6 Defensive Behaviors That Show Up at Work—and How Psychological Safety Can Help

The language of “fight, flight, or freeze” to describe the body’s instinctive survival responses to perceived threats is commonly understood. But some clinicians and researchers now recognize six distinct threat responses: fight, flight, freeze, please/appease (sometimes called fawning), attach/cry for help, and collapse. While our threat responses originate in our earliest experiences of safety and danger, they don’t disappear when we grow up. They remain deeply wired survival strategies—patterns we unconsciously carry with us into adult life.