Have you ever been in one of those situations where you had to make an immediate decision? One of those emergency type moments when you feel threatened or in danger? It’s in these moments that we have one of three typical reactions. We are pretty aware of the two most common: fight or flight. But the third one is pretty popular and equally important. Flee is the final F in the F3 triangle.

Knowing your F3 response is critical, not just in crazy cases like a zombie apocalypse or a terror attack, but it will help determine how you deal with conflict in general. When you’re called on in class and you don’t like to talk in front of people, your F3 will kick in immediately. When you’re cut off on the free way typically your F3 will take over. When your lost in an unfamiliar city while driving in rush hour, your F3 will default your behavior.

So what do each of these mean for how we react? It might seem like this should be simple knowledge but there are some nuances to each of these that are important.

We’ll start with my personal F3 category – Fight. This is the category that means when the stuff hits the fan, we generally come out swinging. Fight doesn’t just mean literally fighting, actually to the contrary most of the time it’s not a real fight at all. The fight response is one of a reaction. Those of us in this category will generally take fear and try to over compensate for a fear filled moment by becoming bigger than our fear. Fear is essential and dangerous at the same time, which is something we’ll cover in a future post.

The Fight F3 response sees any type of conflict as something that has to be managed, right away. The challenge with this mentality is that we often will shoot from the hip and tend to over react to a scenario we’re facing. If you’re a Fighter on the F3 scale, hit the pause button for a predetermined amount of time. Don’t fire back an email when someone angers you. Don’t react right away to something done to you. Take time to evaluate what type of response will yield the best possible results. Showing someone who’s boss in the moment might give you 60 seconds of satisfaction but in the process you can easily end up hurting someone who cares about you (and all because of what is likely a misunderstanding or overreaction).

The second F3 response is known as Flight. And it is pretty much what it sounds like – you run from the problem. Now don’t get me wrong each of these have their time and place and none of them are inherently wrong in and of themselves, but knowing your default will help you better manage how often you lean into each category. The Flight response means that when any kind of trouble arises you simply walk away, or run away depending on the intensity. And it’s not getting away to avoid unnecessary conflict, it’s running away because you’re too afraid to deal with the problem head on.

The Flight F3 response sees any type of conflict as something you need to avoid and you’ll go out of your way to get as far from it as possible. The challenge here is that in an effort to avoid any type of conflict or have a hard conversation with someone with whom you don’t agree or by whom you feel challenged, you’ll end up losing friendships and causing undue strife in a relationship. Your F3 Flight response could be the reason your circle grows smaller over the years.

Finally the third F3 response type is called Freeze and it means just what it says. When trouble arises the Freeze response makes you unable to move, sometimes literally. Freeze is what happens when you’re so flustered that you can’t make a decision. Your brain becomes so fogged over with what is happening around you that you can’t make a rational decision. So you instead of doing anything (fight or flight) you just do nothing. Literally nothing. This would be the equivalent of seeing a burning building with someone hanging from a window and you not thinking you have the skills to help so you just stand back and watch in terror. Now I’m not saying you should run into the house and put yourself in danger, although that’s what we Fight people would do. But there are other options like call for emergency help!

You see it’s not just the big hairy problems that manifest these F3 response types. It’s the everyday situations as well. We can see it in social media and even friendships in general. Someone says something you don’t like or their opinion doesn’t line up with your opinion so what do you do? Do you lash out at them and get angry? Do you essentially cancel them by walking away from the friendship altogether? Do you sit dumbfounded with no answer or thought at all? None of these are the right way to handle this type of situation and for certain they are not the Christian way to do it. All too often we let our F3 over rule our way of Jesus method of handling problems.

The point here is simply to make you aware of your default so you can better keep it under control. So whether you normally fight, flight or freeze you have the power to adjust your response if you hit the pause button and collect yourself before you lash out, run away or collapse in fear.