It can often be difficult for trauma survivors to understand how or why they reacted a certain way during a traumatic experience.
Instead of seeing their trauma response as the result of a split-second, unconscious decision made by their nervous system, your client may blame themself for not reacting differently.
This can be especially true for clients who went into the freeze or collapse response.
But Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD has a simple way of explaining how the nervous system responds to trauma that can be very helpful for clients.
This powerful piece of psychoeducation can ease feelings of shame and self-blame, and help clients appreciate the nervous system’s efforts to keep them safe.
We put it into an infographic that you can share with your clients. Have a look.
Click the image to enlarge
How does your nervous system figure out how to respond in a crisis?
It’s a split- second, unconscious process designed to choose the best option for keeping you safe. Here’s how it works.
Identify the Threat. Can I escape?
If yes, then flee. If we can quickly get far enough away from the threat, we might be able to escape and avoid interacting with it entirely.
If I can’t escape, can I overpower it?
If yes, then fight. If we attack the threat before it attacks us, we might be able to weaken it and possibly keep it from attacking in the future.
If I can’t overpower it, can I make it lose interest?
If yes, then freeze. If our body closes up, becomes rigid, and won’t move, we might be able to keep the threat from noticing or becoming interested in us.
If I can’t make it lose interest, then collapse. If our mind/brain disconnects from our body, like by dissociating, or in some cases by fainting, we might be able to avoid feeling as much of the pain.
In the face of threat, there isn’t time to try every approach. In fact, your nervous system has to make these choices almost instantaneously. So while you may not understand the choice, or agree with it afterward, it’s important to know that your body is taking care of you the best it knows how.
(If you’re sharing this infographic, please be sure to include the copyright information. We put a lot of work into creating these resources for you. Thanks!)
If you’d like to print a copy, you can use one of these links:
If you’re looking for more ways to work with the nervous system’s response to trauma, you can get some of the top strategies in our Advanced Master Program on the Treatment of Trauma.
In this program, you’ll hear more from Stephen Porges, PhD, along with Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD, Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD, and other leading experts in the field. Just click here.
Now we’d like to hear your takeaway from this infographic. Please let us know by leaving a comment below.
If you found this helpful, here are a few more resources you might be interested in:
Working with the Nervous System via Telehealth
How the Nervous System Responds to Trauma
Panic is a legitimate strategy. Do something totally off the wall. If it works, you pass on your genes. Many predators will pause if an animal behaves in an eratic manner. It could be sick, and thus less desireable as prey.
Bluff is a legitimate strategy. While I cannot win a fight with a bear, I can bluff a bear into having self doubt. You can argue that this is a subtype of fight.
Call for help. This is what we train our kids to do. And likely why they scream when excited playing. Constant noise allows adults to track them even when they are out of sight.
Placate. Not usually a technique used with predators, but with human interactions. This is the fawn response. But placting, distracting, by thowing the deer carcass you were carrying to the lion may allow you to escape
Wonderful ideas! I think it’s totally applicable, and way better than what our stupid human bodies are hardwired to do. In danger? Just PLACATE, kids! And if that doesn’t work, call for help! And if by then you are still functioning- BLUFF your way out.
But seriously, Unbelievable. That’s just straight up delusional you actually think this.
Very helpful.
That is such a helpful visual prompt to help clients release their sense of failure or guilt for ‘making the wrong choice’. Thank you.
great infographic! Thanks!
Excellent! I have been through a freeze response and still 25 years later realise that I have absolutely no memory of the situation I was involved in! It is very interesting that the brain and body can work together for so long to protect yourself from the trauma that was happening!
This is an excellent way to learn about the trauma response. Thankyou 🙏 for sharing.
It would be more powerful if it wasn’t animal related. I understand the “reptilian” “animal brain/response” but people don’t take this seriously when its about an animal. Kids do, but they aren’t going to read this. JMO
The print friendly version cuts off the bottom, including your the nicabm credit.
Just appreciating all that you are doing to assist as many as possible to help each other during these times.
Deep gratitude and blessings.
this is an excellent tool to use to explain a trauma response. Thanks for sharing
This is excellent; clear and on point. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much. Accessible visual 👏🏽
Thank you! Very useful.
Thanks. That is very useful. It is the core of understanding what is going on for humans. “Clients” ( we) need to be very clear on this right from the start, then every “conversation” or therapy can reference to it.
Helpful to see 4 different responses, flee, fight, freeze and collapse, thank you. I’ve experienced these and find freeze the most uncomfortable. Keep judging myself for not being able to respond so the infographic reduces a bit of the agony and shame.
Very informative….thank you
What a beautiful, easily understood, gently colored diagram. Very useful and easy to understand. I agree with Ricks comment about possibly including a ‘please and appease’ pathway..
