How You Survived: Innate Stress Responses

We have innate stress responses to protect ourselves. They come automatically with no conscious control by us. Unfortunately, with trauma and chronic stressful situations, these once adaptive things can become maladaptive and interfere with our lives. However, there are ways to treat your trauma and reduce the effect that your trauma has on your life through stress responses.

What are Innate Stress Responses?

Innate stress responses are automatic, unconscious responses controlled by the nervous system. They are not under conscious control. They are there to help you survive when your life is in danger. How you react when your body perceives danger depends on the situation and past experiences.

Fight Stress Response

The “Fight” response creates a readiness to directly confront or combat a threat. It happens when your nervous system believes you can overpower the threat. Your brain releases signals to your body, preparing it for the physical demands of fighting.

Signs of a fight response include:

• Tight jaw or grinding your teeth
• Urge to punch, push, stomp, or kick someone or something else
• A feeling of intense anger or crying in anger
• A burning or knotted sensation in your stomach
• Attacking the source of danger

Flight Stress Response

The “flight” response prepares you to evade the stressor. It happens when your nervous system believes you cannot overcome the danger but can avoid it by running away. Your body releases a surge of hormones, including adrenaline, that gives you the stamina to run from danger longer than you would be able to normally.

Signs of a flight response include:

• Feeling restless, fidgety, tense, or trapped
• Constantly moving your legs, feet, and arms
• Excessive exercising
• Feeling of numbness in your arms and legs
• Dilated, darting eyes

Freeze Stress Response

The freeze response induces a state of immobility when a threat seems to be too overwhelming or powerful to escape or fight. It is a form of de-escalation or emotional escape through dissociation when physical escape is impossible.

Signs of the freeze response include:

• Sense of dread
• Going tense, still, and silent
• Feeling stiff, heavy, cold, and numb
• Loud, pounding heart
• Decreasing heart rate or pale skin

Flop Stress Response

The flop stress response is similar to the freeze response. It involves someone who reacts to intensely stressful situations by becoming so overwhelmed that they become physically and mentally unresponsive. Some of the signs of the flop stress response include:

• It is very similar to the ‘freeze’ trauma response, but your muscles become loose, and your body goes floppy
• Total bodily collapse (which might involve blacking out or loss of consciousness)
• Loss of control over bodily functions
• Appearing disengaged, lack of emotions, disorientation or submission

Friend Stress Response

The friend stress response is an instinctive reaction to reduce the danger. It can involve yelling for help from a friend or bystander or befriending a dangerous person. Some signs of the friend stress response are:

• Shouting, screaming, yelling for help from someone close by
• Placating, negotiating, bribing or pleading with the offender

How Chronic Stress Responses Can Cause Problems from Trauma

Our nervous system is designed for us to act quickly in response to danger without much thought for the long term. When stress responses turn into trauma responses, they limit our ability to slow down and be mindful of the big picture because our nervous system is trying to get us out of danger. However, when these responses are triggered over and over again, aspects of them can become chronic, and they can become sensitized to being triggered. These reactions are part of your PTSD or Complex PTSD being triggered. Your nervous system reacts instinctively and humanly to perceived danger, even though the perceived threat may be in the past, not the present.

Fight

Unfortunately, due to past trauma and other experiences, your nervous system can become hypersensitive to danger and perceive danger when there is none. Therefore, when your trauma is triggered, and your body chooses the fight response, you may instinctively react with assertiveness or aggression. This can come in the form of sudden bursts of anger where you feel the anger come out of nowhere. Sometimes, people with anger issues may be people with past trauma whose fight response is being triggered.

What are some of the signs of a fight trauma response:

• Temper that is very explosive and unpredictable (0 to 100 at the flip of a switch)
• Taunts, mocks, insults or shames (verbal aggression to protect oneself)
• “My way or the highway” tendency to need the final say and ignore others’ perspectives (Only concerned with protecting oneself)
• Yells, slams doors, screams, punches walls, or otherwise becomes aggressive
• Easily becomes reactive (can confuse people with their ‘big’ emotions)
• Always feel as though they’re being threatened, will protect themselves at any cost
• Often feels shameful/remorseful post outburst
• ‘Talking back’ to authority figures

Flight

Unfortunately, due to your past trauma and stressful experiences, your nervous system can be hypersensitive to danger and perceive danger where there is none. Therefore, when your trauma is triggered, you may try to escape.

