Trauma impacts people in different ways.  Whether it’s acute stress disorder (short term) or post-traumatic stress disorder (long term), people will have different feelings and reactions to stressors.  Your experiences will typically show up in your reactions, or trauma responses.  The four types of trauma responses are fight, flight, freeze and fawn.  You may have heard “fight or flight response” before and they are pretty self explanatory.  Someone may fight back verbally or physically when triggered, or run away.  A freeze response typically looks like being stuck with making a decision or dissociating.  Lastly, a fawn response looks like people pleasing and no boundaries to protect from harm.  

Fight

Having power and control over a situation or others comes from the fight response.  It is believed (unconsciously) that this would provide safety, acceptance and love you didn’t receive as a child.  As a child, your parents may have shamed you, didn’t have healthy limits, bullied you, and/or had narcissistic traits.   Those with a fight response mostly respond in physical or verbal aggression, however other tactics such as shaming and bullying, which may look like retaliation.  

Flight 

When we are in flight mode, we are trying to escape or run away from pain or emotional distress.  Someone in flight response may experience anxiety, panic, OCD and be an overthinker.  This can push someone to work extra hours or spend a lot of time out of the house to avoid their own thoughts.  As a child, you may have tried to avoid unkindness and abuse from parents or others, so you may have stayed longer hours at a friend’s house.  Flight responses can also show up in perfectionism and substance abuse.  Perfectionism is a defense for not being criticized or challenged.  Substance abuse continues the pattern of avoiding emotions and fear.  

Freeze 

Pausing, or being stuck in figuring out which option will lead to safety is a freeze response.  Sometimes we get so stuck, this pause turns into dissociation.  Dissociation refers to feeling removed or disconnected from the situation.  This can cause someone to become numb, unable to move/talk, go limp or pass out.  In most cases, the person can forget what happened during dissociation.  This can be difficult to come back to in trauma therapy, as digging into the blank spaces can bring emotional distress.  The freeze response can be a result of physical and/or sexual abuse, where the body and mind freeze to remove our mind from the trauma.  

Fawn

Those who experience fawn responses typically use people pleasing, no boundaries and codependency as their safety net.  The person does everything they can to make the threatening person happy.  This includes ignoring your own needs, neglecting your own self-identity, making yourself available and useful, and still providing admiration after the person was mean to you.  Codependency develops and shows up as agreeing to whatever someone asks, whether you agree or not, avoiding sharing how you feel out of fear of making someone angry, praising someone to avoid negative feedback, and no boundaries.  

Trauma has long lasting effects and can negatively impact all areas of life.  People may experience trauma growing up and develop trauma responses through the years, or they can experience trauma as adults and have these responses.  Conditions such as PTSD and C-PTSD are not likely to improve without the support of trauma therapy.  These therapies can include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), trauma informed expressive arts therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).  Recognizing that you may be experiencing trauma responses is the first step.  Unlearning these responses can take time and some emotional pain, however it will bring more healing and reconnecting with your sense of self.