When we feel threatened, our brains click over to fight or flight or freeze mode. We attack, run, or seize up. And this does not help us address the “threat” intelligently.
Ok, we have heard this before.
But there are two more (tricky) manifestations of this that also counterproductive, but less obviously so.
(1) FAWN: If the threat is coming from a specific person, we might fawn, resorting to flattery to appease the person and diminish the threat.
And
(2) FIX: If the threat is a situation, we might jump straight to try to fix the situation before understanding it in its totality.
The challenge, then, is to sit with the discomfort of the thing we perceive as the threat (that is, to resist whatever manifestation of the fight-flight-freeze-fawn-fix we are prone to) and to take the time we need to respond (instead of react) to the situation at hand.
Paul's Blog 