Fight, Flight, Freeze Or Fawn? What Your Stress Response Might Say About You

Most of us know about the “fight or flight” response, the body’s built-in survival instinct. But that framework leaves out two other common ways the nervous system reacts to stress.

Indeed, psychologists say there are four instinctive reactions that help us understand how people cope with feeling unsafe, overwhelmed or emotionally flooded.

“The ‘four F’s’ – fight, flight, freeze and fawn – refer to automatic nervous system responses to a perceived threat,” Caitlyn Oscarson, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told HuffPost.