What fight or flight response do you have?

Hey @Rayven, welcome to the forum.

I would definitely say I'm a fawn. I always just tried to please people and avoided conflict... by avoiding people in the first place mainly. I've always had issues saying 'no' to people and always put their needs above my own. I only discovered all of this recently myself and have been looking into it as I've found it explains so much about my behaviours and explains why I do it.

Yours does seem to not fit any of the standards. I know there is the flop response where people sort of just surrender or collapse in a stressful situation. I think people who have this reaction just basically 'play dead', unable to fight, flee, or even freeze. Their feelings of helplessness and/or hopelessness combine with a sense of resignation of a threat. So if you're on your own and dont feel like there's anyone there to protect, then i'd say you're closest to this flop response. But people can display traits of different responses in different situations. so for you, this probably happens when it involves other people. But on your own, you seem to display traits of the rarer flop response. As you pointed out, yours isnt a fawn response where you would try to make people happy to avoid harm, instead you 'submit' allowing the situation to unfold and intentionally exposing yourself to the danger.

Do you think your past has taught you to face trauma by just bracing yourself for a inevitable and predictable outcome? Therefore seeing no point in fighting or fleeing because you feel it wont change the outcome. I'm curious about what you think.

@Rayven I have been thinking of flight fight freeze fawn for a while …. But I am also a bit like you in going into circumstances that are not always good.

was thrown in at the deep end a lot as a kid…. Literally and metaphorically

may be that is why

slowly learning to trust my intuition and read the signs….

@MJG017

My history is very strange and I’m still learning to understand it but I also don’t remember a lot of it. I would say that my history has probably taught me to do the flop response but I still don’t think it’s quite right as I’m not just letting it happen. I tend to make things worse for myself and I don’t know where that would come from

@RayvenWhat do you do in those situations to make them worse? you don't have to talk about that if you don't want to of course.

In a situation of panic it depends on what it is. Like if I’m arguing with someone and it has upset me deeply I won’t stop it or try to fix things I will just start arguing harder or yelling or verbally attacking the person I’m arguing with. In a situation where I feel like I’m in danger or could be in danger I will go towards the thing that makes me feel that way, but in a situation where I know I’m in danger and whatever it is is close to me I will let it happen to me or encourage it.

@Rayven Yeah, that's interesting. It does seem like you do just throw yourself head long into it and just trial to dial it up to 11.

I just wonder if the intensifying the argument and going towards the danger just come back to that flop response of assuming the result of the current incident is inevitable. So be it a smaller argument getting worse, or the danger is coming so i might as well head towards it to get it over with. So you just escalate it to to just get it over with since you feel it is going to happen any way, so skip just skip right to the end and get it over with.

Like I said before, i'm still trying to work all of this out myself so I'm only theorizing in my own very amateur way. Your own responses definitely don't seem clear cut and feel like a really good test of anyone's understanding of these different responses.

@Rayven You mentioned not remembering lot of your past, I have similar circumstances. Ive been told, for me, it’s my brains way of trying to protect me from anymore hurt.

Similar to what you described, I have had times when I’m already feeling hurt by someone and that pain fires up my anger and continues it to grow. I started doing that in my early teen years during bouts of verbal abuse by my dad. I went from happy, outspoken child who had been encouraged to verbally stand up for myself to the reverse.
could there be something similar in your past that your auto responses are bringing to play?

I would say I am now mix of flight and freeze mode when verbally attacked. I go completely quiet and try to get away from the situation. Other times I feel as if I can’t move from where I am, I go completely quiet but inside I’m getting angry. Start to calm down and I auto burst into tears. For me, another childhood response I still use to deal with things

in situations where the danger is coming I do basically let it happen to me but I also have Situations where I know that it’s not going to happen and I walk towards it and I can’t understand why.

yeah I definitely had that history of verbal abuse and went from an outgoing person to quite. I can understand why that’s the case too. When you are constantly going through that sort of thing you learn eventually that there’s nothing that you can do to stop it.

im just not sure why it is that I walk into these things that cause me pain.