*disclaimer: I am not a medically licensed psychologist or medical practitioner. These blog posts are not meant to replace getting real help and guidance from a trained medical professional. If you are in crisis and need immediate support, contact 911 or call the suicide prevention hotline at 988.*

In my previous post, Understanding the Importance of Mental Health,  I highlighted the importance of mental health and the benefits of adopting good mental health practices. I also talked about stress and some of the effects that stress, left unmanaged, can have on our bodies.

Stress is a universal phenomenon that affects all living organisms. It has been around for as long as life has existed, in fact, and shapes a lot of the ways animals respond to the world around them and learn. This is just as true for early humans as it is for the rabbit trying to avoid a fox. In fact, Earl Hipp (2014), in his book Fighting Invisible Tigers, explains stress and our innate reaction to it well in terms of why our stress response came about. Early humans, though a force to be reckoned with, had a lot of stress they had to deal with, according to his book. But the biggest stress was that of large predators that wanted to eat them. Though humans are often regarded as the top of the food chain, we are not. Our bodies are fine-tuned to deal with the stress caused by the attack of a big predator or other life-threatening dangers that require an immediate fast response, just like most other animals. This response is most widely known as our fight, flight, or freeze response. 

While this response is part of instincts to keep us alive in times of immediate danger or stress, our brains can’t always differentiate between immediate life-threatening danger and the stress caused by having an overwhelming amount of bills that need to be paid. When we get stressed out, our brain’s immediate response is to kick in fight, flight, or freeze to keep us alive. While that is good if we are fighting off a bear or an attacker from a back alley, it’s not needed when we are trying to plan our overstuffed, busy schedules, dealing with the stress of public speaking, or having a disagreement with our friends. 

Sometimes, in fact, it can cause more issues. 

The Brain and the Five F’s

As stated in previous posts, it comes down to the brain and how it operates. When we are taking in stimuli such as sounds, smells, sights, tastes, and the feel of things we are touching, our brains are working to assess whether these things are a threat. If things are normal, or at least not determined to be a threat, those stimuli are passed into higher brain function and used to make decisions and take actions with more conscious thought in the frontal cortex. If the brain- the amygdala, more specifically- deems what we are experiencing as stressful or a threat, it kicks into action, cutting off communication with the frontal cortex momentarily, releasing hormones such as cortisol (the stress hormone), redirecting blood flow to where it would be needed to fight or flee, shutting off systems unnecessary for immediate survival, and throws our awareness into overdrive. 

People experiencing a fight or flight response, according to Hipp (2014), might feel things like their pulse racing, their breath speeding up, their face flushing, getting an upset tummy, sweaty palms, dry mouth, and one might go blank or lose higher thinking needed to make decisions or recall needed to take tests. 

The brain is preparing our bodies, however, to engage in survival tactics to keep us alive. 

The Five F’s Explained

We commonly know this response as fight, flight, or freeze; however, many professionals in the field are now deeming this response as the 5 F’s- fight, flight, freeze, flop, or fawn (Virtual Psychiatric Care, 2025). 

In a fight response, our bodies are geared up, and we are taking on whatever we need to get away from or deal with in an aggressive way to fight our way out or subdue the threat, often physically. An example of this would be the person who got scared and immediately threw out a punch, hitting whatever it was that had scared them. My favorite examples to watch of this are online videos where husbands try to prank their wives by scaring them and end up getting punched, or the wives end up breaking things because they went into a fight response. 

Flee responses are us running away or escaping from the situation by removing ourselves from the area. Say you startle your friend, and they take off running in the opposite direction without any thought. There is a video floating around the internet of cops going to check out a call in a graveyard or in the woods, there’s a scream from the direction they are walking, and they turn and scramble run in the other direction. That is flee. 

Freeze responses are when your brain seems to short-circuit. Thoughts shut down, and your body stops moving. One of my favorite examples of this is young calves of cows or deer who are being stashed in the long grass when predators are around. They freeze and don’t move until the danger is passed, hoping not to be seen. Or like rabbits with a fox in the area. A lot of times, the first response is freeze. If they are still, they turn almost invisible, and maybe the danger won’t see them. Freeze in humans is a response I often associate with test anxiety. We get in to take the test and just freeze up, stop being able to think of what we studied for, and leave the test without having written anything. 

Flop is like freeze on steroids. Our brains and bodies seem to completely shut off. I think of fainting when I think of flop, but according to Virtual Psychiatric Care (2025), this is a response that often takes place after extended or extreme stress and can appear as someone lying in bed, unmoving, not engaging in pleasure activities, not sleeping, just disengaged from the world. It’s like a last-ditch effort of the body to escape the stress and just get through. 

Fawn is another more recently coined term in relation to fight, flight, and freeze responses and is often seen in people with a lot of emotional trauma or abuse. It is said, according to Virtual Psychiatric Care (2024) and Taylor (2024) to take the appearance of people pleasing or “fawning” to keep themselves safe. Looking like extreme agreement or appeasing a person, even if they don’t necessarily agree with them, to keep the peace, so they themselves are not threatened. 

Knowledge is Power

All of these responses are natural reactions to stress. They are our brain and body’s mechanisms to keep us alive, but, as stated previously, they can sometimes cause more issues than they solve. It is important, however, that we know about these responses and that we engage in them, so we learn how to recognize them and how to get back control of our thinking and bodies. When we know we are going into the Five F’s, we can practice mindfulness and mental health practices to help protect our brains and allow us to make better decisions or work through the stress to positive action. We can take steps to train our bodies to respond differently to specific stressors, such as people who work to overcome stage fright to go on to be public speakers or those who overcome test anxiety to ace their midterms. We can also recognize habits that might be unhealthy in response to stress for what they are and work to break those cycles, such as people who go into fawn responses being able to recognize they are doing it and break the cycle in safe, healthy ways with people they feel safe and comfortable with by setting boundaries or holding to their thoughts and beliefs in disagreements. 

It is often said that knowledge is power, and in this case, I would agree. The knowledge of the Five F’s gives us the power we need to fight our natural responses and overcome them so we can lead happier, healthier lives. 

Thank you for joining me in this blog post about the Five F’s. Press that like button and leave a comment on a time you had one of the Five F’s happen in your life. 

-Dare

I dare you to talk about how you’re really feeling today.  

References:

Hipp, E. (2019). Fighting invisible tigers: Stress management for teens. Free Spirit Publishing.
Taylor, M. (2024, June 23). Acute stress response: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-does-fight-flight-freeze-fawn-mean
Virtual Psychiatric Care. (2025, November 1). The 5 FS: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn & Flop – what your brain does when it freaks out. virtual psychiatric care. https://www.virtualpsychiatriccare.com/the-5-fs-fight-flight-freeze-fawn-flop-what-your-brain-does-when-it-freaks-out