Flop: similar to freezing, except your muscles become loose and your body goes floppy. This is an automatic reaction that can reduce the physical pain of what's happening to you. Your mind can also shut down to protect itself.
Most of us have heard of the “fight or flight response,” referring to our automatic reaction of fighting or running away when we face a threat. We actually have 5 hardwired responses to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, flop, and friend.
Flag: If there is still no resolution of the threatening situation you will progress into the fifth stage, “flag,” which is the collapse, helplessness, and despair that signals parasympathetic based nervous system shut-down and immobilization. Dissociative reactions dominate this phase.
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. Their heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature lower.
The freeze response is connected to:
childhood trauma and neglect. adult psychological trauma. post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD).
Dissociation is something that can occur when a person has a traumatic experience. It makes severely distressing events feel less real, causing a person to feel numb or detached. This may explain why the freeze response is more common in people with previous experiences of trauma.
Fawning is a trauma response where a person develops people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict and to establish a sense of safety. In other words, the fawn trauma response is a type of coping mechanism that survivors of complex trauma adopt to "appease" their abusers.
What types of trauma cause the fawn response? The fawn response is most commonly associated with childhood trauma and complex trauma — types of trauma that arise from repeat events, such as abuse or childhood neglect — rather than single-event trauma, such as an accident.
The keywords in SAMHSA's concept are The Three E's of Trauma: Event(s), Experience, and Effect. When a person is exposed to a traumatic or stressful event, how they experience it greatly influences the long-lasting adverse effects of carrying the weight of trauma.
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.
Right after a trauma, almost every survivor will find it hard to stop thinking about what happened. Stress reactions—such as fear, anxiety, jumpiness, upsetting memories, and efforts to avoid reminders—will gradually decrease over time for most people.
The silent treatment can stem from trauma, such as attachment injuries, trauma bond relationships, and childhood trauma, so it may also be especially helpful to consider individual therapy. This can help each individual dig deeper into their individual behaviors and help improve relational and communication skills.
In a nutshell, “fawning” is the use of people-pleasing to diffuse conflict, feel more secure in relationships, and earn the approval of others. It's a maladaptive way of creating safety in our connections with others by essentially mirroring the imagined expectations and desires of other people.
Understanding the Fawn Response
The fawn response involves trying to appease or please a person who is both a care provider and a source of threat. Examples of fawning include: “I hoped that by caring for them they might care for me.” “I never showed my true feelings for fear of retaliation.”
Fawning or people-pleasing can often be traced back to an event or series of events that caused a person to experience PTSD, more specifically Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD.
The 'fight or flight' response is how people sometimes refer to our body's automatic reactions to fear. There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'.
The flight trauma response involves a release of stress hormones that signal us to flee from the danger or threat. Instead of staying in a dangerous situation, this response causes us to literally or metaphorically run.
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.
Relax – use relaxation techniques such as yoga, breathing or meditation, or do things you enjoy, such as listening to music or gardening. Express your feelings as they arise – talk to someone about your feelings or write them down. When the trauma brings up memories or feelings, try to confront them.