Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn Explained
- Brittney Green
- Mar 21
- 4 min read
Have you ever looked back on a reaction you had—maybe it was snapping at someone, shutting down, or saying yes when you really meant to say no— and thought “Why did I do that?” Well, you’re not alone. When we experience stress, especially if we’ve been through trauma, our nervous system can hijack our behavior. And it doesn’t always drive us to where we want to go.
Most people are family with the “fight or flight” response, but our built-in survival system can also trigger “freeze” or “fawn” reactions. These trauma responses aren’t something we choose—they’re automatic, deeply wired into our bodies to keep us safe. The tricky part? Sometimes they get stuck, showing up even when the danger is long gone.
As a therapist specialising in trauma, I help people understand these responses not as flaws, but as signs that their nervous system is working hard to protect them. The good news? You don’t have to stay stuck! Let’s break down these responses and take a closer look.
The Four Trauma Responses
Fight: The Protector
Ever lashed out when you felt threatened, annoyed, or irritated? That’s your fight response in action. This response is all about standing your ground—whether it be through anger, control, or defensiveness. In a healthy form, the fight response helps us set boundaries, and advocate for ourselves. But when in overdrive, it can make us reactive, aggressive, or unable to tolerate perceived criticism. Most people with an overactive fight response describe constantly feeling “on edge,” irritable, and quickly defensive.
Flight: The Escapist
If fight is about standing tall, flight is about getting out of there. Sometimes that means physically retreating, but in the modern world, this can often look like staying busy. Overworking, perfectionism, constant distraction—these can all be signs of a nervous system stuck in a flight response. If you feel like you can’t slow down without anxiety creeping in, thigh might sound familiar.
Freeze: The Shutdown
Ever felt paralysed in a stressful situation? Like your brain hit the pause button and left you unable to act? That’s the freeze response. Freeze will often come up when neither fight nor flight feel like a good option. If we get stuck in a freeze response, we can struggle with indecision, dissociation, chronic procrastination, and feeling emotionally numb.
Fawn: The People-Pleaser
The fawn response is rooted in appeasing others to avoid harm. Imagine a child who learns that keeping the peace is the safest option. People-pleasing, difficulty saying no, and losing yourself in relationships are all signs of an overactive fawn response. While this once kept you safe, it can cause issues with developing relationships and intimacy when we find it difficult to prioritise our own needs.
Why Do We Get Stuck in Trauma Responses?
First of all, let me be clear, it’s not you—it’s your nervous system doing its best to keep you safe based on your life experience. If even circumstances change, these patterns can stick around. This can happen for a few reasons:
The past trauma is unprocessed. If your brain still registers certain situations as dangerous it will keep reacting as if you are in danger—even when you are perfectly safe.
These responses worked before. If something like fawning kept you safe in childhood, or flight helped you escape stress, your brain holds onto these responses as go-to strategies. Especially if a response was reinforced in your childhood, it can become an automatic response in adulthood.
Your nervous system stays on high alert. After trauma, our nervous system can become chronically dysregulated. This means we can become sensitive to going into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. In this case, it is especially helpful to incorporate somatic practices that help the body find safety again.
Parts of you believe it’s necessary. (This is where Internal Family Systems (IFS) comes in!) Protective parts of us often insist on using these responses to keep us safe, even when these responses are hurting us more than helping us. You can read more about IFS on my Beginner's Guide blog here.
Healing Is Possible
Healing isn’t about forcing yourself to “just stop” reacting this way. (If it were that easy, you wouldn’t be reading this, right?) Instead, it’s about helping your nervous system and the protective parts of you feel safe enough to let go of survival mode.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) helps you better understand and work with the parts of you that use fight, flight, freeze, or fawn to protect you. By engaging with these responses with curiosity and compassion, we can start to build the trust and safety that are necessary to explore change.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) allows your brain and body to process past trauma, reduce the emotional charge of distressing memories, and help our nervous systems recognise these experiences are in the past. That last part is really important, when your body recognises the past is the past, you can stop treating the present like the past.
If you recognise yourself in these trauma response patterns, know that healing is possible. These responses aren’t just survival instincts—they’re signs of resilience. Your nervous system has been doing its best to protect you, even if those strategies no longer serve you. You are not broken. Healing can help you and your system feel safe enough to let go of survival mode.
Through IFS and EMDR, we can work together to untangle these patterns, bring compassion to the parts of you that feel stuck, and help you step into a life that feels safer, freer, and more you.
If you’re ready to explore this work, I invite you to schedule a free consultation. Let’s talk about where you are, where you want to be, and how we can get there together.
