The 4 "F's" of Trauma - Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn

When talking about trauma, it is common to refer to the fight or flight response (Brown & Fee, 2002) but other common trauma responses are freeze and appease (Walker, 2008).

• Fight

• Flight

• Freeze

• Fawn/ Appease

The Freeze response is when an individual shut's down and freezes in response to a traumatic response. It can manifest as someone appearing:

• quiet

• non responsive

• not moving

The appease response is when an individual ends up catering to the person using violence's need to avoid further harm. It can look like:

• doing everything the person using violence wants

• doing what they believe the person using violence wants

• being soft spoken

• conforming to previously defined roles or behaviours

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f5a3b9_17a6c479796444c4b8387bfe7167a513/480p/mp4/file.mp4

References

Brown, T.M. & Fee E. (2002) Walter Bradford Cannon - Pioneer Physiologist of Human Emotions. Am J Public Health. 92(10):1594–1595. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1447286/

Walker, P. (2004) The 4Fs: A Trauma Typology in Complex PTSD. Pete Walker. https://pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm