Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn: Understanding Your Stress Responses
105,937
Published 2021-09-20
Today we are going to talk about our stress response, otherwise known as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Now I know you are probably wondering what freeze and fawn are, and why we don't hear about them as often, well that's what we will dig into today, so stay tuned.
Let's start out by explaining what our stress response is. Whenever our nervous system believes that we are threatened either physically or emotionally (and it doesn't matter if we are truly at risk or not, we just have to think we are), like if we think someone could attack us, or if the situation at hand requires more resources then we have, we can be pushed into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Being pushed into this state causes our amygdala and entire limbic system to sound the alarm. This change in our brain focuses our body on survival and takes the planning and more organized part of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, offline. This can cause us to feel on edge, act impulsively, and even feel overwhelmed emotionally. It's supposed to be short lived, save us from a perceived threat, and then go away, but for many of us it can last for much much longer.
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All Comments (21)
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Thank you for this video. I hadn’t heard of the “Fawn” stress response. Great explanation. Also, I bought your book, and i am enjoying it; it’s a very readable style.
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It's interesting that whenever someone is attacked or assaulted people always ask 'why didn't you run?' Or 'why didn't you fight back?' And I guess it's down to us mainly knowing and acknowledging fight or flight. When a really common response is to fawn or freeze but those response to an assault aren't recognised and victim blaming happens.
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In my traumatic experience I freezed and fawned and then blamed myself so hard for not leaving or fighting back, it’s nice to know that those are legitimate responses to trauma
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I'm 44 years old and had an abusive childhood. Watching this video, helped me realize I've been in the Fawn response for the majority of my life.
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I've recognized for decades that when it comes to others in need of defending my response is fight, especially if it's an underdog. Yet, when it comes to myself, even as an emotionally neglected child, I freeze. Sadly, the freeze is a constant; I know this is how I exist in the world and/but struggle to feel safe, to have compassion for my inner, neglected, child.
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Talk about a light bulb moment. I didn't know fawning was a thing but it perfectly explains my stress response and why sometimes helping others becomes such a debilitating thing for me.
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My therapist says my nervous system is stuck in the freeze/fawn response. I went through a year of captivity and that is what it stems from. Im just beginning edmr and somatic exercise therapy to hopefully correct that
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My husband has a fifth stress response: Flop. He has a dissociation disorder. In stressful situations he dissociates (goes trance-like) and can collapse and lose consciousness. Understanding the condition has helped to decrease the frequency and intensity of his dissociative episodes.
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I specialize in flight and fawn. I constantly fawned around my father (emotional abuser, we had to walk on eggshells) and now I do it at work with everyone. As for the flight, well, I suffer from depression and anxiety and when I feel overwhelmed, I just go to bed. I can spend whole days taking naps. This is exhausting.
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I found out through therapy this year that my threat respons is to “fawn”. No one understood. Thank you for explaining it
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It would be amazing if you could do a video breaking down each response individually, especially fawn. Over the last year I've come to realize that fawning is my trauma response and have been trying to learn more about it. I've been trying to figure out as many coping mechanisms as possible on my own (therapy is too expensive, even with insurance). I love the way you explain things, so I think it would be super helpful for a lot of people!
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I have lived my entire life in freeze and fawn state. I spent 5 years in therapy and it still barely touched it. She sent my case in as part of the early DESNOS studies. She really didn't know how to fully help me. I learned to be more functional in my PTSD behavior. The good thing about only having a freeze response under stress and fawn without immediate stress is that others don't recognize the behavior.
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when you talked about fawn response i started hysterically laughing, which then turned into hystericall crying, the more you said, about walking on eggshells, anger and pain turning inside you and how your patient said she learned not to cry (my dad would spank me if i was crying, even if i was crying because he spanked me before) everything makes sense now, i always thought i was crazy selfharming just because i was angry, but now i get it, thank you, ill definitely go to therapy when ill be 18 (in 4 years)
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Wow, the last person you mentioned reminded me of my dad. He would "give you a reason to cry" if he heard you during a whooping. I still cry silently and rarely as a 30-something adult. On the bright side, if you had a similar experience, you're not alone 🥰
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What a great video! I never knew the term “Fawn” until now. It’s exactly what I did throughout my childhood, and probably is the reason I struggle so much with people pleasing nowadays. I definitely need to see a Trauma Specialist. Thank you for all the great content! I’m learning so much. Keep it up!
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I actually heard about "fawn" during my lessons on how to treat people with mental illnesses/in the psychiatry (as a nurse). But somehow I didn't put it in the same "category" as fight-flight-frezze. So thank you for this new point of view!
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It feels relieving to here about fawn because it is exactly what I have done my whole life. Yes there's times of the other ones too but when I've done something because of fawn that I really wish I didn't do, it was hard not to just blame myself for not being strong enough. Having a name makes me feel hope to overcome it and less bad from choices I made because of it. I have a fear of abandonment and doing the wrong things making people upset and fawn was my response to anything perceived towards that.
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Who hasn’t gone through stuff like this? It seems everyone has been traumatized by someone sometime in their life. What I learned in my life time is abusers are people who were also abused. What we need to teach, the younger the better, is how to recognize the “Red Flags” and where to go to safely seek help or intervention. If not, we grow up thinking that abusive behavior is normal. 😔
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Katie, my loved one was 302'd a few days ago after a 3 day manic episode of reliving suppressed childhood sexual trauma. You have cleared up so, so much for me. I felt totally alone and unable to articulate what I had witnessed until this video just happened to show up on my news feed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this video.
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Not only painful as a source for fawn, but just knowing or truly feeling your emotions are neglected in the first place from childhood, only grows...
