The 4 Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn
How do they manifest in your life?
Our society still views trauma as the result of an extreme, life-threatening event like war, a natural disaster, or a violent crime.
However, the truth is that trauma can also be silent and subtle, yet extremely deep. It can affect every decision we make and transform every part of our being — even if we have no idea it is there, deep within us.
As children, we need a safe environment with predictable, available, and loving caregivers. This creates a secure base that will allow us to become confident and emotionally healthy adults.
Without this secure base, we develop unhealthy beliefs and coping mechanisms: our nervous system becomes dysregulated, we people-please, we don’t know how to identify or satisfy our needs, and we don’t know how to build fulfilling intimate relationships.
These coping mechanisms are, essentially, trauma responses. That’s why we need to stop minimizing small, “unimportant” traumas.
Unfortunately, we tend to focus on the fight and flight responses, but the truth is that there are other ways we respond to trauma — and they’re much more common than you might think.
How The Trauma Responses Work
As Dr. Gabor Maté says, trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.
We all have different backgrounds. What triggers me might not trigger you, just like what triggers you might not trigger me. That’s because we have our own unique feelings, emotions, and beliefs— and they shape our realities very differently.
Besides, our trauma responses are largely based on what our brains think will help us survive the situation. Sometimes your brain thinks fighting is not possible, so it immediately turns to other coping mechanisms like freezing or fawning. Or, you may gravitate towards one response but have a different response in certain situations. Again, it all depends on your background.
For instance, my predominant responses have always been fawn and flight, however, I also tend to freeze when certain emotions come up. This is something I am currently working on with my therapist.
It’s important to keep in mind that when we are indeed experiencing something traumatic, these responses can help us survive (either emotionally and/or physically). The problem is that we tend to hold onto them even if we’re not under threat anymore, and that can be very damaging to our mental health.
The 4 F’s: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn
1. Fight.
This is the response associated with anger and reactivity. It happens when trauma leaves us in a state of fear and we feel like we have to constantly be ready to react to something.
People who respond with fight tend to create conflict out of nowhere because they’re easily triggered. They find it very difficult to relax, and they also tend to be quite controlling. In the past, they may have felt like they had no control over their environment, so they overcompensate with an extreme need for control because that’s what makes them feel safe.
2. Flight.
People who respond with flight have usually experienced a certain degree of emotional deprivation. They were either raised by emotionally unavailable parents or experienced emotional abuse.
Flight is the response associated with the avoidant attachment style. Avoidant people seek safety through avoidance of people and interactions that may trigger them, and they tend to be extremely independent. However, their hyper-independence is a survival tactic that allows them to avoid vulnerability and protect themselves from pain.
3. Freeze.
We freeze when we feel completely helpless, meaning when the circumstances are so painful/stressful that we can’t even fight and flight is not possible either.
Some people think freeze and flight and pretty much the same, but the freeze response goes way deeper than avoidance and is much more complex. People who freeze don’t just avoid their emotions — they literally feel paralyzed. When something triggers their trauma, their brain numbs everything and they’re unable to react. While people who flight tend to be very busy and independent, people who freeze tend to feel fatigued and lethargic.
If you have a fearful-avoidant attachment style, you probably oscillate between two or three responses (freeze/flight, freeze/fawn/fight, freeze/fight…).
4. Fawn.
If you’re a fawner, people-pleasing is your go-to coping mechanism. You find it very difficult to express yourself and honor your needs because you’re terrified of conflict (and you believe expressing yourself will inevitably cause conflict).
“If you’re a people-pleaser, your parents have probably made you feel like their love for you was conditional. Maybe they showed affection when you were meeting their expectations, yet they got distant when you expressed your real emotions.
It’s important to mention that as children, we do whatever it takes to establish an emotional connection with our caretakers, and we need this connection to be consistent. If our parents don’t know how to deal with our self-expression, we cope by sabotaging our authentic self.
Besides, if one of your parents/caretakers was not able to emotionally regulate — leading to rage outbursts and an overall unpredictable environment — the lesson you learn is that conflict is scary and being honest is not really safe.”
These trauma responses exist on a spectrum, ranging from mild to severe.
If we want to let go of these patterns, we need to understand why they exist in the first place— and, from my experience, awareness is 90% of the transformation.
As I wrote before, your trauma can be very messy, unfair, and confusing, but it doesn’t have to dictate your entire life.
You deserve much more than being defined by what happened to you.