Trauma formation: how fight-flight becomes freeze-fawn
In 1915, physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon first described the fight-or-flight response. What has since become clear is that under certain conditions, operations of this mechanism are disrupted—and fight-or-flight becomes freeze-and-fawn.
Fight or flight
Fight-or-flight is “a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.” It makes us more attentive, more combative, and anticipates physical injury.
To achieve this, fight-or-flight disturbs the homeostasis of the body—our state of natural, sustainable balance—through an injection of adrenaline. This means fight-or-flight can only be maintained for a short time—the period of immediate danger. From Wikipedia:
“[Walter Bradford Cannon] asserted that not only physical emergencies, such as blood loss from trauma, but also psychological emergencies, such as antagonistic encounters between members of the same species, evoke release of adrenaline into the bloodstream.
As per Cannon, adrenaline exerts several important effects in different body organs, all of which maintain homeostasis in fight-or-flight situations. For example… adrenaline constricts blood vessels in the skin and minimizes blood loss from physical trauma.”
Adrenaline
Adrenaline—once known as ‘adrenin’—is powerful stuff. In The Wisdom of the Body, Bradford writes that “the presence of one part of adrenin in one billion four hundred million parts of blood would make the isolated heart of a cat beat faster.”
Adrenaline propels us towards or away from the perceived danger. Once the adrenaline has done its job, we return to homeostasis through the regulating effect of cortisol. In simple terms, adrenaline pumps us up while cortisol brings us back to balance.
This pathway is illustrated in the process flow below:
- A danger situation materialises
- The body galvanises us through the production of adrenaline
- We assess the situation—whether to fight or flight
- We carry out the fight or flight action
- Adrenaline decreases and stabilises
- We return to normal (homeostatic) balance and functioning
Trauma formation
But what happens if neither fight nor flight are possible?
If, for instance, you were a German Jew in World War II imprisoned in a concentration camp. How do the body’s stability and defence mechanisms—homeostasis and fight-or-flight—cope?
The short answer is that they don’t—and the result is trauma formation.
Generational trauma was first identified in the 1960s through studies of psychological illness among the children of Holocaust survivors. As adults, these children felt as if they were caught in the same crises their parents experienced. One of them observed that “I’m wired for Auschwitz, but I live on the Upper West side of Manhattan.”
Freeze and fawn
When we assess a danger situation and instinctively recognise that neither fight nor flight are available, we go into emotional overwhelm. The threat to survival is so acute that it overloads our psychic circuitry—and we literally blow a fuse.
In this state of overload, the fight-or-flight mechanism keeps doing what it does—pumping out adrenaline—to try to resolve the situation. Remember the old Meatloaf song, ‘All Revved Up with No Place to Go’? That’s exactly what happens.
Unable to defeat or escape a predator of some kind, we turn to two alternative modes of behaving, which can also be conveniently encapsulated by short words beginning in ‘f’ (no, not that word!)—freeze and fawn.
Freeze and fawn are the result of emotional overwhelm on mind, psyche, and body:
- Mental fog—an inability to perceive workable solutions
- Emotional numbness—shutting out the pain of the survival threat
- Physical paralysis—the effect of undischarged adrenaline
This creates an ‘incapacity loop’ of increased panic and decreased functionality. In response, our defence mechanisms buy time. We freeze in the hope the predator will not notice us, and we fawn—pretend to be its friend—while we figure out what’s next.
Fawning is clearly visible in the phenomenon known as Stockholm syndrome. It’s better known as people pleasing. A sensitive child growing up in a household with an angry or abusive parent naturally falls into freeze-fawn—which becomes an adult pattern.
By recognising and releasing family patterns, we can break the cycle.
Next steps
For further resources on generational trauma, both free and paid, please click on this image.
