Stress Response Uncovered: Understanding Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn
In life-threatening situations, our bodies respond in ways that aim to ensure our survival. Common survival responses are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Biological instincts within our autonomic nervous system, specifically the sympathetic nervous system, prepare us to confront, flee from, ignore, or appease a source that represents potential harm.
For individuals who’ve experienced trauma, the associated neural pathways in our brains can become particularly sensitive to real or perceived threats. Such hyperawareness can lead to challenges in managing stress responses and potentially contribute to conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In this article, we will explore what distinguishes the four prevalent stress responses from one another, their corresponding mental health implications, and how online therapy can help people control emotions in the face of stressors.
Understanding the acute stress response and its impact on the nervous system
The fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses are part of our acute stress response.
When faced with a threat, the body activates its sympathetic nervous system, releasing stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that prepare us to act quickly. To defend us from harm, this response is automatic and not within our conscious control.
Fight response
The fight response activates when we perceive a threat we believe we can overcome. The body prepares for confrontation, often resulting in heightened alertness, increased heart rate, and focused attention. This response can serve us well in certain circumstances, but if triggered excessively or inappropriately, it can contribute to aggression, impulsivity, and challenges in our mental health.
For example, someone could tap you on the shoulder while riding in a packed subway car. Someone displaying the fight response may be primed for aggression, perceiving the threat as coming from someone who intends to harm. This response often stems from having experienced similar impactful moments associated with trauma, such as physical or sexual assault.
Flight response
The flight response occurs when we perceive a threat we believe we can escape by running away, often literally. Our bodies prepare for quick movement, which may cause increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and a rush of energy. Like the fight response, this can safeguard us in appropriate contexts but can lead to anxiety, restlessness, or avoidance behaviors when overactivated.
An appropriate flight response may look like coming across a snake and noticing it is coiled in a defensive position with its fangs bared.
Many people would experience a quick engagement of the flight response and start backing away to avoid a potentially fatal bite.
While a poisonous snake may be a legitimate reason to flee, our flight response may sometimes prompt us to run away when we might need to confront a challenge head-on. One example may be participating in a difficult conversation with a romantic partner and taking responsibility for a wrong-doing that will upset them.
Freeze response
While fight and flight are the two most commonly referenced stress responses, the freeze response may be just as common. In the freeze response, we perceive a threat but assess that neither fighting nor fleeing may be an option. This response can be akin to “playing dead” to make us less noticeable to the threat.
Physically, the freeze response may involve reduced movement and slowed breathing. When frequently activated, especially in response to past trauma, the freeze response can contribute to feelings of paralysis, difficulty making decisions, and depressive symptoms.
Fawn response
The fawn response may be triggered when we perceive a threat we believe we can appease or placate. It involves behaviors aimed at pleasing others, defusing conflict, or seeking approval.
While this can be adaptive in certain circumstances, chronic activation can lead to behaviors such as people-pleasing, difficulty setting boundaries, and low self-esteem.
Fawning may look like childhood trauma where a child does everything to appease an angry parent as a way to avoid their lashouts and “survive” in their environment. This behavior may translate to adulthood, where pleasing others becomes a coping mechanism to avoid the anger, disappointment, or rejection of others.
In a workplace scenario, an employee might fawn in front of an intimidating supervisor to avoid toxic behaviors such as public shaming or unfair treatment.
If you or a loved one is experiencing abuse, contact the Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Support is available 24/7.
Understanding the stress response of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and its mental health implications
Chronic activation of any of these stress responses can lead to mental health conditions. For instance, chronic fight or flight responses can contribute to anxiety disorders, while a frequent freeze response may be associated with depression. Fawning, if overused, can lead to relational difficulties and low self-esteem.
The acute stress response system can become significantly dysregulated in individuals who’ve experienced significant trauma. These individuals may respond with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses in situations that aren’t genuinely threatening. This quickness to enter the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response can often be seen in PTSD, where reminders of past trauma can trigger these survival responses, leading to significant distress and impairment.
Managing overactive stress: Understanding fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and stress responses with professional help
If you or someone you know seems to be struggling with these stress responses, and they’re interfering with daily life or linked to past trauma, it can be beneficial to reach out to a mental health professional. Therapists and counselors are trained to help individuals understand and manage these responses and can provide strategies to manage them.
Understanding the stress response of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and its mental health implications
Chronic activation of any of these stress responses can lead to mental health conditions. For instance, chronic fight or flight responses can contribute to anxiety disorders, while a frequent freeze response may be associated with depression. Fawning, if overused, can lead to relational difficulties and low self-esteem.
The acute stress response system can become significantly dysregulated in individuals who’ve experienced significant trauma. These individuals may respond with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses in situations that aren’t genuinely threatening. This quickness to enter the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response can often be seen in PTSD, where reminders of past trauma can trigger these survival responses, leading to significant distress and impairment.
Managing overactive stress: Understanding fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and stress responses with professional help
If you or someone you know seems to be struggling with these stress responses, and they’re interfering with daily life or linked to past trauma, it can be beneficial to reach out to a mental health professional. Therapists and counselors are trained to help individuals understand and manage these responses and can provide strategies to manage them.
How to tell if your body is in fight-or-flight mode?
