Fight Flight Freeze Fawn Flop: Understanding the 5 Trauma Responses

What Fight Flight Freeze Fawn Flop Really Mean

What’s happening in those moments when you spiral into shame after sending a “weird” text or freeze from overwhelm and take hours to leave the house? The situation itself might seem minor—so why does your reaction feel so intense?

These are likely examples of your nervous system’s survival responses kicking in, especially if you have a history of trauma. While many people have heard of "fight or flight," there are actually five main survival strategies: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop. These responses are hardwired into us—and shared with our furry, scaled and feathered friends. They’re fast, instinctive, and often misunderstood.

To be clear: survival responses aren’t bad. We need them to enforce boundaries, leave unhealthy situations, and pause when we’re overwhelmed (Walker, 2013). But for those with trauma, these responses can become overactive—hijacking both the nervous system and the brain in everyday, innocuous moments. 

This has to do with a process called neuroception—our nervous system’s built-in radar for detecting safety or threat (Porges, 2004). It works automatically, scanning cues like facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, and even internal sensations. This all happens below conscious awareness, and when something feels off—even slightly—your body might react as if you’re in danger, even when you’re not. When you’ve lived through chronic trauma, your neuroception system can get stuck on high alert, since you may have been primed to feel unsafe a lot of the time, leading you to interpret neutral signals as potential threats.

In this post, I’ll unpack each of the five survival responses and explore how understanding them can help you make sense of your own reactions—especially when they seem confusing, disproportionate, or unnerving.

Fight Flight Freeze Fawn Flop in Animals

Fight

If you’ve read anything on trauma before, you’ve likely heard of the term fight or flight, i.e. the “don’t just sit there—do something” respsonse (Fisher, 2017). We go into fight or flight when our sympathetic nervous system kicks into high gear by increasing our heart rate, tensing our muscles and giving us an adrenaline rush of energy, so we’re ready to take action. 

The fight response activates in animals when they need to defend themselves, and fighting back is safer than running. For me, this conjures up an image of a formidable, growling Doberman, baring its teeth in anticipation of attack. In dogs, the fight response kicks in when another dog or stranger invades its territory or gets too close too fast. This isn’t aggression for aggression’s sake—it’s an instinctive response that takes over when the dog’s safety feels threatened.

Another vivid example comes from the sea: octopuses have been observed delivering underwater “sucker punches” by jabbing other fish. Why? For some animals—especially highly intelligent ones like the octopus—fight isn’t always about immediate survival. Researchers believe these attacks may serve to discipline fish that get too pushy or competitive during hunting (Mehta & Kuba, 2020). It is still a perceived threat to their safety for food even though it’s not a do or die situation. 

Flight

Fighting back, of course, is not always an animal’s best bet for survival. If it is safer to flee or run away than fight back, the flight response gets activated. While rabbits will dart in a zigzag pattern to throw off and confuse predators, some lizards detach their tails when they’re caught!

The left behind twitching tail serves as a decoy while they scurry away for their lives. In a similar distract-and-dart fashion, going back to our octopus friends, they blast a puff of disorienting ink before jetting away when the sucker punch is not safe.

Freeze

If it’s more dangerous to fight or flee, such as when the animal is trapped, then the body may shift into immobility. This shows up as either freeze or flop. On the surface, they are difficult to discern because they look similar (stillness), but internally they’re very different—and it’s important to tell them apart.

In freeze, the body appears still, but under the surface there’s tension, alertness, or even panic, like in fight or flight. The body is mobilized for action but stuck in a holding pattern.

A classic example is a deer in the headlights or a stunned bunny. There is still an alertness in the body in both cases. For instance, the bunny’s eyes enlarge, its ears go up, and its body goes low to the ground. It’s a sudden “don’t move” survival response that allows the body to stay alert while still, so that the animal can flee once it’s safer to.

Fawn

While solitary animals like octopuses rely on intelligent problem solving camouflage, ink blasting and tentacle jabs, highly social animals—like wolves and chimps—also need to maintain group cohesion for survival. For them, appeasement is a necessary part of this. 

The fawn response is all about trying to keep the peace and avoid harm by pleasing, helping, or being non-threatening. In a wolf pack, in order to maintain hierarchy, a lower ranking wolf might roll onto its back to submit to a dominant wolf. In this case, it is their paradoxical power move - they have to submit, because they depend on the higher ranking wolves for protection and acceptance in the group.

