“Flock” and “Fix”: Proposed Additions to “Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn”

“While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse. And whoever isolates himself and does not participate in such being together, forfeits power and becomes impotent, no matter how great his strength and how valid his reasons.” – Hannah Arendt

“How can we raise our voices and fight back—we who have no other weapons than poems and paintings and stories? … We shall meet in the place where we can light a candle together, in the place where we can find and grow humanity and hope. We shall meet in love, light, dignity, equality, resilience, renewal, respect for pluralism, appreciation for diversity, and most importantly, democracy. We shall also meet in global sisterhood, solidarity, kindness and empathy. But forgive me, if I tell you that, sometimes, we will also meet in melancholy.” – Elif Shafak

“Opposition brings together, and from discord comes perfect harmony.” – Heraclitus

The term “fight or flight” was coined in 1915 by Harvard physiology professor Walter B. Cannon to describe the instinctive, near automatic response of the sympathetic nervous system in people and animals to perceived threats. Sometimes referred to as the “acute stress response” or “hyperarousal,” the perception of a real or potential danger by the brain’s amygdala rapidly triggers a cascade of physical and neurological responses that have evolved over time to favor responses that are most likely to result in our survival.

In the 1970’s, “fight or flight” was expanded to include “freeze,” a common response of the parasympathetic nervous system to stress that can often be observed in children, people who are unable to successfully fight or flee, and some individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This description was later revised by psychotherapist Pete Walker to include the word “fawn,” which is also a common response to potential danger, especially in cases of childhood abuse, and in situations involving bullying, blackmail, threats, fear of retaliation, and repeated traumatic experiences.

The purpose of each of these reactions is to prepare the body and mind to act immediately and energetically, without thinking, in ways that seem likely to protect us from harm. These obviously include counter-attacking, running away, freezing to avoid notice, and fawning or currying favor with the attacker, a response Anna Freud called “identification with the aggressor,” in which victims try to avoid harm by placating, or even imitating the perpetrator and seeking to overcome feelings of shame or powerlessness by turning aggressively against anyone the aggressor opposes.

To these four responses I believe we can add a fifth: that both people and animals who find themselves in danger may also, as initially suggested by Stephen Porges’ “polyvagal theory,” seek safety by “flocking” together, and gaining strength or solace through numbers and social cohesion. Thus, people in danger or conflict may instinctively seek the company of others – perhaps in order to “hide in plain sight,” or confuse the aggressor with multiple targets, or appear less obvious a target, or out-number and more easily defend and counter-attack, or simply assuage the fear and panic that dissipate when we share companionship with others.

When flocking is combined with fighting, the upshot is violence or warfare. When it is combined with fleeing, the result is fear or panic. But when it is combined with social connection and empathy, or with dialogue, negotiation, and mediation, the outcome is not a negative, antagonistic “flocking against,” but a positive, collaborative “flocking with,” that results in greater unity and openings to problem solving, negotiated solutions, mediated resolutions, and restorative outcomes.

These openings suggest the presence of a sixth, still less instinctual response, which can be seen when conflicted parties work together to “fix” the problem at its’ source. This “fix” response to danger and conflict resides in the brain’s “executive function,” and may lead in new directions, using naturally synergistic group processes like dialogues, joint problem solving, collaborative negotiation, consensus building, envisioning, brainstorming, and transformative mediation. 

A significant advantage for conflict resolvers, coaches, and therapists of adding “flock” as a fifth response and “fix” as a sixth is that, of all these responses to danger and conflict, only the last two enable hostile parties to evolve to higher order collaborative, mediative, and transformational responses that do not simply attack, escape, avoid, or mimic perceived aggression, but are potentially able to transform, transcend, and overcome it.

Flocking also helps us explain some of the conflict behaviors people commonly engage in, like gossiping and forming cliques; and heroic, selfless, altruistic efforts to help others; as well as dogmatic attitudes, autocratic leaders, and insistence on group alignment and loyalty; while fixing helps us shift the cyclical, repetitive dynamics of aggression and counter-attack and “tit for tat” retaliations, into more skillful and less costly responses that do not demonize or isolate the “perpetrator,” or weaken the “victim’s” capacity for empathy and reconciliation, or keep the conflict going, but aim at reconciliation, a return to open-heartedness, and restoring positive relationships between Self and Other.

