Comparing the 4F Types: A Series — Breathwork + Life Coach (2024)

Survival instincts, coping mechanisms, trauma types — oh my!

In earlier posts we discussed the 4F survival strategies: fight, flight, freeze and fawn. In striving toward emotional health, learning more about each type as well as the similarities and differences between them can aid in our attempts at deconstructing our survival responses and ultimately help us find the healthy boundaries of our individual 4F type. Over the next 5 weeks we will be looking at each 4F type in depth, starting with a closer look at both the positive and negative characteristics of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses.

Here’s a brief refresher on how each 4F type deals with stress/triggers:

• Fight types avoid pain through conflict.

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• Flight types avoid pain through escape.

• Freeze types avoid pain through dissociation.

• Fawn types avoid pain through placation.

In his book “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving,” Pete Walker M.A. gives in depth explanations of the contributing factors that lead to each of the aforementioned survival types, as well as detailed character analyses of how those 4F types manifest in adulthood. We’ll delve into his findings in later weeks, but for now let’s look at both the positive and negative characteristics of the 4F types, as compiled by Pete Walker himself.

Positive Characteristics of the Four F’s

• Fight types: assertiveness, boundaries, courage, moxie, leadership.

• Flight types: disengagement, healthy retreat, industriousness, know-how, perseverance.

• Freeze types: acute awareness, mindfulness, poised readiness, peace, presence.

• Fawn types: love and service, compromise, listening, fairness, peacemaking.

For many adults, childhood was free from any semblance of abuse or neglect. It is those adults who now have unlimited access to all of the 4F types and their positive qualities. Because of the nurture and safety present in their childhood homes, these adults can now move in and out of the various survival strategies, while adhering mostly to the positive qualities of those responses. They know when they need to speak up for themselves (fight), when they need to retreat or disengage to avoid exacerbating the circ*mstances (flight), when they need to stop fighting altogether in the face of a futile situation (freeze), and when they need to listen and empathize to deescalate a possibly harmful interaction (fawn).

For adults who suffered isolated or longterm abuse or neglect, these healthy, interchangeable responses aren’t as easy to access. Most traumatized adults fixate on one or two of the 4F types, and more often than not it’s the negative characteristics of those survival strategies that are at the forefront of their emotional reactions.

Negative Characteristics of the Four F’s

• Fight types: narcissistic, explosive, controlling [enslaving], entitlement, Type-A, bully, autocrat, demands perfection, sociopath, conduct disorder.

• Flight types: obsessive/compulsive, panicky, rushing or worrying [outrunning pain], driven-ness, adrenaline junkie, busyholic, micromanager, compelled by perfectionism, mood disorder [Bipolar], ADHD.

• Freeze types: dissociative, contracting, hiding [camouflaging], isolation, couch potato, space case, hermit, achievement-phobic, schizophrenic, ADD.

• Fawn types: codependent, obsequious, servitude [groveling], loss of self, people-pleaser, doormat, slave, social perfectionism, domestic violence victim, parentified child.

Many of us learned as children that one or two of the 4F responses worked well enough and consistently enough to keep us out of harm’s way. Now as adults we over-use that response in an attempt to maintain a sense of control in the face of perceived threats. But since we are acting out of a triggered state, and since we were forced to camp out in one or two preferred survival strategies for extended periods of time in adolescence, we lack the constructive experience of choosing which of the 4F types might be most beneficial in any given situation — our brains simply direct us back to our default strategy and hope for the best. And thus, our ability to oscillate between each of the 4F types is impaired and we stagnate in the cycle of our own reactions.

Needless to say, this can be a sticky topic. It seems like a vicious cycle: we don’t want to react this way but it’s the only way we know how, and it’s the only way we know how because we were never able to learn any other way. The circ*mstances which drove us to choosing a preferred 4F strategy were the very circ*mstances that would have benefitted the most from the ability to healthily oscillate between all four of the coping mechanisms, but sadly we weren’t given that opportunity.

As we learn about the 4F types and their characteristics though, we can gain the ability to deconstruct our emotional reactions and slowly learn to consciously choose how we respond as fight/flight/freeze/fawn types.

Stay tuned next week for “Comparing the 4F Types: Fight Response”!

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