Understanding the 5 Types of Trauma
"Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you." - Gabor Mate
I’ll never forget the moment I realized that my constant need to work, and my relentless drive to do more, wasn’t just ambition. It was exhaustion, and behind it, a deep-seated fear of failure. As a parent and a business owner, it felt like I couldn’t stop, as if pressing pause would make everything collapse. But the truth is, workaholism wasn’t just about striving for success—it was a survival mechanism born from something deeper.
If you're a parent reading this, juggling the demands of a career, family, and life, you’ve likely pushed your well-being to the backburner more times than you can count. You may feel like you’re running on fumes, endlessly trying to be everything to everyone. But what if I told you that the constant need to work, to over-deliver, might be driven by unrecognized trauma?
Research shows that trauma, especially unresolved, can manifest in many forms, including overwork. It isn’t always obvious—sometimes, it disguises itself as productivity. But underneath that drive, there could be a much deeper narrative playing out.
What is Trauma?
Dr. Mate emphasizes that trauma is not simply a single event or experience, but rather the persistent psychological and physiological response to distressing or overwhelming situations. Trauma can manifest in various ways, and its effects can be long-lasting and pervasive.
Trauma is that very separation from the body and emotions. So, the real question is, “How did we get separated and how do we reconnect?” Because that’s our true nature—our true nature is to be connected. In fact, if that wasn’t our true nature, there would be no human beings.
The human or any species could not evolve without being grounded in their bodies. You couldn’t have a bunch of intellectuals walking around out there in the wild, wandering in an abstract sense about the meaning of life when there’s a sabre-toothed tiger lurking behind the next bush.
Individual and Collective Trauma:
"Trauma is not just an individual issue. It's a public health issue. It's a social issue." - Gabor Mate
Dr. Mate underscores that trauma can be both an individual and collective issue. Traumatic experiences can be passed down from one generation to another through epigenetic mechanisms and cultural norms. Trauma can also perpetuate systemic oppression and inequality, creating cycles of trauma that impact entire communities.
Effects of Trauma:
"Trauma is an injury, not a choice." - Gabor Mate
Dr. Mate stresses that the effects of trauma are not a choice, but rather a result of the injury that trauma inflicts on the mind and body. Trauma can have a profound impact on a person's emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physical functioning. It can lead to symptoms such as anxiety, depression, dissociation, hypervigilance, and physical pain.
If you are interested in checking out the stress cycle and how it relates to burnout you can check it out here
Let’s look at the different types of trauma responses that you could be experiencing without even knowing.
The Four F’s: Fight, Flight, Freeze, And Fawn
The fight/flight response is an innate automatic response to danger in all human beings it is a natural process in the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response of a combination of these. The unique wiring of your nervous system will allow you to respond whichever way
A fight response is triggered when a person suddenly responds aggressively to something threatening. A flight response is triggered when a person responds to a perceived threat by fleeing, or symbolically, by launching into hyperactivity.
A freeze response is triggered when a person, realizing resistance is futile, gives up, numbs out into dissociation, and/or collapses as if accepting the inevitability of being hurt.
A fawn response is triggered when a person responds to a threat by trying to be pleasing or helpful in order to appease and forestall an attacker. This fourfold response potential will heretofore be referred to as the 4Fs.
If you identified with one in particular skip ahead and read on. See if it sheds a little more light on you and how you are navigating your reality.
Credits: Ananda Healing Project - https://www.ananda.org/prayers/prayer-resources/
Fight Trauma Type
Fight types avoid any sense of real intimacy by unconsciously isolating themselves and pushing others away by alienation with their anger and controlling demands as a way to meet their unmet need of unconditional love. Someone stuck also avoids vulnerable relating because his past makes him believe that he will be attacked or abandoned as he was in childhood. This is why showing vulnerability often triggers painful emotional flashbacks. With having this unrealistic demand of the unmet childhood need it also cancels out the possibility of any real intimacy. It can seem narcissistic but fight types will convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with them and everyone else is the problem. Eventually showing up as super defensive reactions and responses in relationships and never feeling as if you can switch off and actually let your guard down. It’s this me against the world thing that can eventually lead to perpetuating your own burnout cycle.
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According to research fight types who are not true narcissists, however, benefit from understanding the costly price they pay for controlling others with intimidation, criticism, and sarcasm.
Learning to understand the downward spiral of power and alienation that comes from being over-controlling. It looks like this: excessive use of power triggers a fearful emotional withdrawal in the other, which makes the fight type feel even more abandoned. In turn, becomes more outraged and contemptuous, which then further distances the connection to the people close to you This once again increases the fight type’s rage and disgust, which then creates increasing distance and the withholding of warmth
Flight Trauma Type
The flight response intends to protect us from pain through escape. The flight response can make it challenging to slow down and rest; it might feel like you’re constantly rushing, worrying, or panicking. When the obsessive/compulsive flight type is not doing, she is worrying and planning about doing. Many flight types are so busy trying to stay one step ahead of their pain. You may feel like you have to micromanage everything to maintain control.
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The flight types that I have worked with are so busy trying to stay one step ahead of their pain that introspecting out loud in the therapy hour is the only time they find for self-examination. As a recovering flight type learning and understanding trauma helped me start the healing process and deconstruct my inner critic and her perfectionistic demands.
