While Dr. Amanda Weiss and I were developing our Understanding Your Stress Response Quiz, I took it myself.
My results showed that one of my strongest stress responses was flight-the instinct to avoid or escape what feels stressful or threatening.
I thought the quiz was broken.
I’ve always thought of myself as someone who stands up, takes action, and moves toward hard things. Avoider? That didn’t sound like me.
So I emailed Dr. Amanda.
She reminded me that tools like this aren’t the end-all, be-all. They offer insight based on our current state, how we understand the questions, and the language we have available to describe our experiences. But she also encouraged me not to immediately reject what I was seeing. Maybe there was something there worth exploring.
So I sat with it.
And I started noticing things.
Conversations I had avoided. People I stayed away from after conflict. Decisions I put off because I didn’t want to deal with them.
Apparently, I do avoid things.
That’s also when I began to understand these stress responses differently. Flight doesn’t always mean literally running away.
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn can show up in ordinary moments: avoiding a conversation, procrastinating on a decision, struggling to set a boundary, shutting down, getting defensive, or trying to make everything okay for everyone else.
Knowing this hasn’t made my flight response disappear, but it has helped me notice it more.
Sometimes I see it afterward. Sometimes I catch it while it’s happening. And increasingly, I can recognize it before I act on it.
That’s where this kind of self-awareness becomes useful.
Survival Mode can be automatic. Awareness creates a little space between what we’re experiencing and what we do next. And in that space, we have an opportunity to respond with greater intention and compassion.
The goal isn’t to label ourselves or decide that one response is good or bad. It’s to get curious about our patterns so we have more choice in how we show up.
Our free Understanding Your Stress Response Quiz can help you explore how fight, flight, freeze, and fawn might show up for you.
Whatever your results are, consider them an invitation to notice, not a verdict on who you are.