Trauma doesn’t always announce itself. It often shows up quietly and is easy to miss, especially when it doesn’t look like fear or panic.

You may be familiar with the three “Fs” of trauma responses, fight, flight, and freeze, and how our minds and bodies continue to react to traumatic triggers even after the initial moment has passed. Our nervous system tells us to be fearful and outwardly anxious, often running away from what we perceive as a threat as a way to keep us safe. These responses, the “Fs”, are automatic and are usually reflective of the type of trigger that is related to a past traumatic event.

What the three Fs can look like:

Fight: Responding to a minor disagreement with a friend by becoming aggressive and defensive. Raising one’s voice and feeling a need to “win” or to be heard in the situation, even if it doesn’t call for it.
Flight: Cancelling plans or removing oneself from a conversation because it feels overwhelming or emotionally suffocating. Escape and distance seem like the safest option, even if it means silencing your feelings.
Freeze: Procrastinating an important deadline or feeling stuck when choices need to be made. Shutting down physically in response to a loud or stressful situation is often a last resort method of protection.

Recently, two more “Fs” have surfaced in trauma research, fawn and flop. These responses are still protective in the moment of perceiving threat, however are more visible in the long-term patterns trauma leaves behind. Shaping relationships, self-perception, and everyday behaviours (e.g. sleeping patterns, routines) are impacted by trauma long after the original threat has passed, and fawn and flop help illuminate the spaces where the other three Fs don’t quite fit.

Diving Deeper into Fawn & Flop

Fawn and flop are trauma responses that go beyond the other three “Fs” when a threat feels inescapable, or when fighting, running away or shutting down are not possible. Fawn often involves appeasing or pleasing the source of threat as a way to avoid conflict. It can present as sacrificing your own needs or having difficulty saying no, powered by the belief that “if I do x, I’ll be safe”. Your brain is manipulating the situation to achieve the feeling of security, however it can ignore your own boundaries and make you feel responsible for others’ actions in the process. Flop, similar to freeze, involves a physical and/or mental shutdown often accompanied by dissociation and emotional fatigue. Flop shows up in cases of severe trauma and can go beyond a state of “freeze”, leading to complete collapse as a form of protection. Flop is a passive response where your brain believes it is better to be unresponsive than to actively resolve or neutralize the threat.

What fawn and flop can look like:

Fawn: Giving into peer pressure to avoid social isolation or gain approval, even if it means suppressing your own beliefs. The response is automatic and driven by fear of rejection or harm, not connection.
Flop: Emotionally and vocally shutting down instead of fighting back or listening to a partner during an argument. It may have been learned that protecting yourself in an outward way isn’t useful and it is easier to “check out”.

Not Flaws, but Survival Strategies

It is valuable to understand our patterns when responding to trauma so we may identify our own triggers and develop healthy coping mechanisms. Each of us is unique in our experiences and no one “F” can fully summarize the way we think and act, however it can be helpful to understand the why behind it. It is important to remember that trauma responses are not flaws, but protective adaptations we have developed to keep ourselves safe in high-stress situations. Talking to family, friends, or a professional can help you become more self-aware in how you process difficult and emotional situations, and how to move forward.

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