Nervous System
Stress Response Quiz: Find Your Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn Pattern
Your body has a default reaction to threat. And it was programmed long before you had any say in it.
What this measures
Your body had a default reaction to threat long before you had a say in it. Fight, flight, and freeze were named by Walter Cannon almost a century ago. Pete Walker added a fourth in 2013 (fawn) for situations where the threat was also the attachment figure, and direct opposition was not survivable. The response that runs your nervous system today was usually wired in early, by environments that no longer exist. Recognising it is the difference between reacting from a survival template and choosing.
How it works
The seven scenario questions are grounded in Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory and Pete Walker's 2013 framework on the fawn response. Each scenario (a critical email, a friend's confrontation, a family member's dismissive comment) presents four real first-impulse responses, one per state. Your dominant pattern is the percentage of responses that map to each state. The design measures behavioural defaults rather than self-perception, since most people's stated stress style differs from what their body actually does.
What you'll get
You'll get your dominant response named (Fighter, Fleer, Freezer, or Fawner) with a written profile of how that pattern shows up in work and relationships, plus a three-step protocol. Fighters get the 90-second pause from Jill Bolte Taylor's research. Freezers get sensory grounding to disrupt dorsal vagal shutdown. Fawners get a daily micro-boundary practice to rebuild access to their own preferences.