Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Most of us know about the “fight or flight” response, the body’s built-in survival instinct. But that framework leaves out two ...

Before Porges’ (2011) polyvagal theory became widely known, it was commonly thought that the autonomous nervous system has only two branches: the sympathetic system which manages in times of stress, ...

Fight or flight are not the only common responses to a traumatic event. I addressed this a bit in a column published on November 22, 2022 explaining that some authors describe “4 F’s”: fight, flight, ...

An eye-opening, new serotonin-based study (Seo et al., 2019) on mice was published today in the Feb. 1 issue of Science. These findings shed light on surprising ways serotonin may help the brain ...

Spend enough time in self-help spaces—by following therapists online or devouring books in that genre—and you'll read quite a bit about the "fight-flight-freeze-fawn" responses to stress. Essentially, ...

Imagine facing a mountain lion. Your body instinctively reacts – fight, flight, or freeze. Functional freeze is akin to that ...

When you're stuck in survival mode but your actions aren't Functional freeze is when someone goes into autopilot as a response to chronic stress and trauma. Unlike other trauma responses, someone in ...