Your Body's Brilliant Defense System: Recognizing and Befriending Your Trauma Responses

By Jen Bennethum

That moment when someone raises their voice and you instantly become a people-pleaser. When conflict arises and you're suddenly picking fights about nothing. When stress hits and you're frozen at your desk, unable to move. These aren't character flaws—they're your nervous system's brilliant attempts to keep you safe.

"Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you." - Gabor Maté, from The Myth of Normal

The Four Guardians of Survival

Think of trauma responses as your body's emergency response team, each with a specific job. All to keep you safe, physically, emotionally, mentally and socially safe.

Fight shows up as irritability, arguing, jaw clenching, or that surge of "I'll show them" energy. It's your boundary defender, the part that learned to push back when cornered. You might notice it as sarcasm that cuts deeper than intended, road rage that surprises you, or picking fights with loved ones about dishes when you're really upset about feeling unseen. Fight can also be internal—harsh self-criticism, perfectionism, or that relentless inner drill sergeant. It's the response that says "I'll control this before it controls me."

Flight manifests as restlessness, anxiety, overthinking, or literally fleeing situations. It's your escape artist, always scanning for exits. This might look like suddenly needing to clean when hard conversations arise, working overtime to avoid home, or mentally rehearsing conversations that will never happen. Flight can be physical—fidgeting, pacing, unable to sit still—or mental, like losing yourself in planning, worrying, or creating endless to-do lists. It's the response that whispers "If I just keep moving, nothing can catch me."

Freeze feels like shutdown, dissociation, numbness, or that deer-in-headlights paralysis. It's your pause button, playing dead until danger passes. In daily life, this shows up as endless scrolling when you have deadlines, going blank when asked your opinion, or feeling like you're watching your life from outside your body. Freeze might look like procrastination, indecision, or that foggy feeling where hours disappear. It's the response that believes "If I don't move, maybe I'll become invisible."

Fawn appears as people-pleasing, over-apologizing, shapeshifting to match others' needs. It's your social survival strategist, keeping peace at any cost. This looks like laughing at jokes that hurt you, saying "yes" when your body screams "no," or becoming whoever others need you to be. Fawn shows up as over-explaining, taking responsibility for others' emotions, or that exhausting performance of being "fine" when you're falling apart. It's the response that learned "If I'm good enough, maybe I'll be safe enough."

Recognizing These Patterns in Daily Life

Our trauma responses often hide in plain sight, disguised as personality traits or "just how we are." Start noticing your body's subtle cues throughout the day. When your boss emails, do your shoulders rise (fight), does your leg start bouncing (flight), do you stare at the screen unable to respond (freeze), or do you immediately craft the "perfect" reply (fawn)?

Pay attention to relationship moments. During conflict, do you get louder and more rigid, find reasons to leave the room, go silent and disconnected, or suddenly become agreeable? Notice what happens in your body first—the clenched jaw, the urge to move, the heavy limbs, or the automatic smile. These physical sensations are your early warning system.

Watch for patterns in different contexts. You might fight at work but fawn at home. You might freeze with authority figures but flight with intimate partners. These responses learned to activate in specific situations, and they often still follow those old maps. Morning meetings might trigger one response while family dinners activate another.

The goal isn't to judge these patterns but to witness them with curiosity. Try keeping a simple note in your phone: "Felt frozen during team meeting when asked for ideas" or "Noticed I fought with partner after stressful call with mom." Patterns become clearer when we name them.

Honoring the Wisdom

Here's what changes everything: These responses once saved your life—or at least your nervous system believed they did. Consider the exquisite intelligence of your body's choices. That fight response that emerges as sarcasm? Maybe it kept a dangerous person from seeing you as weak. The way you flee into busyness? Perhaps it got you out of rooms before things escalated. Your freeze response wasn't giving up—it was your nervous system's calculation that playing dead was the safest option when escape and fighting were impossible. And that fawn response? It might have been the sophisticated social intelligence of a child who learned to read the room and shape-shift to prevent violence.

Your body remembered everything—the tone of voice before the rage, the footsteps on the stairs, the particular silence before chaos. It built an early warning system so complex that it can detect danger in a shifted eyebrow or a door closing too softly. This hypervigilance that exhausts you now? It's the same system that helped you survive by noticing what others missed.

These responses often protected more than just you. Your fighting spirit might have drawn fire away from siblings. Your fawning might have kept the whole family safe by managing an explosive parent's moods. Your freeze might have prevented situations from escalating by not adding fuel to the fire. Your flight patterns might have removed you from spaces where your presence would have made things worse for everyone.

Consider too the creativity of these responses. A child who learns to dissociate during abuse has discovered a profound neurological ability to separate consciousness from experience. That's not weakness—that's innovation under impossible circumstances. The person who becomes hypervigilant has developed an almost supernatural ability to read micro-expressions and energy shifts. These aren't just trauma responses; they're evidence of your nervous system's genius for adaptation.

Try placing a hand on your chest and speaking to these parts of you: "Thank you for reading the room so perfectly. Thank you for knowing when to make myself small. Thank you for fighting when I had no voice. Thank you for carrying me away when staying would have broken me. Thank you for the numbness that helped me survive what I couldn't process. You were brilliant."

The cost of not honoring these responses is that we declare war on the parts of ourselves that loved us most fiercely. When we shame our trauma responses, we activate more of them—creating a vicious cycle where our attempts to heal become another source of threat. Your nervous system then has to protect you not just from the original danger, but from your own rejection of its protection. It's like punishing a guard dog for barking—now it's confused, anxious, and barking even more.

Practical Pathways Forward

For fight responses, channel that fire into boundaries by asking "What am I actually defending here?" Try ten push-ups against a wall to discharge the energy, then reassess. For flight, honor the movement need—take a walk, shake it out, then ask yourself what would happen if you stayed. For freeze, start tiny by wiggling your toes or naming five things you see. Your nervous system needs to know you can move when ready. For fawn, practice one "no" daily, even to small things, and notice that you survived disappointing someone.

The Integration Dance

Real healing happens in the space between honoring and updating. It sounds like: "I see you, fight response. You protected me from dad's rage. I'm safe now, but I'll keep you close in case I need those boundaries." Your trauma responses are not the enemy. They're more like outdated software—brilliant for their original purpose, just needing an update for current circumstances. The goal isn't a nervous system without defenses; it's one with flexible, choice-filled responses to life's challenges.

Remember: If these responses are significantly impacting your life, working with a trauma-informed therapist can provide personalized support for your healing journey. Please feel free to reach out to us at Integrate Therapy and Wellness Collective to let us know how we can help walk with you on your journey to wholeness.