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Why do victims of violent attacks sometimes take no immediate action, and how can we learn to react appropriately?
Anne Barnfield
London, Ontario, Canada
A violent attack is a highly stressful situation. In the past, it was thought that responses to this were the classic “fight or flight”, to fight back or flee. More recently, the concept was modified to “fight, flight or freeze”, which acknowledges that, in some cases, an individual doesn’t immediately react.
These actions are part of the “alarm” stage of the stress response (followed by resistance and exhaustion). In this stage high physiological arousal occurs; the…