What are some of the signs of a flight trauma response:

• Chronic rushing, ‘always going,’ or difficulty slowing down
• Feels uncomfortable (or even panic) when still
• Energy is spent micromanaging everything, including people and situations around them
• History of abruptly ending relationships or phobic of commitment
• Easily feels trapped
• Avoids downtime and throws themselves into work/achievement
• Often presents as anxiety or panic attacks
• Being intentionally or unintentionally distracted

Freeze

Unfortunately, due to your past trauma and stressful experiences, your nervous system may have become hypersensitive to danger and perceive danger where there is none. You can also be stuck in a chronic freeze triggered when you are stressed or overwhelmed.

What are some of the signs of the freeze trauma response:

• Feeling completely numb, life is ‘pointless’
• Shutdown (silent treatment, complete avoidance), hiding from the world
• Procrastination or inability to make even small decisions, giving up quickly
• Endless social media scrolling/binge-TV watching
• Confusion over what is real or unreal
• Often confused/misdiagnosed with depression

Fawn/Submit

The fawn (or submit) response develops from adapting to chronic traumatic situations like abusive families. It involves prioritizing others’ wants and needs to seek approval or avoid punishment and avoiding conflict to survive.

The fawn response can mask the distress and damage from outsiders. It can be confusing to yourself and others why you are trying to please someone treating you so badly. You may feel guilty about your natural instinct to attempt to soothe them rather than distancing yourself or fighting back.

The fawn response can also become a chronic stress response that is generally applied to others and makes you highly vulnerable to narcissistic and manipulative people. Some of the signs of a chronic fawn trauma response are:

• People-pleasing, highly submissive, overly polite and agreeable, fear saying ‘no.’
• Going along with another person’s perspective, beliefs or values without connecting with your own, relying on others to help solve problems
• Dissociating (leaving the body), ‘spacing out’
• Letting others make decisions, overdependence on others’ opinions, and avoiding situations that could lead to conflict.
• Hyperaware of other people’s emotions and needs while betraying your own, lacking boundaries.

Cry for Help

Cry for help is another chronic trauma response that involves a person desperately searching for rescue. It is a survival strategy that involves a person becoming intense, clingy, and needy. It develops from the body still feeling like it’s in the middle of the trauma and a desperation to be free of it. This continues even when life circumstances change. It’s a cry to be released from the body’s prison.

Some of the signs of the chronic cry for help trauma response include:

• Being intense, clingy and needy
• Idealizing people they’re trying to connect with.
• Leave endless voicemails, constantly need more of other’s time, and have difficulty separating after spending time with someone.
• Searching for a rescue

How Can Chronic Stress Responses Be Changed?

Chronic survival mechanisms can be changed since they are based on the fragments of trauma responses and the danger our nervous system feels when they are triggered. By desensitizing and processing trauma, we can reduce the chronic stress responses because they are essentially reactions to our past trauma.

Coping with Chronic Stress Responses

Awareness and Acceptance

Awareness and acceptance that what you are experiencing is a stress response can help you cope. Label it as a stress response, recognize that it is an innate response, and have compassion about how you feel.

Curiosity

Be curious about your stress response. You may ask why it is here and what its purpose is. Is it connected with your past trauma experiences or something else? What might have triggered it? Is there something it needs?

Finding Solutions

There are both short-term and long-term solutions for your trauma responses. In the short term, becoming aware of your triggers and meeting unmet needs can be beneficial.

In the long term, processing the trauma can help integrate the fragments of trauma memories and adjust core beliefs that may have developed due to the trauma (such as changing a belief that you are worthless to one that you believe you are valuable). Developing and maintaining healthy boundaries is something you can do to create long-term change. Developing a plan to honour yourself and meet your physical and emotional needs is also essential.

Processing the Trauma

Integrating the fragmented parts of our traumatic experiences is vital to reducing their effect on our lives. When integrated, they connect to adaptive memory networks. They can be part of our past experiences in an adaptive rather than intrusive and distressing way.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) can be very effective for desensitizing and reprocessing the memories behind traumatic symptoms, including stress responses due to past trauma. It can integrate the fragments of traumatic memories into adaptive memory networks and help to adjust beliefs based on traumatic experiences to be more adaptive and accurate. With the reprocessing of trauma memories, the stress response connected to those memories is much less likely to be triggered, and your response will be more based on what is happening in the present moment.

Flash Technique

The Flash technique operates in a similar way as EMDR. It sensitizes and reprocesses traumatic memories. It can be used as a stabilizing technique before EMDR or as a standalone treatment to process trauma.

Conclusion

Stress responses are meant to help us survive and defend ourselves from danger. When they become chronic and triggered by trauma triggers, they can interfere in our lives. There are things you can do to cope with chronic and triggered stress responses, as well as process trauma, so their negative effect on your life is reduced.