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Fight flight freeze fawn flop friend8/16/2023 ![]() It is really important to note here that survival mode isn’t always easy to spot. There are 6 survival responses in total: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop and flood. Unfortunately at school this ‘Fawn’ response is often interpreted as a person being ‘Fine’ when actually they aren’t fine at all. This makes sense if you can’t escape the frightening situation. Fawn is another mode, and this is when a person becomes very compliant and stops protesting. When someone goes into freeze they may seem like they’re day dreaming, or they may look a bit ‘glazed’. Freeze is when you are holding very still - like a rabbit in the headlights - not knowing what to do. If our brains think that we can’t fight or run away, we might instead go into Freeze or Fawn mode. However, there are other responses in survival mode. Things can get worse and worse, then young people are put in seclusion, restrained or excluded. Punishment will make them feel even less safe, and so the behaviour is likely to escalate - which will then result in more punishment. That will make things worse, because the reason for the ‘behaviour’ is that they feel unsafe and threatened. There is a risk for autistic young people that this is seen as ‘challenging behaviour’ and then they are punished for this. They might start to pace around, or speak more loudly, or appear aggressive. When a person wants to fight or run away, you can usually tell by their body language. ![]() Lots of people know about the Fight or Flight response - and that’s quite easy to spot. When we don’t feel safe, we go into survival mode. ![]() Here are some examples to illustrate what a traumatic stress response looks like: Whenever we mention the term trauma, we are referring to a chronic traumatic response. This is where you have a long term emotional response to an event (or events), which then continues to have a negative impact on your life. The focus of this guide is chronic trauma. Sometimes that might lead to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Your survival mode is being triggered and it can feel really frightening. That means that you might have the urge to run away, or to fight, or to freeze - when actually there is nothing dangerous. Even when we are safe from whatever made us feel in danger at first, our brains continue to behave as if we are under threat. However, sometimes things which happen can affect us for years afterwards. We feel safe and calm again, even if the event was really scary. When a traumatic event happens, our brains go into survival mode - and then, once we are safe again, our brains go back to normal. Other times it’s used to describe what happens in our brains during and after an event - more like a ‘traumatic stress response’. Sometimes it’s used to mean an actual event - like, we might describe a road traffic accident as ‘a trauma’. The word ‘trauma’ is used to mean several different things. It won’t waste time looking around to check if that animal is really dangerous, it will just tell you to get out of there, now! There’s no time to stop and think. If you meet a wild animal, you need to get away fast, and so your brain will prioritise that. This is a natural process and it’s there to keep us alive. Your brain sees something frightening, feels you are in life threatening danger and it must do whatever it can to get you to a sense of safety. When something happens which makes us feel unsafe, our brains respond by going into survival mode.
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