Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn
When used as a healthy response to danger, the 4 F’s can insulate a person from harm, but in a maladapted form, these responses serve to perpetuate dysfunction in both internal self and external relationships. With women, the patterns are exacerbated by additional factors.
There are four basic defensive structures that develop out of our instinctive responses to perceived danger — Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn (often referred to as the 4 F’s). Individuals who received healthy parenting in childhood usually arrive at adulthood with access to all of the appropriate responses to danger and exploitation, but for those of us who did not get the benefit of that programming, we falter and struggle with maladaptive versions of healthy responses. When people have gone through trauma, they adopt survival strategies based on the 4 Fs and these form hardwired circuitry in the brain. Neural pathways are formed so that it becomes a full mind and body experience and very difficult to release and resolve.
The fight response can keep you safe when used in the right circumstances for the right reasons, but in its unhealthy iteration, the fight response to threats can be driven by the false belief that power and…
