Fight or flight is a well known stress response that happens when hormones are released in your body, causing you to remain and fight or run and flee from danger. When your body appears like it's in trouble, your system will work to maintain you alive.
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are a broader collection of natural physical responses to stressful, frightening, or dangerous events. This response of the sympathetic nervous system goes back to our ancestors' encounters with dangerous animals.
Fight, flight or freeze are the three most elementary stress responses. They reflect how your body reacts to danger. Fawn is the fourth stress response identified later.
The fight response is your body's way of aggressively meeting any perceived threat. Escape means your body urges you to run away from danger. Freezing is your body's inability to maneuver or counter a threat. Fawn is your body's stress response to please someone and avoid conflict.
The goal of the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn response is to cut back, terminate, or avoid danger and return to a peaceful, relaxed state.
In fight or flight mode, your brain prepares for a physical response.
Battle. When your body appears like it’s at risk and believes you possibly can overcome the threat, you respond in fight mode. Your brain sends signals to your body, preparing it for the physical demands of combat.
Signs of a fight response include:
- Tight jaw
- Grinding of teeth
- Urge to hit something or someone
- A sense of intense anger
- Must stomp or kick
- Crying in anger
- A burning or cramping feeling within the stomach
- Attacking the source of danger
Flight. When your body thinks you possibly can't overcome the danger but can avoid it by running away, you react in flight mode. A surge in hormones, similar to adrenaline, gives your body the stamina to run away from danger for longer than usual.
Signs of a flight response include:
- Excessive training
- Feeling restless, tense or trapped
- Constantly move your legs, feet and arms
- Restless body
- Numbness in legs and arms
- Wide, darting eyes
Freezing and tickling are also stress reactions that don’t require decisive motion.
Freeze. This stress response leaves you feeling stuck. This response occurs when your body doesn't think you possibly can fight or flee.
Signs of the freeze response include:
- feeling of fear
- Pale skin
- Feeling of stiffness, heaviness, cold and numbness
- Loud, pounding heart
- Decreasing heart rate
Fawn. This response is used after an unsuccessful fight, flight, or freeze attempt. The fawn response occurs primarily in individuals who grew up in abusive families or situations.
Signs of a fawn response include:
- accordance
- I'm attempting to be overly helpful
- First and foremost, it's about making another person completely satisfied
The fawn response often masks the grief and damage you are feeling inside on account of trauma. Crawl is a standard response to child abuse. The fawn response is your body's emotional response wherein you express extreme pleasantness towards the one who is abusing you.
The fawn response may cause confusion and guilt when you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Even if you find yourself treated badly, your instinct drives you to calm the abuser down slightly than react by fleeing or fighting.
Signs of sycophantic behavior include:
- Excessive dependence on the opinions of others
- Little to no limits
- Susceptibility to narcissists
- Easily controlled and manipulated
The fawn response is believed to occur in individuals who grew up with narcissistic parents. You can have been continuously neglected or rejected as a baby. Being helpful and type was the one strategy to survive.
The problem with the fawn response is that it may result in codependent adults and cause you to lose your sense of identity.
During an acute stress response, many alternative reactions happen in your body. Some of those reactions occur with any variety of stress response, but others are specific to the variety of response. The following might be a part of a stress response:
- Heart rate and blood pressure increase
- Pale or red skin
- Temporary lack of blunt pain response
- Dilated pupils
- Feeling nervous
- Distorted memories of the event
- Tension or tremors
- Involuntary control of your bowels or bladder
Whether you’re in physical or psychological danger, your body triggers a stress response. This response begins in your amygdala, the a part of your brain chargeable for fear.
The amygdala transmits signals to your hypothalamus, stimulating the autonomic nervous system. Then your sympathetic system stimulates your adrenal glands to release the hormones adrenaline and norepinephrine.
Anxiety disorders can trigger your fight-or-flight response even in situations that don't put you at risk. Unfortunately, this chronic stress has harmful effects. The problem that triggers a stress response varies from individual to individual. However, certain environmental or health conditions could also be related to the response.
Managing stress is an important a part of improving your overall health. Recognizing your psychological, emotional and behavioral signs of stress can assist you analyze them and work to beat them. This will assist you determine whether you’re actually facing a threat or whether your nervous system is overreacting.
If stress is affecting your quality of life, you possibly can confer with your doctor. They may recommend therapy, medication, or other stress management techniques. Managing stress is a day by day struggle that can not be solved with a fast fix.
There are three techniques you should use to ascertain yourself in the current and assist you overcome your stress response.
Mental grounding techniques include:
- Focus in your surroundings
- Reciting songs, poems or affirmations
- Play the alphabet game
- Remind yourself that you simply are protected with safety suggestions
- Mental arithmetic
- Visualize overcoming your fears
Physical grounding techniques include:
- Breathe and concentrate on your speed and stability
- Touching or holding an object firmly
- Shift weight onto your heels and physically hook up with the ground
- Tense your body and concentrate on slowly relaxing it out of your brow to your toes
Calming grounding techniques include:
- Think of your completely satisfied place and calm down there
- Treat yourself to something comforting or completely satisfied
- Repetitive coping statements
- Say positive affirmations