Similarly, if you’ve seen chimps grooming, it might just seem like a form of displaying affection or bonding. It is that, but it is also often a way to appease - lower ranking chimpanzees will offer grooming more often and receive it less than higher ranking chimpanzees.

Flop

Out of the 5 survival responses, flop happens in the most dire situation - when an animal knows that it’s trapped and there’s no way out. In these cases, the nervous system goes into flop, a deeper state of immobility to increase the animal’s chances for survival.

 In flop, the animal “plays dead” because it does not make sense for the body to stay alert when there’s no escape. But, if a predator mistakes their prey for dead, they’ll seem less appealing than if they’re alive. For this to happen, the nervous system shuts down—unlike freeze there is no heightened activity or alertness under the surface.. Rather, the heart rate slows down, the body may go limp, and everything powers down.

One of the most fascinating flop examples in the animal kingdom is that of the opossum. When there’s no escape, an opossum will play dead by rolling over. Then, its body will emit the scent of death & decay, in hopes that its predator will continue the hunt for fresher smelling meat.

How Fight Flight Freeze Fawn Flop Show Up in Humans

While everyone has these survival responses built in, they often become embedded as protective parts of the personality in people with complex trauma (Fisher, 2017). In other words, they don’t feel like choices. These are adaptations the nervous system made to keep us safe—and over time, they can become default settings. These responses can get triggered before we even have a chance to think. That’s why they can feel so sudden, confusing, or disorienting. It can really feel like being hijacked by a survival instinct that bypasses the rational brain entirely.

It can happen in those moments you send a scathing text to a loved one while triggered, only to be hit with regret moments later. What’s worse, when moments like this happen, trauma survivors often blame themselves.

Why did I lash out like that? I should know better.
Why am I crying over nothing? I’m pathetic.

But neuroscience offers an explanation. As Janina Fisher explains in the training I’m certified in, one of the most robust findings in trauma research is that when someone is triggered and a survival response kicks in, the prefrontal cortex shuts down. This is important—because the prefrontal cortex is responsible for judgment, learning from experience, putting feelings into words, and staying self-aware in the moment.

So, if you feel like you’re just “an angry person” or “a depressed person”—and you have trauma—it might actually be that you have an overactive fight or flop part.

The good news? It’s possible to work with your survival responses so they don’t hijack you. To do that, it helps to understand how fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop show up in humans—because it’s more nuanced than it is in animals.

Since we’re such complex creatures, our survival instincts can show up in a ton of different combinations. To illustrate all the ways they can show up is far beyond the scope of one blog post, but I’ve pulled together some examples for the the 5 Fs, how they can develop, how they show up in adulthood, and how to start working with them, instead of against them.

Fight

The fight part is like our inner Anger part. When you feel intense judgment, resentment, rage, or even irritation toward someone, that may be your fight part kicking in. What’s especially interesting about Fisher’s take on the fight part is that it doesn’t always turn outward—sometimes it directs its energy inward. This can be a protective attempt to avoid outside harm by preemptively blaming yourself instead.

The fight part often tries to create a sense of control in order to feel safe—whether that’s through lashing out at others or attacking yourself. According to these inner fight parts, taking control through aggression or hostility helps prevent future pain.

If it wasn’t safe to express anger outwardly as a kid—as is often the case in homes where children were punished or ignored—then the fight response may have turned inward. For example, children who were subject to a lot of criticism often internalize those voices, and the fight part becomes a hostile inner critic: ‘You failed. Nothing you do is ever good enough.’

While an internalized fight response tends to emerge more in childhood, the fight part directed at others often emerges first in adolescence. By the time you're physically stronger, it might feel safer to push back—whether that’s challenging a parent, arguing with teachers, or even bullying others who are less powerful (Walker, 2013). I’ve witnessed this often with trauma survivors - their inner critic may have been around since early childhood whereas the part that attacks others developed later in life.

Flight

The flight response is a bit less obvious in humans than it is in animals. It’s not just about physically running away, though sometimes, it is. More often, it’s subtle. But the premise is the same: for the flight part, distance = protection. And if that distance isn’t physical, it’s often mental or emotional.

As Pete Walker (2013) explains in his book on complex PTSD, constant thinking or chronic worry can serve as a way to avoid intolerable emotional pain. In other words, if you’re not directly dodging a stressful event—like a hard conversation—you might be avoiding it by spinning in your own thoughts.

