What is freeze or fawn?

What is freeze or fawn? Freeze or fawn refers to two of the four common trauma or stress responses, the others being fight and flight, together called four Fs. Freeze response is when person becomes immobilized, unable to move or speak, feeling stuck, dissociated, or shut down under threat, like deer in headlights, body freezes to avoid detection or because brain perceives no escape. Fawn response, also called please and appease, is when person tries to please, appease, or submit to threat to avoid harm, people pleasing, being overly agreeable, sacrificing own needs to keep abuser calm. Both are automatic survival strategies developed in childhood trauma. Freeze involves numbness, dissociation, difficulty making decisions. Fawn involves codependency, lack of boundaries, trying to be liked. Understanding freeze and fawn helps in trauma therapy, recognizing these responses as protective not weakness. So freeze or fawn are stress responses beyond fight flight.