Beyond the Alphabet Soup

The Parade of New Models

In recent years, trauma terminology has proliferated at an extraordinary rate. What began as the familiar fight-or-flight response has expanded to include freeze, fawn, flop, flail, faint, and friend. Each addition arrives with its own advocates, literature, and clinical applications. The mnemonic convenience is obvious—alliteration helps us remember. But we might pause to ask: are these genuinely distinct patterns, or are we creating artificial boundaries in what is actually a continuous, dynamic field of responses?

This question matters more than it might initially appear. When we name something, we tend to reify it—to treat it as if it has fixed boundaries and stable properties. We begin to diagnose people as fight types or freeze types, rather than recognizing these as momentary patterns in a constantly shifting system. We develop separate treatments for separate responses, when perhaps what's needed is a more fluid understanding of how nervous systems adapt across time and context.

I don't mean to dismiss the value of these frameworks entirely. Models are useful—indispensable, even—for organizing clinical observations and guiding interventions. I use trauma models (and developmental models) extensively in my own work. But they are not the things they describe. The map is not the territory, and the danger lies in mistaking our convenient categorizations for the irreducible complexity of actual human beings responding to threat.

The Scientific Turn Toward Complexity

What's striking is that while trauma theory has been proliferating categories, much of contemporary science has been moving in precisely the opposite direction—toward understanding biological and psychological phenomena as complex dynamical systems that resist simple categorization.

In neuroscience, dynamical systems theory has become increasingly influential for understanding how brain networks coordinate and adapt over time (Beer, 2014; Favela, 2020; Seguin et al., 2023). Rather than treating neural activity as a series of discrete states, this approach recognizes that the brain exists as a continuous, nonlinear system where patterns emerge, dissolve, and reorganize. As Favela (2020) notes, "studying systems like biological organisms and their behavior may require an understanding of interactivity, dynamics, and emergent order" rather than fixed categories.

This shift extends to psychotherapy research, where a systematic review found growing application of dynamical systems and complexity theory to understand how change unfolds in therapeutic relationships (Klocek et al., 2023). The review identified 41 studies using methods that account for nonlinearity, phase transitions, and self-organization—concepts that stand in stark contrast to categorical diagnoses and treatment protocols.

Perhaps most relevant to our understanding of trauma, research on physiological regulation has revealed profound fractal organization across multiple systems. The healthy human heartbeat, far from being metronomically regular, displays complex fractal variability with self-similar patterns across multiple time scales (Goldberger et al., 2002; Ivanov et al., 1999). Remarkably, this complexity diminishes in illness. Patients with congestive heart failure show less variable, more predictably regular heart rhythms—the opposite of what homeostatic theories would predict. Health, it seems, requires complexity, not constancy.

Werner (2010) documents fractal organization "at all levels of the nervous system," from the branching patterns of individual neurons to the temporal dynamics of brain activity. The nervous system, like trees and coastlines and river deltas, displays self-similarity: patterns that repeat at different scales. A neuron's dendritic tree branches like a river delta, which branches like a circulatory system, which branches like neural networks. The same organizational principles operate across vastly different scales.

Self-Similarity and the Problem of Categories

This fractal quality has profound implications for how we understand trauma responses. If nervous system organization is fundamentally self-similar across scales, then the question "How many trauma responses are there?" may be asking the wrong thing. It's like asking how many branches are on a tree. The answer depends entirely on the scale you're examining and where you draw your boundaries.

Consider what self-similarity means in practice. A small section of a fractal object, when magnified, resembles the whole. The edge of a coastline shows the same jagged complexity whether you're viewing it from a satellite or examining a single meter of shoreline. Similarly, trauma responses may show self-similar patterns at different scales of observation.

• At the level of immediate physiology: heart rate changes, muscle tension, breathing patterns.
• At the level of behavioral and evolutionary response to stressful situations: fight, flight, freeze, or various combinations.
• At the level of sustained adaptation to ongoing stress: anxiety, depression, dissociation.
• At the level of life patterns: relationship styles, career choices, addictive behaviors.