Perfectionism or nonstop productivity can also be expressions of the flight response. These patterns can protect against deeper feelings of shame or low self-worth. It’s like this part is constantly whispering, “If I stay in motion, I’ll be safe.” (Walker, 2013).

Flight can also show up as commitment struggles or decision ambivalence. If you're constantly analyzing every potential outcome, it's easy to get stuck in indecision.

Another variation is addictive behavior—not just substances, but addictions to work, caretaking, exercise, or even self-improvement (Fisher, 2017). When the flight part is in overdrive, there’s often no space for true rest. Then, even "rest" becomes performative or compulsive.

In terms of development, perfectionism and mental flight strategies can emerge early, especially in homes where love or approval felt conditional. Overt addictive flight patterns, though, tend to show up more in adolescence—once kids become more independent and have more access to substances, distractions, or freedom to escape (Fisher, 2017).

So, while the flight part can mean literally running away, more often it's an invisible exit strategy—one that plays out internally in thoughts, actions, or distractions.

Freeze

Freeze is the least well understood of the survival responses, because of that discord between the stillness on the outside while the body is on high alert on the inside. It’s a heightened state of fear, or terror, that sends the body into paralysis. It can have some of the signs of a flight response, like: a rapid heart rate, a sense of being hyper-alert, and a build up of energy. With freeze though, the energy has nowhere to go, so it leads to feeling stuck or unable to move. Even though it might look like someone is shutting down in freeze, internally there is a lot of anxiety (NICABM: Freeze). This can show up as agoraphobia, panic attacks, the fear of being seen, or paralysis under stress. (Fisher, level1, module 1). 

Being seen can trigger trauma survivors if they were singled out and abused as children. Later in life, being singled out even if it’s for something positive, can trigger that old familiar terror. This is also why trauma survivors often go into freeze not just in moments of difficulty or failure, but also in moments of success. Even though rationally they know that being seen won’t mean they’re going to be abused, it can take them right back to the emotional memories from before (Fisher, 2017). The freeze response can also jump in and prevent someone from even trying something that might make them more visible. It’s like the freeze part will step on the breaks and go no! Don’t do that! It’s not safe! Since I often work with creative types, it can add new meaning to the term writer’s block or stage fright.

While the fight or flight responses become stronger in teens as they mature, the freeze response more commonly begins in childhood, since they are relatively powerless especially if they were abused by an adult or someone bigger than them. In that case, the safest thing for them to do is to freeze, fawn or flop. 

For some, freeze forms in response to extreme. chronic, or invasive trauma. For others, it develops in homes where strong emotions weren’t welcome, where speaking up meant getting scolded or shamed, or where the safest option was to stay quiet and not move. The freeze part learns to put a halt—not because you’re lazy or avoidant, but because at some point, doing nothing was the most protective thing you could do. If the flight part’s mantra is about avoidance and staying in motion, the freeze part’s mantra might be ‘don’t move, it’s not safe!’

Fawn

Like our chimp and wolf friends, we’re social animals too—and the fawn response runs deep in us. First introduced by Pete Walker (2013), fawn is about staying safe by being agreeable, accommodating, or attuned to others’ needs at the expense of your own. According to Walker (2013), fawn types “seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs, and demands of others” and act as if “the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences, and boundaries” (p. 115).

In childhood, this response often develops in families where one or both caregivers are narcissistic, emotionally immature, or volatile. When a parent lacks emotional regulation skills—and is stuck in their own survival responses—the child becomes an external regulator. They learn what to say or do to keep the parent calm, to avoid the next outburst or avalanche of criticism.

This is what it means to be a parentified child: you become the caretaker, confidant, problem solver, or even entertainer. Over time, that role becomes a survival strategy. And then, it becomes a default. Chronic self-abandonment starts to look like “just how I am.”

In adults, fawn might look like people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, hyper-attunement, and difficulty asserting needs. Beneath all of it is the nervous system’s logic: “If I make you happy, maybe I won’t get hurt.”

Fawn can be trickier to spot in the moment compared to the other survival responses. Because it’s centered around attunement to others, it often feels fine in real time—until the regret hits afterward. You realize your needs weren’t part of the equation because you were so focused on someone else’s.

That post-fawn regret is a familiar pattern: the wish that you’d said no, set a boundary, or spoken up. But when your system is wired for fawning, even voicing your needs can trigger overwhelming guilt. And that guilt can feel so unbearable that it’s easier to just keep fawning—even when it means being stuck in a self-sacrificing spiral.

