to be aware of during the work they do with traumatized victims. The limbic system and the body’s response to stresses are personal to the individual. Environmental stress and the ability for an individual to recover from the stressors and traumas depend on the resiliency of the person.
No two people respond the same to a situation or incident. Therefore, understanding the whole functions of how the brain works under duress helps to explain the way the brain works for healthy adults.
Individuals who come to counseling are not the healthiest both mentally, physically, or both. They struggle with mental illness, PTSD, health disorders such as cancer, arthritis, heart conditions, and so forth. Having the knowledge behind the basics only scratches the surface.
Helping the client to understand how their body reacts to trauma and stress provides the client with an awareness in what is happening to their brains why the body responds the way it does. An individual who is under repeated assault by their own body system may need medical intervention, such as with pharmacological aspects: Sertraline (an SSRI) for example, which helps to combat anxiety or overactive thinking.
The medication can help alleviate some of the symptoms by “increasing available serotonin levels or enhancing hippocampal growth” (Briere & Scott, 2015, p. 265).
Clients need to understand how the instinctual survival mode works, as well as accepting how they survived life events out of their control. Only by acceptance can clients move past the pain.
The fight-flight-freeze mechanism is highly instinctual and once a person understands the functions, when they deal with trauma it helps explain more why they react, act, and then panic/freeze in circumstances (Levine, 1997).
A counselor who understands the concept of the brain function is able to provide a secure place to explore the feelings, even if the clients spew them out in blotched, and fragmented statements, describing dreams, or fearful flashbacks.
The fight-flight-freeze model coincides with the concepts of the survival aspects of the Triune Brain. Studies have been done since MacLean’s research on the three parts of the brain.
“Since then, great progress has been made to understand the biology of stress reactions and the physiological and behavioral alterations that occur because of exposure to challenging events in the environment” (Fuchs & Flügge, 2003, p. 118).
The environment dictates whether the client is safe to explore their trauma or if they need some form of intervention or resources for a safe place to live. For a clinician to work effectively with a client who has a traumatic past, the environment potentially poses serious assets or a hindrance to mental health.
Trauma clients, who are provided a safe place to explore their past, do so in incremental stages, especially if they have begun to trust a clinician. The relationship between therapist and client becomes a staging ground for exploration and healing, even if the healing takes a long time to process.
Victimized or traumatized clients find it difficult to explain what and why they feel or think the way they do. They view life from a lens of mistrust.
Therefore, not only does a clinician need to move at the pace of the client, they also need to slowly educate the client on the functions of the brain: both from the perspective of the fight-flight-freeze mechanism to the actual functions the limbic system and the adrenal system.
Whether a client remembers the event from long ago, or has a recently experienced a traumatic event, the therapist can help them process the pain when the clients understand how the autonomic nervous systems functions.
~Just a research paper by Pamela
Personal research paper, edited for content, updated, and revised from Concordia University, 2017.
Reference
Briere, J. N. & Scott, C. (2015). Principles of trauma therapy: A guide symptoms, evaluation, and treatment (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Cory, G. J. (2000). From MacLean’s triune brain concept to the conflict systems neurobehavioral model: the subjective basis of moral and spiritual consciousness. Zygon, 35(2), 385–414.
Fuchs, E. & Flügge, G. (2003). Chronic social stress: Effects on limbic brain structures. Physiology & Behavior 79(3), 417–427, doi: 10.1016/S0031–938(03)00161–6
Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the tiger — Healing trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books
Maack, D. J., Buchanan, E., & Young, J. (2015). Development a psychometric investigation of an inventory to assess fight, flight, and freeze tendencies: The fight, flight, and freeze questionnaire. Cognitive Behavior Therapy 44(2), 117–127, doi:10.1080/16506073.2014.972443
Ploog, D.W. (2003). The place of the Triune brain in psychiatry. Physiology & Behavior 79(3), \ 487–493, doi: 10.1016/S0031–9384(03)00154–9
Ratey, J. J. (2001). A user’s guide to the brain: Perception, attention, and the four theaters of the brain. New York, NY: Vintage Books
Straub, R. O. (2007). Health psychology: A biopsychocosocial approach (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers
Thank you for reading.
About Me: •♥•Pamela J. Nikodem, MS is a writer and educator working on an internship at Roger’s Behavioral Health, guiding those who struggle with mental health and addictive behaviors. Pamela also works with men, mandated to Domestic Violence education to prevent further victimization of men, women, and children. During her Bachelor’s Degree, she co-wrote and edited a 220+ book on Recovery for a non-profit homeless shelter. •♥•©
