What are the most common behavioral responses to trauma?

What is the most common response to trauma?

Perhaps the most common emotional reaction to a trauma is feeling fearful and anxious. It makes perfect sense that we would be afraid after something scary happened. In fact, like so many of these reactions, it's a sign that our nervous system is functioning as it should.

What are the 3 Responses to trauma?

The four trauma responses most commonly recognized are fight, flight, freeze, fawn, sometimes called the 4 Fs of trauma.

What are trauma response behaviors?

Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.

What are the 4 types of trauma responses?

Trauma response is the way we cope with traumatic experiences. We cope with traumatic experiences in many ways, and each one of us selects the way that fits best with our needs. The four types of mechanisms we use to cope with traumatic experiences are fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

The psychology of post-traumatic stress disorder - Joelle Rabow Maletis

What are the 5 trauma responses?

There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'. The freeze, flop, friend, fight or flight reactions are immediate, automatic and instinctive responses to fear.

What are the 5 types of trauma responses?

We actually have 5 hardwired responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, flop, and friend. In a moment of danger, these responses all happen automatically to try to keep us safe.

What is the fawn response?

The fawn response, a term coined by therapist Pete Walker, describes (often unconscious) behavior that aims to please, appease, and pacify the threat in an effort to keep yourself safe from further harm.

What is the freeze trauma response?

The fight, flight, or freeze response refers to involuntary physiological changes that happen in the body and mind when a person feels threatened. This response exists to keep people safe, preparing them to face, escape, or hide from danger.

What causes trauma response?

The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized. Emotional and psychological trauma can be caused by: One-time events, such as an accident, injury, or a violent attack, especially if it was unexpected or happened in childhood.

What is the flock response?

The fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses are known as stress responses or trauma responses. These are ways the body automatically reacts to stress and danger, controlled by your brain's autonomic nervous system, part of the limbic system.

Is apologizing a trauma response?

But repetitive, nearly constant apologies for every little thing—or, what Psychologist Paige Carambio, PsyD calls, “apologizing for existing”—can actually be an after-effect of trauma, a self-preservation technique survivors may think they still need to utilize in order to protect themselves.

Is shutting down a trauma response?

So, you know that you go into freeze, shutdown, disconnection, dissociation, collapse or seizure as a result of Trauma.

What is the flop response?

In a flop trauma response, we become entirely physically or mentally unresponsive and may even faint. Fainting in response to being paralyzed by fear is caused when someone gets so overwhelmed by the stress that they physically collapse.

What is shutdown dissociation?

Shutdown dissociation includes partial or complete functional sensory deafferentiation, classified as negative dissociative symptoms (see Nijenhuis, 2014; Van Der Hart et al., 2004). The Shut-D focuses exclusively on symptoms according to the evolutionary-based concept of shutdown dissociative responding.

What is the collapse response?

The collapse response looks very different from freeze from a biological perspective. Collapse is a state of hypo-arousal. When a person begins to experience this response, they may not be able to speak, and they feel detached or disconnected from their body.

What is the fight or flight response?

The fight or flight response is an automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The perception of threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight or flee.

Is dissociation a freeze response?

Dissociation is an adaptive response to threat and is a form of “freezing”. It is a strategy that is often used when the option of fighting or running (fleeing) is not an option.

What is flight fight freeze?

Fight: facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight: running away from the danger. Freeze: unable to move or act against a threat. Fawn: immediately acting to try to please to avoid any conflict.

What are the 5 fight or flight responses?

We actually have 5 hardwired responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, flop, and friend. In a moment of danger, these responses all happen automatically to try to keep us safe.

What are the 3 automatic responses to danger?

But the other three common reactions to fear and danger - freeze, flop and friend - are just as instinctive as fight or flight, and we don't get to choose which ones we experience in the moment.

Why is it called the fawn response?

The fawn response is “a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat,” wrote licensed psychotherapist Pete Walker, MA, a marriage family therapist who is credited with coining the term fawning, in his book “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.”

How do you know if someone is dissociating?

What is freeze dissociation?

The 'freeze' response is triggered when a person, realising resistance is futile, numbs into dissociation or collapses (internally, emotionally or externally, physically) as if accepting the certainty (inevitability) of being hurt.

Is oversharing a trauma response?

Oversharing is a habit many of us experience from time to time, particularly during seasons of great emotional stress or trauma. Oversharing is a coping mechanism, a trauma response, and also a habit that can negatively affect our reputation and our relationships.