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Nov 23, 2023 · Learn how trauma affects the body and mind, and how to recognize and cope with different trauma responses such as fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and others. Find out how to heal trauma with positive psychology and other therapies.
- Replaying the Memory. Many people find that the mind returns over and over to the upsetting memory, almost as if on a loop. It might feel like the brain is trying to make sense of the experience, or figure out if we should have responded differently.
- Nightmares. While the actual experience probably felt like a nightmare, it's common for real nightmares to haunt our dreams in the aftermath of a trauma.
- Flashbacks. A flashback occurs when the trauma memory gets cued and makes it feel as if the trauma is happening all over again. I experienced a flashback months after my first trauma—a violent mugging—when a friend saw me walking down the street and changed direction to approach me.
- Fear and Anxiety. Perhaps the most common emotional reaction to a trauma is feeling fearful and anxious. It makes perfect sense that we would be afraid after something scary happened.
- Overview
- First, a look at the basics
- Understanding your response
- The fight response
- The flight response
- The freeze response
- The fawn response
- The lingering impact of trauma
- The bottom line
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Trauma, whether it’s momentary or long term, affects people in different ways. This probably isn’t news to you.
But did you know four distinct responses can help explain how your experiences show up in your reactions and behavior?
First, there’s fight-or-flight, the one you’re probably most familiar with. In basic terms, when you encounter a threat, you either resist or retaliate, or simply flee.
Maybe you’ve also heard this called fight, flight, or freeze. You can think of the freeze response as something akin to stalling, a temporary pause that gives your mind and body a chance to plan and prepare for your next steps.
But your response to trauma can go beyond fight, flight, or freeze.
The fawn response, a term coined by therapist Pete Walker, describes (often unconscious) behavior that aims to please, appease, and pacify the threat in an effort to keep yourself safe from further harm.
As you might already know, trauma responses happen naturally.
When your body recognizes a threat, your brain and autonomic nervous system (ANS) react quickly, releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
These hormones trigger physical changes that help prepare you to handle a threat, whether it involves actual physical or emotional danger, or perceived harm.
You might, for example:
•argue with a co-worker treating you unfairly
•flee from the path of a car running a red light
Example
Say you want to protect your younger siblings from your parent’s anger and aggression. You don’t want to flee and leave them alone. But you also know you have to take action somehow, which rules out freezing. This leaves two options: •fight, or taking action against your parent in some way •fawn, or doing something to soothe them and keep them calm so they won’t become violent You might naturally gravitate toward one or the other based on your underlying personality traits, but the situation can also make a difference. If your parent is much bigger and stronger, and you can’t think of any way to subtly take action, you might resort to fawning. If the response proves effective, it can easily become automatic — in all your relationships, even years down the line. Was this helpful? Now, here’s a closer look at the four main reactions.
This response tends to stem from the unconscious belief that maintaining power and control over others will lead to the acceptance, love, and safety you need but didn’t get in childhood, according to Walker.
This response tends to show up more commonly when your caregivers:
•didn’t provide reasonable and healthy limits
•gave you whatever you asked for
•shamed you
•demonstrated narcissistic rage, bullying, or disgust
A flight response, in short, is characterized by the desire to escape or deny pain, emotional turmoil, and other distress.
You might find yourself trapped in flight mode if, as a child, escaping your parents helped you dodge most of their unkindness and ease the impact of the abuse you experienced.
Escape might take a literal form:
•staying longer hours at school and friends’ houses
•wandering the neighborhood
Or a more figurative one:
The freeze response serves as a stalling tactic. You brain presses the “pause” button but remains hypervigilant, waiting and watching carefully until it can determine whether fleeing or fighting offers a better route to safety.
Some experts have pointed out this response actually takes place first, before you decide to flee or fight. And when either action seems less than feasible? You might then “flop” in response to your fright.
Walker identified a fourth trauma response through his experiences helping survivors of childhood abuse and trauma.
This response, which he termed “fawning,” offers an alternate path to safety. You escape harm, in short, by learning to please the person threatening you and keep them happy.
In childhood, this might involve:
•ignoring your own needs to take care of a parent
•making yourself as useful and helpful as possible
•neglecting or failing to develop your own self-identity
Trauma doesn’t just affect you in the moment. More often, it has long lasting effects that can disrupt well-being for years to come.
Just one instance of abuse can cause deep pain and trauma. Repeated abuse can take an even more devastating toll, damaging your ability to form healthy friendships and relationships, not to mention your physical and mental health.
But you can work through trauma and minimize its impact on your life.
Recognizing your trauma response is a great place to start. Just keep in mind, though, that your response may not fall neatly into one of these four categories.
Your trauma response may be a relic of a painful childhood, but it’s not set in stone.
Support from a trained therapist can go a long way toward helping you address deep-seated effects of past trauma, along with any mental health symptoms you experience as a result.
Learn how trauma affects your brain and body, and how you can cope with different types of threats. Find out the basics of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses, and how they relate to your attachment style and PTSD.
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Trauma is a person's emotional distress from an event that overwhelms their capacity to cope. Learn about the different types of trauma, how they affect mental health, and how to treat them.
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Learn about trauma, its effects, and how to cope with it from the APA. Find resources on trauma psychology, research, books, journals, and more.
