Fight, flight, freeze, flop, friend All five responses are our bodies' automatic ways of protecting us from further harm and surviving a dangerous situation: Fight: physically fighting, pushing, struggling, and fighting verbally e.g. saying 'no'.
Fight: facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight: running away from danger. Freeze: unable to move or act against a threat. Fawn: immediately acting to try to please to avoid any conflict.
Emotional wellness experts have described the 5 F's – Freeze, Fight, Flight, Faint, and Fawn – as emotional trauma responses. These 5 F's protect you from experiencing pain by hardwiring automatic behavioral responses. A fainting goat will faint in the presence of a threat or surprise. Its muscles temporarily lock up.
Psychologists generally recognize “The Four Fs” as the altered-states that make up the trauma response – fight, flight, freeze and fawn. By understanding these four states, we can identify them if/when they arise in us, and undergo treatment programs designed to properly regulate them.
The responses are usually referred to as the 4Fs – Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn and have evolved as a survival mechanism to help us react quickly to life-threatening situations.
In evolutionary psychology, people often speak of the four Fs which are said to be the four basic and most primal drives (motivations or instincts) that animals (including humans) are evolutionarily adapted to have, follow, and achieve: fighting, fleeing, feeding and mating (the final word beginning with the letter "M" ...
To easily recall some of the functions, you can remember the famous 5 F's, which are: Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, Feeling and... Fornicating, the last one being, really, just a fancy word for Sex.
It is often said that the hypothalamus is responsible for the four Fs: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fornication. Clearly, due to the frequency and significance of these behaviors, the hypothalamus is extremely important in everyday life.
A 'flop' response results in a total bodily collapse, which might involve blacking out or loss of consciousness, loss of control over bodily functions or total disorientation. This is also referred to as collapsed immobility where the muscles become all floppy like a ragdoll.
These 4 Cs are: Calm, Contain, Care, and Cope 2 Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care Page 10 34 (Table 2.3). These 4Cs emphasize key concepts in trauma-informed care and can serve as touchstones to guide immediate and sustained behavior change.
The trauma-informed approach is guided four assumptions, known as the “Four R's”: Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatization.
These are all great topics to discuss, but it can prove challenging to distill these larger ideas into practice. But, when we talk about apologizing, we wrap all of these complex concepts up into a single practice. It's a common trauma-state response to want to avoid conflict.
Fight, flight, freeze, faint and fool around or fidget. Within each of these broad categories there is also a scale – for instance an animal can be triggered for 'flight' and it might be that the response is as small as the head going up, back tightening and then he recovers before it escalates into anything greater.
The Fawn Trauma Response
Pete Walker is a psychotherapist who coined the term “fawn” and added it as the fourth F in the collection of instinctive responses to trauma. Someone using the fawn response will try to avoid conflict or danger, keep the peace, and ensure their safety at the expense of their own needs.
Fawning is when people try to appease other people, even at the expense of their own needs. Instead of confronting (fight), running away from (flight), or blocking out (freeze) the threat, people who go into the fawn response try to neutralize the threat by pleasing the abuser at whatever cost.
In fact, if you're under chronic stress, then your body may be in a perpetual state of fight or flight, and that's not good for your health. Here are some of the ways you can tell if you're constantly in this mode and how your chiropractor can help you get out of it.
It makes us act. Chronic stress in turn is an unwanted state where the brain concludes that we are under threat. The body is continuously ready to fight for our lives, which is a burden both physically and mentally. Chronic stress can lead to burnout and to many physical illnesses.
The Reptilian or Primal Brain
The primal brain is also in charge of, what are often referred to as, the four Fs: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and… Reproduction (well, we won't use that other f-word here!).
Some things you can do to support the hypothalamus, and the health of your endocrine and nervous systems, include exercising regularly, eating foods rich in chromium and healthy fats, getting enough sleep, and reducing stress.
Hypothalamus: the hypothalamus regulates many of the body's metabolic processes, thirst, hunger and body temperature. Use “hypo- the-llamas" as your mnemonic. Picture a hypo spraying two thirsty llamas with water to quench their thirst and cool them down. Acronym: Pavlov's Really Frickin' Mad!
The thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH), corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), somatostatin, and dopamine are released from the hypothalamus into the blood and travel to the anterior pituitary.
The Flourishing Scale is a brief 8-item measure of the respondent's self-perceived success in important areas of life such as relationships, self-esteem, purpose, and optimism.
Carry on your highest duty to yourselves– following the four Fs: follow the master, face the devil, fight to the end, and finish the game.
This framework is designed by Dr Roger Greenaway, an expert on training teachers and facilitators. By working through the four levels of this model, you will have critically examined the situation you want to review and reflect upon, while thinking about how to use what you have learned in the future.