Healing Trauma 9: Fight Flight Freeze Fawn
by Lynn Fraser
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are survival responses that are generated by our nervous system when we sense danger. We don’t decide to respond this way. Our unconscious mind makes the assessment of threat and the best response to survive. When we are in a survival response, we are emotionally dysregulated and we're not acting with our full capacity. We try to get away from trouble if we can. That's the flight response. If our system decides that we have a better chance if we go into a fight response, that's what we'll do. If flight or fight don’t work, then we go into a freeze or a shutdown response. The fourth one, fawning, appeasing or people pleasing, is a social strategy, hoping they won’t hurt us if we can get them on our side.
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