Flop

Flop (also called “collapse” or “submit”) is the nervous system’s last-ditch survival strategy—the shutdown button.

Unlike freeze, which is tense and alert, flop involves a drop in energy, muscle tone, and presence. It’s a dissociative state. This response is especially common in people who’ve lived through chronic, inescapable trauma: childhood abuse, domestic violence, systemic oppression (NICABM: Trauma Responses).

In humans, it can look like dissociation, emotional numbness, fatigue, or collapsing inward under stress. Sometimes it feels like depression. Sometimes it’s a flat, hard-to-explain shut off.

Flop is the nervous system doing what it believes will keep you safe when nothing else has worked. But when it becomes the default—especially in trauma survivors—it can make it hard to access motivation, movement, or voice. It often arrives with shame, hopelessness, and a kind of resignation: What’s the point? Why even try?

Just like freeze, flop tends to emerge more often in childhood—when there was no way out, and no one coming to help. When trauma is ongoing and escape isn’t an option, the nervous system learns to flop. This patterning then gets embedded such that smaller threats in adulthood can trigger the same response and send someone into flop when it doesn’t serve them.

While I’m describing each part individually, they’re rarely isolated. They trigger each other and can often be in conflict with one another. Most folks with complex trauma will have a few (if not all) of the five survival parts in some kind of overdrive. With flop, I often see a pattern where someone has a strong inner critic (fight) that can quickly send them into flop. It’s like they fight themselves into collapse.

From Hijacked to Healing: Reclaiming the Nervous System

When fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop spring up out of nowhere and hijack your brain and body, now you’ve got some context for why. These responses aren’t personality defects (though your critical part might try to convince you otherwise). They’re ancient nervous system strategies trying to keep you safe, even if they’re running on outdated programming.

The goal isn’t to eliminate these parts. It’s to understand them, build a relationship with them, and learn how to discern when they’re reacting to the past vs. responding to the present. That’s the difference between being ruled by your survival system and learning how to work with it.

Sometimes, these parts are still trying to protect you as the child or teen you once were. Other times, they hold nuggetes of wisdom, and are trying to guide you toward something that needs attention now:

• Fight might be signaling a boundary is needed

• Flight might be nudging you away from something that doesn’t align with who you are
  

• Freeze might mean you’re overwhelmed and need to pause

• Fawn might be useful in moments when maintaining harmony matters more than confrontation
  

• Flop might be your body saying: this pace isn’t sustainable

Healing isn’t about corralling all your parts and locking them down—it’s about listening to them more carefully.

In therapy, especially with complex trauma, I often think of my role as a parts detective. I track which responses get activated when, how they interact, and what they’re trying to do. At first (and sometimes this takes a while), it might just be about recognizing the survival responses in the moment, naming them, and getting a bit of space from them. Eventually, clients learn how to respond flexibly—so they’re not stuck in the same loop over and over again.

Pete Walker (2013) suggests that balancing your dominant survival response with its opposite can be healing. I’ve seen this in my work too. If you tend to fawn often, cultivating a healthy fight response —like saying no without spiraling into guilt—can be transformative. If you live in flight mode, freeze might teach you how to slow down and be still. These shifts aren’t quick fixes, but they open the door to lasting change and a more compassionate relationship with yourself.

I’m certified in a modality called Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), developed by Janina Fisher, a world-renowned trauma expert. I’ve trained with her, and I’ve also done this work personally (and continue to). It’s truly reshaped how I see myself—and how I help others reclaim their lives from trauma.

You don’t have to fight your survival parts. But you can get curious about how they’re still trying to help you survive.

References

Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors: Overcoming internal self-alienation. Routledge.

Fisher, J. (TIST CertificationTraining). Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment Training. Personal training notes, 2025.

Mehta, R., & Kuba, M. (2020). Intraspecific aggression and arm use in octopus social interactions. Ecology, 101(6). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3007 

NICABM. (n.d.). The freeze response: What therapists need to know. Retrieved from https://www.nicabm.com/topic/freeze/

NICABM. (n.d.). Trauma responses. Retrieved from https://www.nicabm.com/topic/trauma-responses/

Porges, S. W. (2004). Neuroception: A subconscious system for detecting threats and safety. Zero to Three, 24(5), 19–24.

Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving. Azure Coyote Publishing.

Psychology Today. (2015, July 26).Trauma and the freeze response: Good, bad, or both? Retrieved fromhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201507/trauma-and-the-freeze-response-good-bad-or-both