The 4 Trauma Responses

Written By Moriah Conant M.A.

Here at Woven, we specialize in trauma therapy. We are passionate about providing trauma-informed care, and a big part of that work is providing psychoeducation on trauma and its effects on our bodies and minds so you can feel empowered in your healing. One of the first steps in understanding your own trauma and healing is to learn about trauma responses.

What is a trauma response?

A trauma response is what it sounds like: It is the way that we respond when we are faced with trauma. Depending on our upbringings, life experiences, and personalities, we will respond to trauma in different ways. You may primarily respond with one type of trauma response, or your responses may vary depending on the circumstances and relationships.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty details of the different responses, I want to affirm you. When you are faced with trauma, you respond in the best way you know how to with the resources that are available to you. Your trauma responses are you trying to protect yourself and survive. You can honor that you were protecting yourself, even if you want to intentionally respond differently in the future.

What are the 4 trauma responses?

Fawn

A fawn response can look like extreme people pleasing. The goal of a fawn response is to create peace with the other person in order to try and avoid conflict. This might look like taking care of other people at the expense of yourself. 

The downside of this response is that your needs are not being met. You may have been implicitly taught, or maybe even explicitly told, that your needs are not important, so you downplay your needs. Not having needs or always being pleasant may have been conditions of your early relationships, so that is how you operate in your adult relationships.

You deserve to be in relationships where you can be honest about your needs and feelings. Your needs should be met in the same way that you meet the needs of others. If you utilize the fawn response, it might mean that one of your relational strengths is conflict resolution. This can be a strength and it can also be important to advocate for and have your needs met.

Fight

A fight response utilizes conflict when faced with trauma. This can be verbal fighting or even physical fighting. A fight response can feel like it creates space or safety because fighting can build a wall in a relationship. This could feel like safety because fighting prevents vulnerability. It could also create safety from people who are unsafe or wish you harm.

This trauma response may protect you in traumatic situations, but it may also prevent you from building intimate and deep relationships with safe individuals. You may have developed this response if your caregivers frequently fought, or if you did not have others who protected you.

You deserve to be in relationships where you can let your guard down and have other people support and protect you. If you utilize the fight response, advocacy and standing up for others may be strengths of yours. This can be a strength and it may be important for you to let your guard down in relationships that are safe.

Flight

A flight response is based on the belief that getting out of a situation will keep you safe. This might look like physically leaving a situation, or it could be mentally or emotionally checking out of a situation. This response is intended to keep you safe by removing you from a situation that is unsafe. 

This trauma response may keep you safe in traumatic situations, but it may also keep you from engaging in relationships. You may have developed a flight response if you did not grow up in relationships that helped you regulate your emotions or facilitated the co-regulation of emotions.

You deserve to be in safe relationships that will hold space for you and help you regulate your emotions. If you utilize the flight response, you may have a keen sense of unsafe situations. This can be a strength and if it is overactive, may prompt you to leave situations that are actually safe.

Freeze

A freeze response may feel like you’re intentionally shutting down or it may feel like something that is just happening to you. It might feel like your mind is blank, that you can’t move or take action, or that you’re dissociating away from the situation. This might feel like safety because you are not mentally or emotionally present in the situation. 

This trauma response most likely kept you safe if you were in really intense situations like someone berating you, or if you didn’t experience relationships where you could safely show up as yourself.

You deserve to be in relationships that will make space for you if you need to slow down in intense situations. Safe people will be understanding of the pace that you need to take as you process and relate to others. If you utilize a freeze response, it may have helped you develop a tolerance for uncomfortable or painful situations. This may have been a protective strength and it may make it difficult to be present in situations that are safe.

Changing Trauma Responses

If you find yourself responding to non-traumatic situations with trauma responses, that may be a sign that some additional support could be needed to process your trauma and trauma responses. Processing why we are responding to situations with one of these four response types can help us understand the purpose that the response is serving and your needs that are not being met.

If you want additional support to process your trauma and work on changing your responses, one of our therapists can help. We specialize in trauma, and each of our therapists have different niches. You can learn more about our therapists and schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our therapist matchmaker below.

Learn more about our approach to therapy:

Blog
How to Navigate the Holidays with Complex Trauma
How to Navigate the Holidays with Complex Trauma

For many survivors of complex trauma, the holiday season can be an evocative time. It can bring up anxiety about setting boundaries with difficult family members, grief regarding the people you are not spending the holidays with, or a sense of gratitude about the past year of growth and healing. Let’s talk about how to navigate the holiday season with complex trauma

How to Survive the Holidays with Your Family
How to Survive the Holidays with Your Family

In a sequel to the blog titled “How to Survive the Holidays with Your Partner,” I present to you some reflective questions and tips for how to cope with seeing family this holiday season!

