Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn: How EMDR Therapy Can Help Manage Your Responses to Trauma
Have you ever felt so frozen with fear that you can’t move or think? Maybe you explode with anger when it isn’t appropriate, or you excessively people please to avoid conflict. Perhaps you avoid attending events that could benefit you because you’re more afraid of the worst-case scenario that is unlikely to happen.
As humans, we’ve evolved to develop these trauma responses to keep our bodies and minds safe.
Fighting back helps us to stay safe by protecting ourselves and keeping our threats at bay
Flight or running away, helps us to flee from our threat and keep ourselves safe
Freezing helps us to appear small or non-threatening to avoid further pain or death
Fawning and displaying excessive flattery or putting yourself down helps our threat to calm down and lower the risk of danger or pain
Trauma responses, such as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, serve an important purpose in protecting one from danger. However, if we are displaying these behaviors when we’re not under an active threat, it’s because your nervous system may be stuck in a trauma response.
Why Do We Experience Trauma Responses After the Threat is Gone?
In an ideal world, after you experience a traumatic event, you would get help from a trusted person to process what just happened, discuss the scary parts, cry, and receive comforting words and actions to demonstrate that you’re going to be ok. This important step of decompressing and receiving comfort helps the brain process what happened, realize that you’re safe, learn from the event, and feel secure about the future, fully integrating the past trauma with the present safety within your brain.
For many of us, we don’t always have access to therapy or trusted people to comfort us and work through what happened. When we cannot process the trauma for an extended period of time, or if we experience these traumas over and over again without any support, our brain gets stuck in a loop, priming itself to expect bad things to occur, creating these trauma responses that keep us feeling unsafe when the threat is gone or unlikely to occur.
EMDR Therapy and How it Can Help Trauma Responses
EMDR stands for Eye Movement and Desensitization Therapy, and it is an effective therapy to help one process their challenging life experiences and traumas. EMDR allows one to process both the emotional aspects of a traumatic memory as well as the physical symptoms associated from that memory, such as the trauma responses you may be experiencing. Once someone completes the eight phases of EMDR for a particular memory, they can look back at that memory and no longer feel triggered. However, it may take processing multiple traumatic memories with EMDR to resolve symptoms.
How EMDR Helps Trauma Responses
EMDR therapy can help process the core memories that are the source of the trauma responses, helping the brain to feel unpacked and clear the repressed fear, anger, and sadness that are causing the responses. Over time, EMDR can help you:
Reduce emotional reactivity to the core memories
Reduce physiological reactions within the body
Update negative beliefs like, “I am not safe” to positive beliefs, like “I can create my sense of safety”
Prepare for future scenarios where you can practice how to respond to similar situations with confidence and a feeling of security
Over time, processing traumatic memories with EMDR can positively shift the way your brain senses the world and your place in it. People often feel they can engage more fully in their lives. Situations that were once overwhelming can feel more approachable.
Trauma responses developed within you for a reason, to protect yourself. EMDR therapy can help you recognize that you are not in that situation anymore, and your path to an empowered life can start now.
If trauma responses are affecting your daily life, working with a certified EMDR therapist may be an important step toward healing.
Interested in Learning More about EMDR Therapy?
Hi! I’m Pamela Pawelski, LCSW. I’m an EMDR-certified therapist, specializing in treating trauma, anxiety disorders, and attachment issues. If you are interested in learning more about EMDR therapy, please feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to chat with you!