On triple fight, flight and freeze, excluding fawning

Mon, Sep 28, 2026 ❝Why I think 'fawning' is not part of the stress response triple fight-flight-freeze.❞

Contents

I have been challenged on “The idea I’m working with is that fawning (e.g. people-pleasing) is more of a coping strategy [than an instinctive stress response], …” (source), claiming that I either shouldn’t state this position at all, or should fully qualify and prove my point if I do. So I did.

First of all, it is important to realize that I wrote this sentence deliberately, to make it clear in words that that is a (no longer implicit) assumption that I am basing other parts of the story on and if you read my blog-post, then this might trigger you to reconsider what you’ve read so far. That’s important because it allows you to check for yourself if my rationale is acceptable to you as the reader. Alternatively, it adds background to my rationale if you want to go along with my way of thinking. Secondly, I cannot prove my point, but I can elaborate.

To clarify, I will typically use “high-stress” or “highly stressful” situations to avoid touching on the topic of ’trauma’. A quick search turned out that “trauma responses” have a notion of “prolonged (over-)sensitivity” resulting in serial stress-responses. This post is about discussing an individual stress response.

As with the other post, a word of caution: I am not an expert. I write about this particular topic to put backing behind my statement from previous post.

Fight, flight or freeze

Fight, flight and freeze are known possible responses in high-stress situations. Fight for the instinctive (split-second) decision to fight your way out of stressful circumstances, flight to run away from such circumstances, and freeze when neither (no longer) are viable options.

Fawn (fawning) is sometimes listed as a fourth response, implying that fawning is an instinctive response to (resolving) a high-stress situation. I do not think this is the case. Consider any highly stressful situation, maybe something from your past, and you might imagine needing to make a split-second decision. This option would imply that in such stressful situations, a solution like “people-pleasing” is instinctive and an effective action.

Mitigation/coping mechanism

A mitigation strategy or coping mechanism, on the other hand, is more of a considered response to prevent or circumvent a (next) highly stressful experience. When you do not have the option to fix the cause of such events at the root, and also have no way to fully escape the environment, then some kind of mitigation or coping is needed. However, these are not instinctive emergency responses, but rather considered responses in a problematic situation. Fawning may be a solution that prevents further escalation into another highly stressful experience.

Why not both

So, why not both? The thing is, to count fawning among fight, flight and freeze, it means that fawning is an instinctive response. I do not believe, even for a second, that your very first reaction, the move you instinctively make when suddenly confronted with a highly stressful (surprise) situation, is that action. If your instinct is one step forward to attack, or a side-step to dodge, in your own defense, you chose fight. If you take one step back, turn around, or run, you chose flight. It is this very first instinct that counts.

If you then get blocked, threatened, kicked to the ground, forced or coerced, those are oppressive actions that are done to you. If the situation is dangerous, you likely tried to flee. If you got stopped and threatened or attacked, you weren’t the one making that decision. Your (instinctive) decision was to flee. Repeatedly trying to fight or flee your way out of a hopeless situation likely does not improve your chances or circumstances. Any other action chosen subsequently is a considered response, hence more of a strategy. This action is likely far from ideal, possibly or even likely detrimental to yourself, but it is not a split-second decision, and it serves to prevent or avoid escalation into a (next) high-stress situation.

A practical case

Let’s discuss this in a practical case. Please excuse me for illustrating using a fictitious scenario of a situation. I recognize that I oversimplify matters and my intention is not to diminish such situations. I’ll illustrate using a general example, and I’ll try to emphasize important aspects.

Someone is walking on the street at night. Some people are closing in and one threatens this person with a knife. The victim tries to run away, so turns around and is immediately met with threats from the people behind them. One of the perpetrators waves his knife around in some suggestive threatening fashion and starts hinting at .. a wallet or a bag or whatever .. clearly coercing the victim. Maybe they’ll try again in a week, again at knife-point, again blocking exits, again hinting at what they want. And again, a few days later. Everytime the victim fails to run away, or possibly to fight their way out. After many such encounters, the victim no longer tries to fight or flee. They know it’ll most likely be futile. They may not be many, but if they’re too many to handle or if you’re helpless against them, that’s all it takes to make resistance pointless and possibly (increasingly) detrimental. The only real way to get out of such a situation, is being able to completely get away, which is not always an option. If you cannot completely get out, you might find some form of mitigation or coping. You “cooperate” under threat or anticipated coercion at a cost to yourself. However, this type of “cooperation” is not freely chosen.

A victim might start blaming themselves for cooperating, thinking they didn’t resist. It is important to distinguish between instinctive responses during these first stressful experiences, and subsequent choice of mitigation or coping strategy. Therefore, my point is, you instinctively chose fight/flight when it truly mattered, and resigned to a coping strategy afterwards.

Changelog

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This article will receive updates, if necessary.

• 2026-09-28 Initial version.