The 4 Trauma Response Types
In the face of threat or danger, the human body instinctively initiates a series of biological responses designed for survival - this is known as the fight-or-flight response.
You might be used to hearing this called “the fight or flight response,” but trauma research shows there are actually 4 main "trauma response types" that people commonly experience.
Understanding these trauma responses is helpful, as they can come up in various situations and contexts, not just during a traumatic event itself. Even without a specific trauma history, people may exhibit these behavioral patterns when faced with stressful triggers or perceived threats in daily life.
The Roots of Trauma Responses
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn trauma responses exist as automatic physiological responses that increase the chances of surviving life-threatening situations.
The amygdala serves as the integrative center for fear, regulating other areas of the brain like the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and brain stem to trigger adaptive responses like those seen with fight-or-flight. When it detects a potential threat, it sets off a precise chain of chemical reactions by signaling to the hypothalamus. This initiates the sympathetic nervous system's "stress response" by releasing hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.
These physiological changes were evolutionarily advantageous for the earliest humans when faced with predators or other dangers, enabling:
Increased strength and aggression (fight response)
Energized burst for running away (flight response)
Stillness to avoid detection or reduce pain (freeze response)
Appeasing the threat (fawn response)
These responses all prop the body into a hyper-aroused state that was designed to provide short bursts of energy to endure or overcome the threat at hand. Afterward, the parasympathetic nervous system could activate the "rest and digest" mode, allowing a person to recover from the hyperarousal state.
While people face fewer harsh environmental threats in modern times, this same survival mechanism continues activating whenever the amygdala perceives a threat. This can occur with psychological, social, or emotional threats with no immediate peril.
The Fight Response
When the fight response kicks in, the body's sympathetic nervous system is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, priming you for combat or self-defense. You might find yourself suddenly feeling angry and combative; your anger has gone from 0 to 100 and you’re suddenly in a rage, unable to hear what anyone is telling you. Hours later it might hit you that you could have behaved differently, but at the moment it seemed to be the only choice.
Key characteristics include:
Increased heart rate and blood pressure
Rapid breathing
Heightened muscle tension ready for action
Intense anger, rage, or aggressiveness
Tunnel vision and muted hearing
Halting of digestion
The fight response enables a person to directly attack or stand their ground against a perceived threat.
The Flight Response
The flight response is all about escape and self-preservation through avoidance. You might find yourself feeling strongly motivated to get out of wherever you are. You might not be able to explain why, but you just know that you can’t stay where you are or something terrible is going to happen. When it happens more subtly, you might find yourself avoiding conflict or attachments, trying to make yourself look small so that you can go unnoticed.
It involves physiological changes like:
Surge of energy for running or fleeing
Loss of appetite
Dilated pupils for expanded vision
Tightening of muscles in arms/legs
Perspiration and chills
Racing thoughts about how to get away
The flight response is initiated by the amygdala perceiving a threat and sending signals to the hippocampus for spatial processing of the emergency situation and how to flee from it.
The Freeze Response
When the fight-or-flight instinct is thwarted and escape or resistance seems impossible, the freeze response kicks in. You might find yourself feeling incredibly numb: you might be able to state intellectually that the situation is upsetting, but you feel very little. Your mind goes blank, and you find it hard to decide what to do next; you just want to stay still and let the threat pass. For many with complex trauma, this can be a chronic state.
This state of tonic immobility is characterized by:
Paralysis and inability to move or speak
Feeling numb, detached or spaced out
Loss of color in the face, feeling cold
Feeling weighed down or "playing dead"
Shallow breathing and slowed heart rate
As explained in a study from Biological Psychiatry, the freeze response facilitates the conservation of energy and metabolic resources, with some theorizing it evolved to help prey avoid detection from predators.
The Fawn Response
A fourth type of trauma response recognized in more recent research is known as "fawning", in which the threatened person attempts to diffuse the danger through people-pleasing behaviors like:
Complying with the wishes of others automatically
Assuming a passive, indifferent demeanor
Speaking in a slow, high-pitched or childlike voice
Deflecting needs or avoiding direct disagreement
Centering the priorities of others over their own
Fawning may arise from an intuitive drive to increase the emotional investment of a threatening figure and de-escalate hostility.
Responses Can Occur Without a History of Trauma
It's important to note that while these fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses were first characterized in PTSD and trauma research, they are not exclusively limited to those who have experienced major traumatic events.
Everyone has deeply ingrained biological programming to react in these fear-based ways when faced with perceived threats, even when the scenarios are more benign like:
Performance reviews or conflict at work
Heated arguments in a relationship
Making important public presentations
Receiving criticism or disapproval from authority figures
Any highly stressful circumstance that activates the threat-detection response
For example, someone with social anxiety may habitually enter the freeze or fawn modes around others. The freeze response may also manifest subconsciously at the mere anticipation of confrontation or perceived danger.
These survival responses evolved as protective mechanisms to increase the chances of survival in dire physical emergencies. However, they can get disproportionately triggered in modern humans by emotional, social, or psychological threats with no immediate peril. This creates physiological stress and distress responses that can negatively impact daily functioning.
Understanding Your Responses
The first step in managing these powerful trauma responses is cultivating self-awareness around which ones you tend to default to and in what kinds of situations.
For some, the threat of public speaking may trigger the classic fight-or-flight arousal, while others shut down in freeze mode. Conflicts at work may spur angry outbursts in line with the fight response for certain individuals. Recognizing your typical trauma response patterns is key to interrupting and regulating these instinctual reactions before they become overly intense or cause further harm.
From there, therapy, mindfulness, and grounding techniques such as breath work can be highly effective in developing new coping mechanisms to override maladaptive threat responses through conscious efforts. Trauma-focused therapy can be particularly helpful for those who have history of trauma. Psychedelic-assisted therapy may also be hugely helpful for people who are dealing with trauma responses.
Working closely with a trauma-informed therapist, people can cultivate greater capacity to stay emotionally and physiologically regulated, even when the threat response gets activated. With practice, the goal is to tap into the "rest and restore" state of the parasympathetic nervous system more easily, minimizing excessive trauma responses in daily life.
While the fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses arose from an evolutionary need for survival, modern humans have the ability to reshape these instinctual patterns through self-awareness, therapeutic intervention, and new habitual ways of responding during moments of stress or perceived threat. The path to greater emotional resilience involves understanding these trauma responses, where they stem from, and consistently building the skills to activate a more grounded, mindful reaction instead.
If you’re interested in seeing whether therapy could be helpful for you, reach out for a free consultation.
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