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

The language of “combat, flight, or freeze” to explain the physique’s instinctive survival responses to perceived threats is usually understood. However some clinicians and researchers now acknowledge six distinct risk responses: combat, flight, freeze, please/appease (typically known as fawning), connect/cry for assist, and collapse. Whereas our risk responses originate in our earliest experiences of security and hazard, they don’t disappear after we develop up. They continue to be deeply wired survival methods—patterns we unconsciously carry with us into grownup life.