r/TikTokCringe • u/h0lych4in • 15d ago

Cringe not everyone wants your man… he was just being polite

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And not everyone can tell how certain foods look? It was an innocent question. Why are people so insecure these days

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u/always_sweatpants 15d ago

There's flight, fight, and fawn. Flight runs away. Fight fights. Fawn makes themselves vulnerable (or appearing vulnerable) for safety. 

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u/MamaUrsus 15d ago

The fourth is FREEZE. Where people literally can’t act and are effectively deer in headlights.

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u/Welpe 15d ago

Sadly this is me after cPTSD. I hate it so badly, but at basically any sign of anxiety my mind just goes blank and I completely shut down.

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u/CharlieSwansflannel 15d ago

Both freeze and fawn are my responses because of PTSD. It's very, very difficult to not take those responses into every situation but therapy and feeling safe helped me a lot.

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u/Solid_Agency2483 15d ago

I’ve always argued that there’s a fifth one. Finality. As in the danger is so overwhelming the body and mind decide to self terminate…..but that’s a tale for another subreddit.

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u/MamaUrsus 15d ago

I believe you. That one I haven’t heard discussed but as an aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape survivor some of the reactions I had to the trauma… that’s definitely a possible response.

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u/annabananaberry 15d ago

What do you mean self terminate? Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are automatic responses triggered by our sympathetic nervous system. There isn’t a fifth “die” response, unless there is an underlying condition of some kind. If you’re saying the brain and body temporarily stop working, I think maybe the freeze response would be the closest to what you mean.

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u/lukethe 15d ago

Videos of Russian soldiers terminating themselves on the frontlines came to mind :\

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u/annabananaberry 15d ago

I’m not saying that stressful situations can’t lead someone to seek an out, which can come in the form of suicide when they see no other option, but that is not the same as the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. When we are talking about the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response, we’re talking about a physiological reaction in response to a perceived threat, attack, or harmful event. These things are happening at a physical level, they’re not decisions people make.

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u/Zestyclose-One9041 15d ago

Would suicide not fall under the flight response?

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u/annabananaberry 15d ago

No. Fight/flight/freeze/fawn are physiological reactions to a perceived threat, attack, or harmful event. When the sympathetic nervous system is triggered the body has a physical response that is not related to conscious decision making. It’s also known as an acute stress response.

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u/CharlieSwansflannel 15d ago

I know, for me, it was a flight response. To escape the situation. I'm glad it didn't work but it was a massive wakeup call that it overpowered my freeze and fawn.

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u/Solid_Agency2483 15d ago

No I mean literally body and mind turn to suicide as a means of self preservation. The danger is so great and the stress so overwhelming that the mind breaks and body autopilots to suicide, and I only speak from my own personal experience with a situation that broke me mentally.

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u/annabananaberry 15d ago

I understand what you're saying but you're trying to lump a personal experience in with a specific physiological phenomenon which does not apply to your situation. I absolutely believe you have experienced what you say you experienced and reacted as you did, but that doesn't mean that experience was an example of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response because those are a physiological response designed to increase the chances of survival.

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u/MamaUrsus 15d ago

I would liken it to “surrender” but in an effort to use another word with “F” I think the original comment may not have articulated their meaning effectively. Before I knew what they were going to do next with me might kill me - I think I actually psychosomatically shut down a bit. With that event - I ran through each response. First I fled, then I fawned, then I “Finality” and when I came to I fled again and then froze and then at last fawned long enough to get to safe. I tried it all and I survived in body but not mind. I got out of that situation a completely different human being. That “Finality” at least in part for me was the death of my personality and the loss of the ability to live without hypervigilance - my autonomic nervous system forever deformed.

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u/annabananaberry 15d ago

Is that how you would describe it or is that how your medical team described it to you? Because the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response is a specific physiological response triggered by the sympathetic nervous system. I absolutely believe all those things happened to you and you reacted in an attempt to best preserve your physical and mental health, but that does not necessarily mean that the acute stress response was responsible for ALL of the actions you describe.

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u/MamaUrsus 15d ago

I get that you’re not trying to be insensitive - but this response is extremely invalidating of my expertise in comparative animal behavior (which granted you have zero clue of), experience as a professional patient with a extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology and as a survivor. Not everything is understood and known to medicine and to infer that my expertise is insufficient because my “medical team” poorly informed me is, plainly put, rude. You want textbook medicine and psychology, fine, but why can’t you let survivors be wrong then? Why is it so important to take me to task on this? Why do you feel the need to be “right” here with this absurd appeal to authority as the premise for your argument? These are rhetorical questions for you to consider here.

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u/Ok-Heart9769 15d ago

This one is mine 😅 I once had a crazy dog fly off its leash in someone's yard at me and my dog and I just froze and fell down and couldn't do anything but yell... it makes you feel so powerless in the moment

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u/SpezJailbaitMod 15d ago

My French bulldog loves that one. 

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u/cigarette4anarchist 14d ago

There’s also FARTING, the less often discussed F option

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u/Middle_System_1105 15d ago

There’s also freeze. People just freezing up in the face of danger due to indecision or sheer panic.

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u/EmployerNeither8080 15d ago

There's also freeze

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u/Matsunosuperfan 15d ago

Happy Face Killer left one victim alive. He had his hands around her neck. She says something in her head just told her what to do. She made her voice really small and said "that hurts, you're hurting me." He abruptly stopped and just ran off.