This is especially important with workaholics who often admit their addiction but secretly hold onto it as a badge of pride and superiority.
Freeze Trauma Type
The freeze response is closely related to tonic immobility, a state in which the body becomes motionless (like a possum). It’s also related to dissociation (disconnecting from one or more aspects of our experience). When it becomes chronic, it is also closely related to depression.
In terms of self-regulation, the freeze response arises when the charge in the sympathetic nervous system climbs too high (fight/flight isn’t working!) and thus the parasympathetic activates at the same time, effectively buffering the high SNS charge. People in freeze response look like they’re in a low-energy state, but it’s really a well-camouflaged high-energy state. It’s very costly to the body, especially when it sticks around longer than it needs to. And the nervous system can be slow to come out of this state.
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It can sometimes be seen in prey animals that are about to be killed. I have seen nature films of small animals in the jaws of a predator that show it letting go so thoroughly that its death appears to be painless. However, the opioid production that some freeze types have access to only takes the survivor so far before its numbing properties no longer function. Numbed out contentment then morphs into serious depression. This in turn can lead to addictive self-medicating with substances like alcohol, marijuana, and narcotics. Alternatively, the freeze type can gravitate toward ever-escalating regimens of antidepressants and other numbing agents.
Fawn Trauma Type
The fawn response, like all types of coping mechanisms, can be changed over time with awareness, commitment, and if needed be focused on intentional healing in a safe space like therapy or coaching. In co-dependent types of relationships these tendencies can slip in and people-pleasing, although it relieves the tension at the moment, is not a solution for a healthy and lasting relationship.
A little more on the fawn trauma response. When you don’t have access to (or your body doesn’t feel like it would be wise to move towards) fight, flight, or freeze - the fawn response shows up. In effect, you’re keeping what fees “threatening” close to you and ingratiating yourself towards it because it feels safer than fighting against it, running away from it, or going numb (remember, this is often underneath your level of consciousness so you’re not aware of it). This is most often learned in childhood, when we may be operating under the attachment dilemma of depending on our parents for survival, as well as love and connection, when they may not have had the healthiest ways of expressing these qualities or even know how to express them at all.
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Understanding = learning, and consuming Psycho-education about your parents’/caretakers' role in creating your fawn response has helped so much in my own journey and my clients. Many instantly grasped that their codependence comes from having been continuously attacked and shamed as selfish for even the most basic level of healthy self-interest. One client in her forties judged herself so harshly and called herself selfish so many times, seeing her needs as a burden until one night she had the epiphany that she was by far not selfish enough. T. Fawns need to understand that fear of being attacked for lapses in ingratiation causes them to forfeit their boundaries, rights and needs.
Understanding this dynamic is a necessary but not sufficient step in recovery. There are many codependents who realize their liking for self-abandonment, but who instantly forget everything they know when self-assertion is appropriate in their relationships. In early recovery, I became increasingly aware in new dating situations of how much I was over-eliciting my date. Eventually, I was struck by how little I had to say for myself, but I found it very difficult to break the pattern. To break free of their codependence, survivors must learn to stay present to the fear that triggers the self-abandonment of the fawn response.
Recovering requires us to become increasingly mindful of our automatic matching and mirroring behaviours. This helps us decrease the habit of reflexively agreeing with everything that anyone says. It is a great accomplishment to significantly reduce verbal matching. It is an even more powerful achievement to reduce inauthentic emotional mirroring.
The Fifth Trauma Response that No one is talking about.
Hybrid Trauma Type
I believe there is a little bit of all 4 F’s in all of us, even though we often default to 1 or 2 of them. Knowing how the complex combinations can affect you can be EXTREMELY helpful when you're moving through recovery and healing. There are, of course, few pure types. Moreover, each type is on a continuum that runs from mild to extreme.
Most trauma survivors are also hybrids of the 4F’s. Most of us have a backup response that we go to when our primary one is not effective enough. When neither of these work, we generally then have a third or fourth “go to” position.
Conclusion
Every day, I meet people standing at vastly different crossroads. Some are battling through unimaginable challenges, while others just need that small nudge, a permission slip, to let joy back in. The common thread between them? The willingness to open up, receive love, and believe that they are truly worthy of the peace they so deeply crave.
You can’t outrun trauma by burying it deep inside, pretending it doesn’t exist. It will only widen the gap between who you are today and the person you’re meant to be. But here’s the powerful truth: healing isn’t some mystical, unattainable goal reserved for people who spend hours meditating or diving into endless self-help rituals. Your healed self is already within you—whole, deserving, and available right now.
Healing isn’t about force; it’s about gentleness. It’s about sitting with yourself, bearing witness to every part, even the parts you’ve been told to hide. Trauma wants you to believe you’re small, stuck, and separate from the life of beauty, love, and peace you deserve. But you don’t need to “fix” yourself to be worthy of that life. True healing comes from breathing love into every unmet need, every part of you that feels forgotten.
If you've tried the traditional approaches and still feel unseen or unheard, I invite you to reach out. Let’s take this journey together—one that is intimate, practical, and rooted in truly being witnessed.
You are not alone. And you are more than enough.
Sending you love and light.
