Fight, Flight and Freeze

Fight, Flight, and Freeze are the three biological responses to danger. There doesn't even have to be a real danger. If your nose smells danger, then your body is going to come out fighting, fleeing, or freezing. Body's choice. The survival instinct takes over the mind and the body. Even after extensive training, professionals can still find their bodies reacting differently than planned.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze, do not reflect moral values. That's just biology, that's all it is. Moral values are displayed in what you do afterward, when you're back in control.

YouTube commentator, "Beau of the Fifth Column," says it better than I do. See especially, "Let's talk about juries, freezing, and being into it." May 26, 2020.

Members of the jury can't use the concept of Freeze, if they don't know about it. Defense attorneys point out that she didn't have any of the defendant's skin under her fingernails, and say it was consensual and she just changed her mind later. And prosecutors don't call a witness to talk about Freeze. Jurors have to bring the knowledge of Freeze with them, into the courtroom.

"This doesn't happen to good girls. It doesn't happen with men you know and trust." When these beliefs that have structured your life start warping all around you, and reality is no longer real, you dissociate. Freeze. You "go into shock." There won't be flesh under the fingernails. Absence of fight, is not consent.

Wiley Hollingsworth,

Pullman