This is not to say that “fight, flight, freeze, and fawn” have not been immensely useful in surviving countless dangers, but that, especially in “modern,” “civilized,” “urban,” continuing relationships – as in marriages, families, schools, communities, and workplaces — as well as in interdependent and tightly connected social, economic, political, and environmental settings, these “lower order” responses can result in harmful outcomes that might otherwise be avoided or minimized, and allow the deeper problems that created the conflict to continue unabated.

With flocking, a wider range of more diverse, “higher order” responses can be set in motion simultaneously, permitting multiple options, and allowing synergies and creative combinations to arise, as can be seen, for example, in the murmuration of birds or fish, and the “swarm intelligence” of many animals, even insects. While the focus of the first four responses is on individual and personal survival, the focus of flocking is on group success, allowing altruism, empathy, and bonding to play a more powerful and positive role, leading to highly successful group processes like circles, dialogues, storytelling, therapeutic support groups, and empathy, consensus, and team building.

Similarly, the focus of fixing is on assisting and enabling people to shift from fighting, fleeing, freezing, and fawning to taking small, practical, strategic steps to minimize or reduce the danger, and potentially prevent the conflict by using advanced methodologies like joint problem solving, collaborative negotiation, conflict resolution systems design, solution-focused psychotherapy, restorative justice, and transformational mediation in an effort to eliminate the problem at its’ chronic source.

As mediators, we are often unsuccessful when we try to help conflicted parties move directly from fighting, fleeing, freezing, and fawning to joint problem solving, as these are simple, rough, limited, involuntary responses that are controlled by the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. Flocking and fixing, on the other hand, allow us to use far more complex, richer, consciously chosen, fine-tunable social and strategic approaches centered in the prefrontal cortex, like the anterior cingulate cortex, ventromedial and dorsolateral areas, and anterior insula, which promote the adoption of higher order conflict resolution skills that do not replicate threatening behaviors or turn them in a circle.

To help conflicted parties transition to flocking and fixing, it is of course necessary for mediators not simply to bring people together, but to do so positively and constructively, by seeking to make people aware of and dismantle the hostile attitudes, negative expectations, and adversarial behaviors that keep them locked in competitive, warlike dynamics. By doing so, we can encourage more welcoming, engaging, honest, empathetic, collaborative, synergistic, and problem-solving responses.

“Fixing” is, of course, far slower and less instinctual, reactive, and instantaneous than the first four responses, yet it is also more positive, reflective, and strategic, allowing people to envision their responses to conflict as a movement or progression, in Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s words, from fast “system 1” to slow “system 2” responses — in other words, from reactivity to logical and sequential thinking, and from short- to long-term solutions — and as mathematician David Bessis advocates, to a meditative, innovative, insightful, synergistic “system 3” mixture of the two.

By inviting conflicted parties to shift from fighting and fleeing to flocking and fixing, we implicitly encourage them to evolve from lower order responses to conflict, like violence (fighting), avoidance (fleeing), apathy (freezing) and complicity (fawning) to higher order, proactive, generative, constructive, and collective approaches, like joint problem solving, consensus building, collaborative negotiation, ODR, and mediation.

While every mediation is, on some level, an effort to transition from lower to higher order responses to conflict, getting people to a place where they are able to step back from their fear and stress, gain perspective and insight, reflect, and become willing to surrender their simplest, most visceral, and on a primitive level, emotionally satisfying responses to perceived slights or threats from others. This is no simple task, especially when groups, classes, races, religions, cultures, and nations are in competition or at war with one another, and when the mountain of their grief, guilt, and unresolved grievances extends over decades –even millennia — and seem insurmountable.

Yet the costs of not choosing and figuring out how to transition to higher order responses like flocking and fixing are escalating, and the consequences increasingly serious and possibly beyond our capacity to control, especially as we move into AI and nearly instantaneous advanced technologies. It is therefore essential for us to discover ways of flocking — not against, but with one another — enabling us to transform lower order instinctual responses into higher order insightful efforts that expand our ability to work strategically, sustainably, and collaboratively to fix our common problems.