The Responses To Threat: Freeze, Appease, Fight, Flight information handout is designed to give clients essential information about common responses to threat.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
Human beings are programmed to respond automatically in a variety of ways to a threat including freezing, escaping, and dissociation. Traumatized individuals often report considerable distress and self-criticism about these normal, natural, and involuntary responses. The Responses To Threat: Freeze, Appease, Fight, Flight information handout is designed to help you share this essential information with your clients.
This informative resource helps clients:
Understanding responses to traumatic events.
Exploring reactions to early adverse experiences.
Gaining insight into dissociation during trauma.
Educate the client about automatic responses to threat.
Discuss the client's response to traumatic events.
Use the content to normalize and validate the client's experiences and reactions.
Teaching clients details of the fight or flight response is a common part of treatment for anxiety disorders. However many individuals who have survived trauma may have experienced other automatic physiological and behavioral responses during their trauma including freezing, dissociation and appeasement. Traumatised individuals are often extremely self-critical concerning ways that they did or did not respond during a trauma. The Responses To Threat: Freeze, Appease, Fight, Flight information handout is designed to give these clients essential information about common responses to threat.
Clinicians should note that this handout is a somewhat simplified version of Shauer & Elbert’s (2010) ‘defence cascade’. Specifically, it condenses their ‘freeze’ and ‘fright’ responses into ‘freeze’ and then helps clients differentiate whether their freeze response happened early in the traumatic event (in which case dissociation is less likely) or later in the traumatic event (in which case dissociation is more likely).
