The 4 Horsemen of Trauma: Surviving Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn

Trauma has a way of leaving dirty fingerprints on your nervous system. It doesn’t just hang back in your memories. It boldly lives in your body, shaping how you react when stress or conflict rears its head. If you’ve survived narcissistic abuse or long-term emotional harm, you already know the drill: your body doesn’t always realize the danger is gone.

These trauma responses aren’t character flaws. They’re survival codes your body wrote for you when survival was the only goal. They may not look graceful now, but they kept you alive. And understanding them is how you begin escaping tightly held shame and learning to pivot.

The Fight Response

Fight isn’t just about throwing punches or screaming your head off. It can show up as defensiveness, snapping back, or needing to control the outcome. If you grew up with someone constantly manipulating and gaslighting you, your nervous system learned to fight hard for your truth.

This is what it could look like:

• Your ex insists you “imagined” their late-night texts to someone else, and you fire back with screenshots to prove you’re not crazy. That’s fight.

• At a family dinner, someone makes a snide remark, and before you even think, you’re pushing back louder than you meant to. Not because you want conflict, but because protecting yourself used to mean survival.

  The healing edge: Fight can be transformed into advocacy, assertiveness, and boundary-setting. Instead of shaming yourself for being “too much,” remember: fight kept you safe once. Now you get to choose how and when to use it.

  2. The Flight Response

  Flight isn’t always about running away. Sometimes it looks like staying constantly busy, working overtime, or trying to perfect every detail. Underneath the productivity is a nervous system that decided staying in motion was safer than standing still.

  This is what it could look like:

• After a tense phone call with your mother, you suddenly decide the pantry needs reorganizing. Like, right now. The motion keeps the anxiety from swallowing you.

• You can’t just submit a project at work. You have to triple-check it at midnight, then redo the slides in the morning. If everything is “perfect,” maybe nobody will have a reason to criticize you.

  The healing edge: Flight can morph into healthy drive and focus. It’s not about killing your ambition, it’s about noticing when movement is fueled by fear instead of passion. Healing teaches your nervous system that stillness doesn’t equal danger.

  3. The Freeze Response

  Freeze is what happens when fight or flight feels impossible. It’s that stuck, numb, shut-down feeling. People may call it lazy or detached, but it’s really your body pulling the emergency brake.

  This is what it could look like:

• You’re staring at your phone, a simple text from a friend sitting unanswered for days, because your brain feels scrambled and you just... can’t.

• You’re in the middle of a family argument and suddenly feel like you’ve left your body. The words are happening around you, but you’re not really there. That’s freeze stepping in to dull the blow.

  The healing edge: Freeze isn’t laziness, it’s protection. With awareness and support, freeze can shift into a mindful pause. Instead of keeping you stuck, it can teach you how to slow down just enough to respond intentionally.

  4. The Fawn Response

  Fawn is the people-pleasing reflex that so many survivors know too well. It’s the instinct to smooth things over, apologize, and keep the peace, even if it costs you your needs.

  This is what it could look like:

• You’re bone-tired, but when your partner asks for dinner, you say “Sure, no problem” and cook anyway. Not because you want to, but because saying no feels dangerous.

• A friend hurts your feelings, and instead of speaking up, you find yourself over- explaining and even apologizing to them, just to make the tension disappear.

Therapist Pete Walker named the fawn response as distinct, showing that people-pleasing is not kindness gone overboard, it’s survival training learned under threat.

The healing edge: Healing fawn means learning that love doesn’t have to be earned by compliance. Safety doesn’t require self-erasure. Genuine relationships don’t demand you disappear.

So What Can You Do?

Name it. Saying “I’m in a trauma response” puts space between you and the spiral.

Create safety. Boundaries, quiet moments, or stepping outside for air can help your nervous system exhale.

Start small. Healing isn’t about “fixing” yourself, it’s about gently teaching your body that it’s safe again.

Seek support. Trauma-informed coaching or therapy helps you untangle what was once survival from who you truly are.

You Are Not Your Trauma Response

You may have survived by fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning, but none of those define you. They were choices your body made to get you through what you should never have had to endure.

Now you get to choose differently.

It’s time to stop apologizing for doing what you had to do to survive. And if you’re ready to step into clarity, strength, and freedom, I’d be honored to walk that path with you.

Until then, I’m sending light to every survivor reading this. May your nervous system find peace, your spirit find rest, and your truth shine brighter than any illusion.

Sending you strength, light, and love, Esther