I would also like to see a please and appease diagram, thx.
I think it’s very curious to note that of all of these experts in the mental health trauma field featured here, the men are far and away the most famous and well known. I wonder why it is that more men than women seem to publish and do ground-breaking work even though mental health therapy is traditionally a more female dominated field.
Kim Ball
Pat Ogden and Babette Rothschild have been leaders in the field for decades
Also in the Art Therapy trauma healing world pretty much all the leading names are women
eg Lucia Cappachione, Cathy Malchiodi. And Cornelia Elbrecht To name just three. I refer you in particular to Elbrecht’s ground breaking work and publications.
Thank you for the graphic representation.
I have one point of inquiry. I’ve known people who go immediately into fight. In these people, I do not sense even a split second of flight.
I’m interested in other people’s comments about fight being able to be activated before flight.
Thank you for this very good forum for learning and sharing.
As we are reacting to a “recording” that bypasses our rational thinking, the reaction is likely to be whichever one that we used to survive very early in life and the one that was the response to ( or content in) the traumatic incidents that established the recording. Later, as adults, the reaction is not so much to the actual situation but to the way it restimulates the early recording.
So you could fairly reasonably suspect that the always fight person is showing you the nature of their earliest hurts.
I am this patient, fight first. Flee last. It’s terrible.
It’s not a sequential series of activations. It’s one in particular that has served you previously to maintain surviving. Someone can experience all 3 depending on the precipitating factor that triggers the trauma response. I experience freeze when it comes to being exposed to heights or on a boat in deep sea, I don’t believe this is something I’ve experienced in this life, it could be passed down through epigenetics or be a former life experience still with me as an implicit memory.
excellent to teach patients!
A.Ament, MD
Many thanks great info graphic.
Your recent email featuring Stephen Porges on the “please and appease” response to trauma might well be included here, too. I’m reminded of stories on the internet where a kitty and a lion form a mutual bond in captivity…perhaps a quite different scenario than trauma where one beast is free to dominate the other, but maybe not all that different than when an abuser and a victim are locked together by social position, economic factors or other circumstances.
Thank you.
For your support to us all…
Thank you sharing this beautiful, compassionate work. How generous for you to offer it as you have above.
Thank you for sharing this information. It‘s so helpful.
Thank you for infographic, easy and helpful!
Thank you for all you do…
Thank you for this helpful and explanatory infographic. It is detailed yet easy to understand and will be a wonderful resource to hand out to client’s.
Good morning, Clear informative infographic! I would suggest adding a final picture to connect the primitive functions with examples of how this plays out for us in modern times e.g. being confronted by a difficult person (family member, friend, co-worker), and our nervous system is triggered into a state of threat, we need to escape, in modern times we may: leave a room abruptly, hang up the phone, if we were in a conversation with the person who caused the NS to go into threat state, ignore or delete a text or e-mail message. Thank you, Esther Brandon
Yes agreed that would be very helpful
I am a client and just a few minutes ago, to my counselor, detailed both the freeze mode and related an avoidance strategy to escape a NS trigger I recognized as upcoming. i did not choose to fight, just flight in a modern day scenario.
Thank you for the clarification of what I did.
Thank you for everything that you’re doing! So incredibly insightful and informative.
Thank you so much for this infographic, it’s great. I’ll use it with clients, especially those on the autism spectrum.
Its great. Specially the part about wanting to prevent the danger happening again. theres depth + height psychology in that.
thanks.
Your kindness and generosity is so very much appreciated, especially by those of us living in distant countries!!!
These sessions are invaluable. Thank you so much. What an amazing service to the world. Jan
Thanks Ruth,
It’d be good if we can also have an infographic representation that explains how the body takes care of us and how it knows how to do that?
Hassan
Thank you.
External people struggle to understand that this response is outside our control emphasising this might help others to understand.
It might also help to give human examples, the outacting child in rage harming others and the quiet one who might be fawning making it harder to spot.
The visuals are the best way to teach people.
Thank you!
Thank you! Once again, a revealing infographic!
On a side note: It landed in my inbox right on time for a workshop I will facilitate tomorrow.
thank you, now i do understand my fear of fainting in theatre or concerthalls by seeing the collaps reaction
What about fawning
So well explained nice visual that is so helpful to better understand trauma. Rather than being a fear based response I would think it is a “threat”, real or non real, felt at the time the person experienced and no longer present. And, flee-fight-freeze response, is the most common “survival mode” just like a sort of self-defense to attacks and abuse. I just feel like this infographic doesn’t clearly explain and show how to regain the sense of control of the body/mind awareness when this happens in a sudden way in such a situation nor to stay safe.