Understanding Survivor Responses Through the Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn and Flop Model: A Guide for Institutions
The Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn and Flop model is commonly used to help explain how trauma can affect a survivor's communication, behaviour, memory and decision-making.
Less commonly recognised is that institutions can display similar responses when faced with allegations of abuse, criticism, legal risk, reputational concerns or organisational uncertainty.
This article explores how the Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn and Flop framework can help institutions better understand both survivor responses and their own organisational reactions to threat, creating a stronger foundation for safe, fair and effective responses to abuse and harm.
How Trauma Shapes Survivor Behaviour
When survivors of abuse come forward, institutions often focus on the disclosure itself. Yet the way a survivor communicates, engages, withdraws, remembers, questions, delays, or reacts is frequently shaped by trauma rather than choice. Understanding the Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn and Flop responses can help institutions avoid misinterpreting survivor behaviour and reduce the risk of causing further harm.
Trauma-informed practice requires more than empathy. It requires institutions to recognise that trauma affects memory, communication, behaviour, trust and decision making. Survivors may not disclose clearly, consistently, or all at once, and expecting them to do so can unintentionally recreate the powerlessness and fear associated with the original abuse.
Looking Beyond the Survivor
The Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn and Flop framework is often used to describe how individuals respond to threat. However, institutions themselves can display similar patterns when faced with allegations of abuse, criticism, legal risk, reputational harm or organisational uncertainty.
Understanding these responses from an institutional perspective can provide a valuable lens for examining whether responses are truly survivor-centred, trauma-informed and accountable.
Fight: Defending the Institution
A fight response occurs when an institution perceives a disclosure as a threat and reacts defensively.
This might involve:
Challenging the survivor's credibility prematurely.
Adopting an adversarial posture.
Focusing on legal risk before safety and care.
Seeking to protect organisational reputation.
Responding with denial, minimisation or counter-allegations.
While institutions have legitimate obligations regarding evidence and procedural fairness, a fight response can result in survivors feeling attacked rather than heard.
A trauma-informed approach recognises that questioning, inconsistencies, delayed disclosures or emotional reactions do not automatically indicate unreliability. Trauma can affect memory, communication and behaviour in complex ways.
Trauma-informed alternative
Instead of asking:
"Can we prove this happened?"
First ask:
"How do we ensure this person feels safe, heard and supported while we determine what can be established?"
Flight: Avoiding the Issue
The flight response occurs when institutions seek to escape discomfort rather than engage with it.
Examples include:
Ignoring concerns.
Delaying decisions.
Referring matters endlessly between departments.
Over-relying on legal advice to avoid difficult conversations.
Failing to communicate with survivors.
Allowing investigations or reviews to drift indefinitely.
For survivors, institutional avoidance can be profoundly re-traumatising. Many survivors already carry experiences of not being believed, being ignored, or being left to manage harm alone.
As one of Kooyoora's internal papers notes, trauma-informed systems replace uncertainty and avoidance with predictable communication, clear decision points and transparent processes.
Trauma-informed alternative
Provide:
Clear timelines.
Regular updates.
Transparent explanations.
Defined decision points.
Honest communication when delays occur.
Silence is rarely neutral. Survivors often experience it as another form of abandonment.
Freeze: Becoming Paralysed
Freeze occurs when an institution becomes overwhelmed by complexity, uncertainty or fear of making the wrong decision.
Signs may include:
Endless information gathering.
Deferred responsibility.
Multiple reviews without action.
Unclear ownership.
Fear of reputational consequences.
Inability to make decisions despite sufficient information.
Many institutions experiencing freeze convince themselves they are being thorough when in reality they have become immobilised.
Survivors may perceive this as indifference or unwillingness to act.
Research and trauma literature describe freeze as a common response when neither confrontation nor escape feels possible. Survivors themselves may also experience freeze, appearing numb, disconnected, inconsistent or unable to engage.
Trauma-informed alternative
Replace paralysis with:
Defined governance structures.
Escalation pathways.
Clear decision-making authority.
Risk-based responses.
Regular review points.
Progress is often more important than perfection.
Fawn: Prioritising Harmony Over Accountability
Fawn involves attempting to maintain safety by appeasing others.
Institutionally, this can look like:
Protecting influential individuals.
Prioritising relationships over accountability.
Avoiding conflict with leaders or stakeholders.
Seeking consensus at all costs.
Softening findings to reduce discomfort.
Excessive concern about organisational unity.
While usually well-intentioned, fawning can lead organisations to preserve existing power structures rather than confront harmful realities.
Survivors frequently report feeling that institutions cared more about preserving relationships than addressing harm.
Research on trauma responses describes fawning as a survival strategy involving accommodation, compliance and appeasement to reduce perceived threat.
Trauma-informed alternative
Ask:
"Whose comfort are we protecting?"
True accountability sometimes requires institutions to tolerate discomfort, conflict and criticism.
Flop: Organisational Surrender
Flop is perhaps the least discussed institutional response.
In individuals, flop refers to a state of collapse, submission or shutdown when resistance feels impossible. Trauma literature describes it as a form of physiological shutdown or going limp.
Institutionally, flop can manifest as:
Accepting dysfunction as inevitable.
Believing change is impossible.
Superficial compliance without meaningful reform.
Cynicism about safeguarding.
Viewing abuse as an unfortunate but unavoidable reality.
Institutions experiencing flop may continue operating but have effectively surrendered their capacity for meaningful improvement.
Trauma-informed alternative
Focus on:
Continuous learning.
Survivor-informed improvement.
Independent oversight.
Measurable safeguarding outcomes.
Transparent accountability.
Healing is not passive. Neither is prevention.
What Good Institutional Responses Look Like
A trauma-informed institution seeks to avoid all five defensive responses and instead adopts a sixth position: intentional regulation.
This means:
Listening before reacting.
Communicating predictably.
Acting consistently.
Maintaining procedural fairness.
Supporting survivor agency.
Making timely decisions.
Being transparent about limitations.
Remaining accountable for outcomes.
Importantly, survivor-centred practice does not mean abandoning fairness or evidence. Rather, it means adapting processes to minimise harm while preserving integrity and accountability. Believing and respecting a survivor is not inconsistent with procedural fairness; in fact, procedural fairness strengthens trust and legitimacy for everyone involved.
Choosing a Different Response
The Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn and Flop model reminds us that responses to trauma are not limited to survivors. Institutions also react to threat. The critical question is whether those reactions serve safety, accountability and healing, or whether they protect the institution at the expense of the people it exists to serve.
The most effective institutions recognise their own defensive tendencies and consciously choose a different path. They replace denial with curiosity, avoidance with engagement, paralysis with action, appeasement with accountability, and resignation with reform.
In doing so, they create something survivors often describe as being more important than any individual outcome: the experience of being heard, respected and treated with dignity.