All of your attention is on the danger, which means that you’ll become less aware of other stuff going on around you. Your heart rate speeds up drastically, you start breathing faster, and your muscles ready for action, and you shift into an anger and aggression response pattern. What’s happening in your body: When your body goes into the Fight response your body releases adrenalin and other chemicals – which makes you feel energized and ready to act. What is it: The Fight response is all about battling your way through the danger to safety. And, what behaviors are common when stuck in that response. So, let’s define each of the four responses: What is it? What does our body do when in it? What behaviors are common when triggered into that response. They can become more comfortable or stuck in a danger response being on alert and on guard can feel safer and more normal than being relaxed or calm. It can take them significantly longer to shift back to a no danger resting state. They can shift into a danger response too frequently and too easily it can become their default response. They can become too sensitivity to danger, meaning that things that are not actually dangers are responded to as dangerous.

When a person experiences childhood trauma, particularly ongoing or repeated traumas, their danger response can become dysfunctional. I feel the Fawn response is unique enough to be its own category and will treat it as such in this post. In fact, Researchers are still arguing over the validity of Fawn being its own category (some feel it’s an aspect of the Freeze response). Only recently has the idea of Fawn been added to mix. When I went to university, I learned about the Fight/Flight/Freeze response to danger. When I was younger, I learned about the Fight/Flight response. We have not always known that there were four primary responses to danger. The four ways we respond to danger are: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. In todays blog I’ll discuss what those four responses are, what happens to our bodies and our behavior when in each danger response, and how having past trauma (particularly childhood trauma) impacts your response. Your body chooses and responds so quickly that you may feel yourself responding as, or even before, you are becoming aware of the danger. How your body reacts depends on which of four possible responses your body chooses. Whenever we feel that we are in danger our bodies react.

Fight flight freeze fawn cptsd