Understanding Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn
When faced with a traumatic event, our bodies respond in ways designed to protect us. These reactions, known as trauma responses, include four main types: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. While these responses are natural and can be helpful in the moment, they may persist long after the event, influencing how we handle stress and relationships. Understanding these responses can be a powerful first step toward healing, helping individuals recognize how trauma impacts their daily lives and what they can do to manage it.
1. Fight Response: Confronting the Threat
The fight response is our body’s way of attempting to confront and neutralize a perceived threat. In the context of a traumatic event, this might manifest as anger, aggression, or the instinct to fight back. While the fight response can be helpful when it leads to self-defense, it may become problematic if it turns into chronic irritability, anger issues, or an overly defensive outlook on life.
In therapy, individuals learn ways to recognize and manage the urge to fight when it’s not necessary, fostering healthier ways to channel anger and assert boundaries without conflict.
2. Flight Response: Escaping the Situation
The flight response is characterized by the urge to escape or avoid danger. During a traumatic event, this can mean running away or finding a way to remove oneself from the situation. For some, this response lingers, manifesting as a desire to avoid anything that triggers memories of the trauma. It can also look like excessive worry or hyper-vigilance, always on the lookout for potential danger.
In therapy, individuals can work on grounding techniques and strategies to manage anxiety, helping them feel safe without the need to constantly seek escape.
3. Freeze Response: Feeling Stuck or Paralyzed
The freeze response occurs when someone feels unable to act in response to a threat, almost like becoming “frozen” in place. This response can lead to dissociation, feeling numb, or feeling disconnected from one’s surroundings or emotions. People who experience freeze responses may feel “stuck” in their trauma, as if they can’t move forward or take action.
Therapies such as Somatic Experiencing can be especially beneficial for those with a freeze response, as they focus on reconnecting with the body and processing sensations that may be stuck, helping individuals regain a sense of control.
4. Fawn Response: People-Pleasing to Avoid Conflict
The fawn response is less widely known but common, especially in people who have experienced prolonged trauma, such as abuse or neglect. Fawning is characterized by a strong desire to appease or please others to avoid potential harm or conflict. This might look like people-pleasing, putting others’ needs before one’s own, or avoiding speaking up about personal needs and boundaries.
Therapy can help individuals recognize fawning behaviors and work toward building self-worth and confidence, empowering them to set boundaries and express themselves honestly in relationships.
How Therapy Can Help Manage Trauma Responses
Trauma responses can be deeply ingrained, and understanding them is only the first step. Therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Somatic Experiencing (SE) can help individuals address these responses by targeting both the mind and body. Here’s how:
- Awareness and Understanding: Therapy helps clients become aware of their trauma responses, enabling them to recognize triggers and respond differently.
- Emotional Regulation: Through various techniques, individuals learn how to regulate their emotions, preventing intense responses to perceived threats.
- Reconnecting with the Body: For those experiencing freeze or fawn responses, therapies like Somatic Experiencing encourage clients to reconnect with physical sensations and emotions, helping them move past stuck feelings.
- Building Resilience: Therapy offers tools for managing trauma responses over the long term, fostering a sense of resilience and empowerment.
Embracing a Journey of Healing
Understanding trauma responses is a powerful tool for healing. By recognizing whether you tend to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn, you can begin to unpack how trauma has shaped your reactions and behaviors. Therapy provides a safe and supportive space to explore these patterns, offering guidance and techniques to transform them. Over time, you can move toward a more balanced, empowered way of being, free from the weight of unresolved trauma.
If you’re curious about exploring how trauma responses affect you or are interested in starting a healing journey, consider reaching out to our team of licensed therapists who specialize in trauma-informed care.
Schedule your free consultation today.
Taking the first steps to start therapy can be intimidating, let one of our skillful and compassionate therapists help you through the process. Today is the best day to start feeling better!
