The body has its own way of communicating with us. Learning to listen to our body's language can be an important part of healing. Read more below to discover a few ways that the body acts in a trauma response: flight, fight, freeze, and fawn; as well as some ideas on how to respond. Please, note that these ideas have been gathered through lived experience and peer-to-peer support networks and shouldn't be used to replace medical assistance or advice.
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What Is a Trauma Response?
Everyone has a built-in system of protection that reacts in the presence of a threat. This protective response network is a part of the autonomic, or automatic, nervous system (ANS). The ANS will engage without someone thinking about it. The ANS also supports the functioning of the heart and blood pressure, the digestive tract, the urination process, the sweat glands, and more. When the ANS activates, the body releases both adrenaline and cortisol, also known as the stress hormone.
Both the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system make up the ANS. The sympathetic nervous system responds to threat through fight or flight, while the parasympathetic nervous system causes the body to freeze. It also returns the body to a state of calm after threat. Together they are supposed to maintain balance in the body.
When the sympathetic nervous system activates due to physical exertion like exercise, stress, or illness, it causes a number of physiological responses to the various organs it manages. For example, the pupils of the eyes may enlarge to improve vision and allow for more light. The muscles around the lungs will relax so they can fill with oxygen. The heart rate will increase to improve oxygen flow throughout the body. The liver will activate to rapidly release energy, while the digestive tract will slow down to redirect energy to other parts of the body. The activated state of the ANS allows people to have quicker reflexes, better endurance, and improved strength. It also enables faster healing processes in the case of harm.
What Types of Stress Might Activate a Trauma Response?
There are different types of threats and stress that can trigger one or many trauma responses. Examples include:
This type of stress occurs suddenly and dissipates quickly after the source of stress resolves. This kind of stress occurs daily like running late or sitting in traffic.
Chronic stress:
Chronic stress is caused by daily instances of anxiety or frustration that occur over a long-period of time. Having a stressful job or being a primary caregiver without lack of sufficient resources can both cause chronic stress, as can the stress of having to manage a chronic illness.
Traumatic stress:
Traumatic stress happens when you witness or experience a life-threatening or painful event or events. Examples include a car accident, natural disaster, domestic violence, sexual abuse, social injustices, the process of im/migration or becoming a refugee, and/or combat. Short-term symptoms from traumatic stress can cause Acute Stress Disorder, while symptoms lasting longer than one month can cause Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, some experience ongoing traumatic stress and I prefer not to use dificit-based language, so I choose to call this Complex Trauma Condition.
There are a number of ways that the body and brain react to the different forms of stress including the flight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses.
What Is the Fight Trauma Response?
One way to respond to a threat is by fighting. The fight trauma response is usually activated when people believe they can overpower the threat before them. Their brains react by releasing chemical messages to the body that prepare it for the physical demands of the conflict. During a fight trauma response, the feeling of anger may flood the body, the jaw may tighten, the stomach may churn, the teeth may grind, the legs may want to kick, the arms may want to throw fits. The person may simply prepare to fight or actually attack the source of threat either physically or verbally.
What Is the Flight Trauma Response?
Another natural response to a threat is to run. The flight trauma response activates when the body doubts its capacity to overpower the opponent through fighting, so instead prepares to run away. Adrenaline floods the body to provide the extra stamina needed to flee the scene. Today many people’s nervous systems may be stuck in a flight trauma response, but not actually have the capacity to run away. Instead, they may feel restless, fidgety, uptight, or trapped. In order to cope with these feelings, some may tap their feet, move their legs, or participate in excessive exercise. Numbness in the arms and legs can also be a sign of an activated flight trauma response.
What Is the Freeze Trauma Response?
Another traumatic stress response is to freeze or become immobile. The body responds by being on high alert. The heart may race, the body may sweat, breathing may increase, hearing and vision may improve to listen to and see any perceptible threat. If there is no way for the individual to fight or flee in response to the threat, an internalized helplessness may result causing fatigue, numbness, and depression.
