What is the Fight-or-Flight Response?
The fight and flight responses are part of the brain’s automatic response mechanism to danger or stress, but did you know that there are actually other responses too? And you might be wondering - how does my brain even know when to activate these responses? Let’s break it down.
Your brain is always taking in information, both from the external world and internally within your mind and body. The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes all the incoming information and decides if that information indicates danger or not. If it does, it sends a signal to the hypothalamus, the area of the brain responsible for the physiological stress response. When this happens, the body starts secreting stress hormones so that the brain and body enter into an activation mode - fight-or-flight.
Flock: This is actually the first state that the body enters when the amygdala senses danger. Because humans are social creatures, we’re naturally inclined to look to the people around us to see what their response is, to see if the sound we heard or sight we’re seeing is actually unsafe. We might also scan the environment for more information, but whether we’re looking around us or to other people, this is all happening over a few seconds. Not enough time for us to even really think about what we’re doing.
Freeze: Next, we’re likely to move to a freeze response. I always think about deer when I think about the freeze response. Have you ever walked out to your backyard or been driving along a road, and watched a deer notice you? Their first instinct is to freeze. For deer, they’re hoping to blend into their environment. For humans, it’s a way to help continue assessing the situation. For many survivors of sexual assault, they report freezing in the moment, unable to run away and not fighting back. Often the shock of what is happening, the powerlessness, keeps them frozen in fear.
Flight: After the freeze response, sometimes we flee in response to the trigger or stimuli. When you think about it, getting out of a situation is often (though not always) safer than fighting.
Fight: If running away from danger is not an option, our final option is to fight back. Something to note - many people will say that they are “fighters” and if someone were to try to attack them they would “definitely” fight back. However, that’s not really how fight-or-flight works. Our brain is assessing the scenario quicker than we are able to logically think through a response. This is because the amygdala and hypothalamus are part of our reptilian brain, whereas our ability to think through our actions and their consequences is part of the cortex. When a stress response occurs, it takes information longer to get to the cortex, so we’re really reacting instinctively, not rationally.
Fawn: This response is often found in response to abuse. I personally differentiate it from people-pleasing; while both are rooted in the need to appease others, the fawn response is often more extreme and rooted in physical safety concerns. Think: Stockholm Syndrome. People-pleasing and accommodating others are learned responses that children develop when they need to feel heard, seen, or connected to caregivers. This is also hugely problematic, and I often use EMDR to help people overcome these tendencies, but while similar to the fawn response, it is more of a learned pattern of behavior than a stress response.
Now, one important element of the stress response is that it can be incredibly adaptive. It helps us survive dangerous situations and our body is naturally able to regulate itself when the threat is gone. Where trauma responses require professional help is when we get stuck in them - we find ourselves fighting back against everyone, chronically freezing at any sign of stress, withdrawing from connections. PTSD - post traumatic stress disorder - is when our brain and bodies remain in the stress response cycle long after the threat has left. A classic example is of a solider returning from combat. After being in constant danger for an extended period of time, the brain is unable to differentiate between fireworks and gunfire; it tries to process wartime experiences during sleep, which leads to night terrors. Information gets stuck in the lower regions of the brain, which leads to angry outbursts and violence (the fight response). With therapy, the soldier is able to work through their experiences, often finding that therapies like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing (SE), and other body-based modalities help, as this focuses on the brain and body’s automatic responses, rather than talking through experiences (which involves the cortex and is less likely to be involved in how the memory is stored).
If you have experienced trauma or chronic stress and think you’re stuck in a pattern of stress responses, reach out to see how EMDR can help you work through that to feel calm and present again.
