Understanding Your Nervous System: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Flop, and Fawn
If you’ve ever reacted in a way that surprised you—snapping at someone you love, shutting down during conflict, or agreeing to something you didn’t want—you’re not broken. You’re human. These reactions are often the work of your nervous system doing its best to protect you.
From a trauma‑informed, neuroscience perspective, behaviors we often judge or try to “fix” are actually adaptive survival responses. Understanding these responses can bring relief, self‑compassion, and a clearer path toward healing.
Your Nervous System’s Job: Keep You Alive
Your nervous system is constantly scanning for safety and danger, behind the scenes, usually outside of your awareness. This process, sometimes called neuroception, happens automatically and quickly. When your brain perceives a threat—whether it’s physical danger, emotional pain, or relational conflict—it activates survival responses.
These responses are not choices. They are reflexes shaped by evolution, life experience, and past trauma. There are five responses commonly discussed including fight, flight, freeze, flop, and fawn.
Fight: Protection Through Action
Fight shows up when your nervous system believes that standing your ground or pushing back is the safest option.
You might notice fight responses as:
Anger or irritability
Defensiveness or arguing
Feeling controlling or confrontational
A strong urge to be right or protect boundaries
From a neuroscience perspective, fight is driven by activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Your body mobilizes energy—heart rate increases, muscles tense, and stress hormones rise—to help you confront a perceived threat.
Importantly, fight is not about being “aggressive.” It’s about self‑protection.
Flight: Protection Through Escape
Flight occurs when your nervous system decides that getting away is the safest option.
This may look like:
Avoiding difficult conversations
Overworking or staying constantly busy
Restlessness or anxiety
A strong urge to leave situations or relationships
In flight, your body is also activated, but instead of moving toward the threat, it prepares to move away. This response often develops in environments where confrontation felt unsafe, unpredictable, or ineffective.
Flight isn’t weakness—it’s wisdom learned over time.
Freeze: Protection Through Shutdown
Freeze happens when neither fighting nor fleeing feels possible.
You might experience freeze as:
Feeling numb, disconnected, or foggy
Difficulty speaking or thinking clearly
Procrastination or feeling “stuck”
A sense of collapse or heaviness
Freeze involves a mix of high stress and immobilization. The nervous system slows things down to reduce pain and conserve energy. This response is especially common in trauma where escape was not an option.
Freeze is not laziness or lack of motivation—it is a protective pause.
Flop: Protection Through Collapse
Flop is a trauma response that involves a sudden loss of energy, power, or agency. It is closely related to freeze but often feels more like giving up or going limp rather than feeling stuck.
You might notice flop responses as:
Feeling physically weak, heavy, or unable to move
Sudden exhaustion or collapse during stress
Dissociation or feeling far away from your body
Difficulty speaking, asserting yourself, or resisting
From a neuroscience perspective, flop is associated with a dorsal vagal shutdown response. When the nervous system perceives extreme or inescapable threat, it may reduce heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tone to conserve energy and minimize pain.
Flop often develops in situations where resistance increased danger, such as chronic trauma, medical trauma, or experiences involving powerlessness. It is not consent, passivity, or failure—it is a biological survival response.
Fawn: Protection Through Connection
Fawn is a trauma response rooted in appeasement and people‑pleasing.
You may recognize fawn responses as:
Saying yes when you want to say no
Prioritizing others’ needs over your own
Avoiding conflict at all costs
Feeling responsible for others’ emotions
From a nervous system lens, fawning develops when safety depended on maintaining connection or keeping others calm. The body learns that harmony equals survival.
Fawn is not a personality flaw—it’s a relational survival strategy.
These Responses Are Not Who You Are
A key trauma‑informed principle is this: your nervous system responses are states, not traits.
You are not “angry,” “avoidant,” “shut down,” or “too much.” These are temporary patterns your body uses under stress. With safety, support, and awareness, the nervous system can learn new responses.
Moving Toward Regulation and Safety
Healing doesn’t mean eliminating our survival response. These responses exist for a reason. The goal is to increase flexibility—the ability to notice what’s happening and gently return to a sense of safety.
Some supportive steps include:
Building awareness of your own patterns without judgment
Getting to know your internal cues associated with your stress response (physical sensations, behaviors, and changes in the mind)
Practicing grounding and regulation skills
Developing safe relationships where your nervous system can rest
Working with a trauma‑informed therapist who understands nervous system healing
Over time, your system can learn that the present moment is safer than the past.
A Gentle Reframe
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” try asking, “What happened to me—and how did my body learn to survive?”
Your nervous system has been working hard for you. With compassion and care, it can also learn how to feel safe, connected, and regulated again.
If you’d like support in understanding and working with your nervous system, trauma‑informed therapy can be a powerful place to begin.