How to Safely Talk to Loved Ones About Your Trauma, Part III
How to Safely Talk to Loved Ones About Your Trauma, Part III

You’ve done a whole lot of preparation: you’ve thought of what you want to tell your loved one, why, which triggers might come up and how to soothe yourself accordingly, which questions you’ll field (and won’t), when to take breaks, and whether you want to talk about the impact of your trauma on your relationship with the person you’re telling. You’ve even practiced soothing with triggers and taking breaks as needed to help your central nervous system feel safe when you’re distressed. The question is, how do we translate all of that work into having the conversation itself? Let’s talk about it.

5 Things That Will Kill Connection In Your Relationship
5 Things That Will Kill Connection In Your Relationship

There are many things that can lead to you no longer feeling connected to your partner or your relationship not functioning in the way you would like. Let’s dive into some key patterns that will kill the connection in your relationship.

Demystifying Complex & Complicated Grief
Demystifying Complex & Complicated Grief

Grief is a natural response to loss. It’s what our brains and our bodies do in reaction to the heartbreaking and devastating reality of loss. We humans are extremely resilient, and a vast majority of us will find a way back to living a meaningful life in our own time. Sometimes though, we can get derailed in that natural grieving process and that’s when it may be time to reach out for support. 

How to Safely Talk to Loved Ones About Your Trauma, Part II
How to Safely Talk to Loved Ones About Your Trauma, Part II

So, you have an idea of what you want to say to a loved one about what you’ve gone through. You’ve thought about what might come up for you, and practiced soothing yourself in different ways. So what’s next? Planning for what you might specifically need from the conversation and person you’ll be telling. Let's talk about it.

What are the 3 Phases of Trauma Therapy?
What are the 3 Phases of Trauma Therapy?

I have had many patients come to therapy with me and say that talk therapy has not been helpful for them. Specifically, I hear the same complaint over and over: I felt like all I did was talk and open up, and I didn’t feel like there was a direction to therapy. When I hear complaints like this, I always want to start with some education about what trauma therapy looks like. Let's dive in.

Growing Through Grief
Growing Through Grief

Oomph, so you lost something. You lost something or someone that you loved. We often go so fast as a society, we celebrate the successes and wins, and we tend to ignore the pain associated with loss and grief, or put a time limit on it. Especially non-death-related grief and loss. This is an awful reality to endure for someone grieving. Let’s dive into how processing grief may look as a trauma survivor.

How to Safely Talk to Loved Ones About Your Trauma, Part I
How to Safely Talk to Loved Ones About Your Trauma, Part I

So, you’ve accepted that you get triggered pretty regularly because of What Happened, which is huge. It took so long to stop feeling like you were just “acting out for no reason,” and even if you still suspect you’re milking this whole trauma timeline, you also know you deserve a little bit more peace. In this blog post series, we’ll be covering how to have as safe and as containing of a conversation as possible with your loved ones about your trauma.

What’s a Timeout Protocol?
What’s a Timeout Protocol?

If you often find yourself in conflict with your partner which leads to yelling, there are a few things you can try to help create an environment for more productive conversation can occur. There should be very few reasons for you to yell or be yelled at, so trying a timeout protocol may help limit this way of engaging in conflict. 

Demystifying Dissociation: Derealization and Depersonalization
Demystifying Dissociation: Derealization and Depersonalization

For many people with PTSD and trauma-related disorders, “dissociation” is a term that can seem scary and stigmatized. It can be important to demystify and educate ourselves on dissociation to better understand and validate our experiences.

Shame: What Is It and What Can We Do About It?
Shame: What Is It and What Can We Do About It?

What is shame? The dictionary definition is “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming or impropriety.” One study even defined shame as “negative emotions in which the feeling of global self-evisceration is experienced.” Global self-evisceration. Oof! Shame is extremely unpleasant and painful, and it can affect one’s identity and self-esteem. 

Racial Trauma and Intersectionality
Racial Trauma and Intersectionality

Many people are familiar with the idea of intersectionality, or how different aspects of our identities intersect with one another to make us who we are as people. What are the different ways that racial trauma shows up in our lives? Let’s dive in.

Psilocybin-Assisted Trauma Treatment, Part III
Psilocybin-Assisted Trauma Treatment, Part III

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, is probably going to be legalized for therapeutic use in the United States in the next two years, and that’s on trauma treatment progress. Let’s dive into part III in what that may look like for trauma treatment.

How to Maintain Your Relationship in the Midst of Parenting
How to Maintain Your Relationship in the Midst of Parenting

There are five stages in the family life cycle and the stage of parenting is considered the most stressful. This is the time in which divorce rates are at their highest, sex is at its lowest and couples feel the most disconnected. Here are some ideas to help maintain your relationship during this hectic time.

Moriah Conant M.A.
Previous

Complex Trauma and Narcissistic Abuse
Next

What is Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy and Who is it For?