What's My Trauma Response

The trauma response model, often called the four Fs (fight, flight, freeze, and fawn), describes the automatic ways your nervous system reacts when it senses threat. Its roots are in physiologist Walter Cannon's 1915 description of the fight-or-flight response, extended by later research on the freeze (tonic immobility) state, with the fawn response named by psychotherapist Pete Walker in his work on complex trauma. It puts plain language to a familiar experience: under pressure, some people push back, some bolt into motion, some go blank, and some rush to keep everyone else happy.

Fight mobilises confrontation and control; flight mobilises escape, busyness, and avoidance; freeze conserves energy through stillness and shutdown; and fawn seeks safety through appeasement and people-pleasing. These reactions are fast and automatic — they fire through the autonomic nervous system before conscious thought catches up, which is why your default can feel impossible to override in the moment. Most people have one dominant response plus a backup or two that surface in different relationships and situations.