Fight-or-Flight Response (FFR):

Fight-or-flight response (FFR) or acute stress response, also chronic stress: Fight-or-flight response is the body’s automatic, near-instantaneous physiological reaction to a real or perceived threat, fear, or danger. The stressor activates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight the threat off or flee to safety. When the stressor is over, the body activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to cool things down and return to normal. These responses are evolutionary adaptations to increase chances of survival in threatening situations. Overly frequent, intense, or inappropriate FFR activation (chronic stress) contributes to high-blood pressure and brain changes that promote anxiety, depression, addiction, and obesity. Understanding FFR and chronic stress is crucially important for treating bipolar disorder and panic disorder. Treatment for anxiety needs to include a better understanding of FFR’s purpose and function, for good and bad. See General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), and FFR’s three stages: Alarm, Resistance, and Exhaustion. A breakdown of specific stress responses, the main two and additional responses:

• Fight: Instinct to fight back is the most common response. The body believes it can overpower the threat. A person’s initial reaction is intense anger and rage, accompanied by preparing for the physical demands of fighting (tight jaw, grinding teeth, burning or knotted sensation in the stomach).
• Flight: Body believes danger can be avoided by leaving unexpectedly and fast. Surge of stress hormones (adrenaline) provides stamina to run faster and longer. Can be preemptive: by cancelling or not showing up in anticipation of a stressor. Can experience overwhelming fear/anxiety in flight.

Freeze, Fawn, Flop: Additional stress responses:

• Freeze: When healthy, the person assesses and determines the best action to take. When unhealthy, they can show dissociation and immobilizing behaviors—like temporary paralysis and disconnection to find emotional safety. Freeze can also result from sensory overload.
• Fawn: People-pleasing response prioritizes others over oneself to diffuse conflict and get approval—often to hide distress from trauma from childhood abuse. Self-preservation instinct is to sooth one’s abuser instead of resorting to flight.

Flop: Like animals “playing dead,” body goes limp, with a loss of physical control—like an out-of-body experience, as though the stressor is happening to someone else. It may provide some protection from intense, unwanted experiences