I went for a walk with my neighbour yesterday so we could both have a screen break and a chat with another live human. She is curious about my work with health and healing, and knows quite a lot already from working in roles in an adjacent industry.
This post was inspired by that conversation. I took these photos of the ducks and ducklings as we were walking and talking, and since I got to watch them play out their stress responses in reacting to us giant humans nearing them, I thought they made for strangely complementary photos 😉
If you know anything about stress responses and the human nervous system, you'll know the terms fight, flight and freeze. You may have even heard about the fourth term that gets thrown around sometimes as well - fawn.
Understanding how we human beings automatically behave when we are stressed (due to experiencing a perceived threat) is incredibly helpful. So let's walk through these now.
First, let's get clear on this term "nervous system".
The nervous system is the part of our body that conducts electricity. It includes the brain and all the nerves in our body, including all of those in our spine. It plays a key role in keeping our vital organs functioning. Think: heart, lungs, and all organs in our digestive system.
Second, let's talk about why I used the word "automatic" earlier.
We have two main parts of our nervous system: the Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System. The former consists of our brain and spinal column. The latter consists of all the nerves that branch out towards our 'periphery' (edges), like our arms and legs and many other parts of our bodies.
Part of the Peripheral Nervous System is what is known as the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Autonomic means it behaves autonomously. That is, it happens outside the influence of our conscious thinking. Said another way, it happens 'automatically' whether we like it or not, and far faster than we could 'think' to do it anyway.
This is just as well, because if our ANS didn't react automatically to threats, none of us would probably be alive.
So, let's move on to these four terms: fight, flight, freeze and fawn.
"Fight" is what it sounds like: when we perceive a threat towards ourselves or someone we care about, we get all this extra energy flowing towards our limbs (arms and legs), helping us prepare to move towards the threat to hurt them, or physically defend ourselves if the threat is coming towards us.
Many people in British colonised countries (like where I'm from, here in Australia) have had their fight response squashed out of them in their childhood. In which case, they'll automatically reach for one of the other reactions... like flight.
"Flight" is not about flying, but rather about 'fleeing' the scene. Said another way, it's about 'running away' from a real or perceived threat. Sometimes this is the most appropriate response to a situation but most of us have a default that we lean towards - either fight or flight - in ALL stressful situations.
Unless, of course, the threat feels too big for our nervous system to handle and in that case, we automatically go into freeze.
"Freeze" is easy to spot in yourself and others when you know what to look for. It looks like procrastination, inaction, a loss for words, feeling stuck, and sometimes not physically moving at all. This is probably an appropriate reaction if you are suddenly facing a wild animal that is much stronger, faster or more dangerous than you have never encountered before.
But it's an inappropriate reaction when you get an email from an upset customer, a hateful comment on your social media content or when your partner raises their voice to disagree with the TV!
What we have to understand is that when someone is (or maybe you are) displaying signs of freeze in a less-than-life-threatening situation, it's because something about the current situation is reminding you of a past situation - probably in very early childhood - where you felt really, really, really scared.
When you notice this automatic reaction in yourself or another person, the best response always is gentle kindness with lots of reassurance. This will help you or the other person to regain their sense of safety and then access the fight or flight energy that's been trapped underneath the freeze for all these years.
Messy? Yes. Needed? Yes.
And that brings us to our new friend on the block: Fawn.
"Fawn" is actually a highly sophisticated version of freeze that most (or perhaps all?) other animals cannot do. Fawn is what we do when we feel stuck in a social situation that feels too scary to fight our way out of or flee from, and we use the little bit of access we still have to our pre-frontal cortex (higher human brain) to use our language in a way to try and placate the other person or people involved.
The people most likely to default to fawning on a regular basis are those who have been forever told to be a "good" girl or boy as a child, so their fight response was strongly shut down, and who feel powerless to flee.
They tend to smile while placating you, but it feels fake.
They say they'll catch up with you later, but then they don't.
They'll say sweet and lovely, reasonable things, but you never feel like you can really trust them.
Whether this is your behaviour or someone else's that you can think of, know that no one ever wants to be fake; they're doing it because they're afraid, really, really afraid, really, really deep down in their bones.
Everyone wants to feel safe.
Everyone wants to feel loved.
Everyone wants to authentically express themselves.
But when we feel threatened, for any reason, our nervous system is going to stand to attention and try to protect us from potential harm the best way it knows how.
Hopefully, through this post you now understand a little more about your amazing body and how it's doing it best to look after you.
The best thing you can do? Pay attention to what's happening, be curious and, be kind. ❤️
I recognize the last one, Fawn. I use sweet words to buy my way out of uncomfortable situations even though I don't mean them. Honestly, until this post, I never knew it was a stress response.