Tonic immobility, or a psychological state of paralysis, may result. After long periods of time in a violent environment, the individual may begin to dissociate, or leave their bodies and sensations, in order to cope with the abuse. Peter A. Levine, PhD, noted that animals also have a freeze response where some will “play dead” when under threat and then with a sudden burst of energy, flee their attacker. Often, humans can’t exercise this immediate and immense release of energy, so it stores in the body and causes disease.
What Is the Fawn Trauma Response?
Another way someone may react to a threat, and often less known, is referred to as the fawn trauma response. During a fawn response, the individual may placate the threat. Trying to appease someone who is angry or actively avoid upsetting someone else are both examples of fawn responses. In this case, the person takes responsibility for the other person’s emotional state and behaviors. Often, the victim may internalize the inability to control the other person’s reactions and feel at fault for them. Overtime, the victim negates their own needs to meet the needs of the attacker.
Experiencing Multiple Trauma Responses
Often individuals in a state of threat may experience multiple trauma responses at the same time. One may feel the need to fight, flight, flee, freeze, or fawn simultaneously. The body may prepare itself to fight, become numb and want to freeze, and desire to run, all while the brain attempts to create narratives to stay still or placate the threat. This may cause confusion and overwhelm of the nervous system and hyperactivity like constant movement or the need to shut down and sleep.
How to Respond to Trauma Responses
If someone has experienced a singular traumatic event and presents with acute stress or PTSD, the symptoms may resolve themselves with time, therapy, and support from loved ones. However, with chronic or traumatic stress causing Complex Trauma, the symptoms may need to be managed long-term. In this case, active coping can help individuals to accept the consequences of trauma on their lives and provide the necessary tools to manage symptoms. These tools include:
Practice Relaxation
Practice relaxation methods to help activate the parasympathetic nervous system and settle the sympathetic nervous system. Paying attention to areas that make someone feel relaxed and engaging in those environments and activities can be helpful. Some may enjoy deep breathing, meditation, light exercise like walking or swimming, spending time with a loved one, or visiting a museum or nature. Others may find gaming, group sports, art activities, spiritual expression, or television the most relaxing. It’s important to practice what’s best for your nervous system. You can relax actively by doing something or passively by resting.
Learn the Language of Your Body
Learn more about the consequences of trauma, PTSD, and Complex Trauma. A deeper understanding of these conditions can help normalize your stress responses and activate an empathetic response as opposed to panic or shame responses when you present with symptoms.
Create Support Networks
Develop a network of professional and personal support people. From family and friends, to coaches and therapists, to peer-to-peer networks made up of those who understand what you’re going through, others can help hold space for you as you heal, manage symptoms, and practice self-care.
Get Involved In Community
Get involved in community care programs. Most trauma is not just interpersonal: or caused by the maltreatment of one individual against another. Instead, trauma is often systemic: it’s rooted in social, economic, and institutional injustices that glorify, justify, or normalize violence against certain populations while refusing to hold others accountable for harm. Networks of activists and other change makers can help you to understand cycles of violence and cope within community as opposed to managing chronic symptoms in isolation.
Communicate Your Boundaries
Communicate your boundaries. Learning to understand your constraints with work, family, friends, and other activities can help you to communicate boundaries so that you can manage and increase your capacities to feel at peace, as well manage stressors slowly and at your own pace.
The Trauma Responses of Incest Survivors
Incest abuse can cause particularly challenging chronic consequences. Safety is a state that the nervous system learns through reliable and constant care to secure people with whom children can attach and rely on. If the providers of a child are harming them or are not protecting them by allowing people who are violent into the child’s environment knowingly or unknowingly, then the child never learns to feel safe. The nervous system can’t find a safe and stable baseline to depend on internally or externally, keeping the child in a state of chronic stress for a lifetime. Community support and long-term recovery resources are imperative to establishing this sense of safety and security, as well as the necessary care to manage difficult symptoms.
Incest Survivor Recovery Resources
You can find more incest survivor resources at Incest AWARE and other support organization in the Incest AWARE Alliance.
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