Some signs you might be in flight or fight mode include:
- Elevated heart rate
- Sweating
- Dilated pupils
- Digestive system symptoms, such as nausea or diarrhea
- Pale or flushed skin
- Dry mouth
- Hyperawareness
- Feeling dizzy or faint
In addition to fight-or-flight responses, you may experience the freeze or fawn response. For example, human freeze responses can lead to symptoms like a sense of dread, feeling stiff, or dissociation. The fourth trauma response, fawning, may lead to symptoms like dissociating, hypervigilance, or people-pleasing behavior. Less commonly, some people experience the flop response, which can cause severe symptoms like tonic immobility or loss of consciousness.
Can anxiety cause a fight-or-flight response?
Anxiety and other forms of emotional distress can trigger the body’s fight-or-flight response. In the short term, it’s okay to experience this response, but in the long term, chronic stress and hypervigilance can lead to persistent mental health issues, high blood pressure, and worsening overall health. That partially explains the importance of stress management practices.
What happens if you are constantly in fight-or-flight?
If you’re constantly in flight-or-fight mode, you might experience some of the following signs:
- You respond to a perceived threat aggressively, leading to issues in interpersonal relationships
- You’ve been in “survival mode” for a long time
- Trauma survivors may have a physiological reaction to things that remind them of a traumatic event
- Maladaptive coping skills, like drinking, can lead to substance abuse
- High tension in skeletal muscles, which may contribute to issues like temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders or muscle wasting
- Grinding teeth, urge to move, inability to sit still, or irritability
Chronic stress and prolonged fight-or-flight responses can have significant effects on physical health and well-being. Some of the reasons this might occur include:
- Prolonged constriction of blood vessels, leading to increased blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular diseases
- Adrenaline, released from the adrenal glands, can lead to intense fear, weakened immune function, and difficulty concentrating
- Stress-induced sleep challenges
What is an overactive fight-or-flight response?
An overactive fight-or-flight response refers to individuals whose sympathetic nervous system is highly reactive and overly sensitive to perceived danger. It’s common for people with mental health conditions, survivors of childhood abuse, and survivors of other types of traumatic memories to become hyper-responsive to this built-in defense mechanism.
If you’ve experienced a traumatic situation or other mental health challenges leading to high reactivity, you might find yourself feeling depleted, overwhelmed, or isolated. Getting professional support from a licensed therapist can help you develop the skills to better regulate your stress.
What happens to the body during the stress response?
The body’s stress response is triggered whenever there is perceived harm, such as a physical danger (like a natural disaster or a physical altercation) or a psychological danger (like relationship conflict, work dissatisfaction, financial struggles, and other things that might not be seen as a “traumatic event”).
When you encounter potentially dangerous events, the body may trigger the following natural reaction:
- First, the eyes, noses, skin receptors, and/or ears take in the threat, sending information to the area of the brain largely in charge of emotional processing (the amygdala).
- If the amygdala senses danger, it sends a signal to the hypothalamus.
- The hypothalamus is the part of the brain responsible for getting the four trauma responses (flight, fight, freeze, or fawn) out to the rest of the body through the sympathetic nervous system. It does this by sending a signal through the autonomic nervous system to the adrenal glands.
- In response, the adrenal glands are responsible for releasing hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, into the bloodstream.
- These hormones trigger physiological changes, like increased heart rate, greater lung airway capacity, heightened senses, and blood sugar release.
The stress response is an important survival instinct, helping people quickly react to stressors. However, when the “gas pedal” stays down, it can lead to the worsening of mental health conditions, high physical demands on the heart and other organs, and damage to overall well-being.
Some strategies that can help you manage chronic stress include practicing relaxation exercises (like deep breathing or grounding techniques), seeking mental health treatment (like cognitive behavior therapy), setting personal boundaries, and recharging healthy relationships.
How is the nervous system involved in emotional responses?
The nervous system is highly involved in the response to a real or perceived threat (stressor). Specifically, the autonomic nervous system activates a series of defense mechanisms to prepare the body to respond to the threat.
Exploring human freeze responses to stress can be interesting, because on its face it may not seem like an effective stress response. However, it may evolutionarily serve a purpose by providing the brain with more time to plan a response, conserve energy, minimize pain, and appear calm to reduce the risk of further threats.
What are the psychological effects of fight-or-flight?
The flight-or-fight response can cause wide-ranging psychological symptoms, such as:
- Heightened alertness, anxiety, and irritability
- Irritability, mood swings, or feeling “on edge”
- Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, or remembering information
- Feeling emotionally numb or “checked out”
The type and intensity of psychological symptoms can vary significantly. For example, for some, the symptoms may peak quickly and then return to baseline. For others, like those with complex PTSD, symptoms may be persistent, leading to intense fear, emotional detachment, distrust, or extreme hypervigilance.
How do stress and anxiety affect mental health?
Stress and anxiety can both negatively impact mental health by leading to things like difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability, social isolation, emotional overwhelm, fatigue, low self-esteem, and body pains.
How do you know your body is releasing trauma?
Some signs that you’re releasing trauma include a sense of joy, laughter, anger, relief, happiness, energy, restlessness, muscle relaxation, deeper breaths, improved digestion, or a greater sense of presence, connection, or inner peace.
Is overthinking a trauma response?
Yes, overthinking—also called ruminating or obsessive thinking—is a common type of trauma response. However, it can also be a sign of stress, certain personality traits, low self-esteem, anxiety, OCD, depression, major life changes, or insomnia.
To figure out what’s causing you to overthink, consider keeping a thought journal, non-judgmental meditation, working with a cognitive behavioral therapist, identifying patterns in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and working on building your self-esteem.
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