Member-only story
Your Fawn Response to Stress: A Coping Strategy That Leads to Codependency
Find out what the fawn response is, how it differs from the known fight, flight or flee response to stress and how it can lead to codependency
Most of us already know about the fight, flight or freeze response to stress, but what about the fawn response? When I first read about the fawn response, I found that it adds to my understanding on what our behaviours can be like in the face of stress. It’s why I decided to put the various responses to stress together in this article.
Fight, flight or freeze is a set of stress response arising in natural body reactions to perceived threats. It started out as a survival response to physical threats posed by dangerous animals. Since our caveman days, the survival response has been programmed and hard wired in us. However, the threats that we face these days tend to be psychological. Yet, the body continues to respond in the same manner as if there is a tiger standing right in front of us.
In a nutshell, when faced with stress, your sympathetic nervous system is being activated. For a start, your adrenal glands release hormones including adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol, which triggers a cascade of physical responses from a signal that was first transmitted to the hypothalamus by your amygdala, the emotional part of your brain. These physical symptoms can look like any of the following…
- Breathlessness
- Increase in heart rate.
- Rise in blood pressure
- Nervous tension
- Pale or flushed skin
- Dilated pupils
- Stomach upset.
Your body is prompted to stay and fight, run and flee danger or stay frozen and stuck. Once the danger has passed, your cortisol levels fall. The parasympathetic nervous system kicks in to dampen the stress response.
However, chronic stress can cause your stress response to remain activated for a long time. You may find it hard to relax or you can’t seem to cope. With blood pressure being increased extensively, the risk of getting heart attacks or strokes rises. Also…