Each level displays recognizable patterns that echo patterns at other levels. Someone who freezes in immediate threat may also "freeze" in their life—withdrawing from engagement, waiting passively for change that never comes. Someone who fights in crisis may also maintain a fighting stance in their approach to work, relationships, and self-care.

The developmental psychologist Esther Thelen described this beautifully in her work on motor development, showing how children's movements emerge from the interaction of multiple systems rather than from predetermined programs (Thelen & Smith, 1994, as cited in Favela, 2020). What appears to be a distinct developmental "stage" is actually a temporary stable pattern in a continuously changing system. The pattern emerges, holds for a while, then dissolves as conditions change.

Perhaps what we call fight, flight, and freeze aren't three distinct programs but rather temporary stable patterns—what dynamical systems theorists call "attractors"—that emerge from the interaction of multiple factors: threat intensity, available energy, prior learning, social context, and countless others. In some conditions, the system settles into fight. In others, it tips into flight. In still others, freeze becomes the dominant pattern. But these are descriptions of moments, not fixed types.

The Clinical Utility of Vagueness

Here's what I've noticed in forty years of clinical practice: rigid adherence to categorical models often interferes with actually seeing the person in front of you. When I'm trying to determine whether someone is displaying a fight response or a fawn response or a flop response, I'm not actually present to the dynamic, shifting quality of their experience. I'm sorting them into boxes.

But when I simply follow the patterns without needing to name them precisely—when I notice how energy moves in their system, what happens when safety increases or decreases, how their responses shift across contexts—something different becomes possible. I'm tracking a process rather than applying a diagnosis. I'm curious rather than certain.

This doesn't mean abandoning frameworks entirely. The language of fight, flight, and freeze can be extremely useful, particularly when it helps someone recognize their own patterns and understand them as adaptive rather than pathological. Van der Kolk's (2014) work has been transformative in helping trauma survivors understand that their symptoms make sense—that they're not broken but responding logically to overwhelming experiences. Herman's (1992) framework for understanding complex trauma provided essential validation for survivors whose experiences didn't fit neat diagnostic categories.

When we assert that specific symptoms always indicate specific types of trauma, or that specific treatments match specific response patterns, we may be imposing order that doesn't actually exist in the system. This is a particular challenge in situations where clinicians use models for educational and treatment-planning purposes (as I do in my Guide for Therapists). It can be easy forget that the model is is simply a heuristic, a lens, a way of gathering up themes for the purposes of establishing a place to stand within the complexity.

A Contemporary Illustration

One particularly vivid example of this tension appears in Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2021, 2023), which has become extraordinarily influential in trauma treatment. The theory proposes three distinct neural circuits corresponding to social engagement, fight/flight, and shutdown—a kind of neurobiological threefold categorization that maps neatly onto our clinical observations.

The appeal is obvious: it provides a clear, biological explanation for phenomena therapists observe daily. It suggests specific interventions: if someone is in dorsal vagal shutdown, we help them climb back up the autonomic ladder. If they're in sympathetic activation, we help them access ventral vagal regulation.

Yet the theory has also faced substantive criticism. A systematic review found limited evidence supporting the predicted relationships between vagal tone and social behavior (Haeyen, 2024). The neat three-circuit model may oversimplify neural regulation that's actually far more distributed and interactive. The proposed evolutionary sequence—where "newer" circuits supposedly inhibit "older" ones—doesn't align well with current understanding of how evolution actually works.

This doesn't make Polyvagal Theory useless. Many clinicians find it helpful for organizing interventions. But it illustrates how our desire for clear, biological explanations can lead us to embrace models more strongly than the evidence warrants.

The trajectory of PolyVagal theory within the research literature is typical and illustrative of all models—the DSM, Bodynamic Theory, Somatic Experiencing, Attachment Theory—they can be useful, but they do not precisely fit the reality of human beings.

Moving With Rather Than Against Complexity

What might it mean to work with complexity rather than trying to reduce it? Several principles emerge:

Track patterns rather than labeling types. Instead of asking "Is this person a freeze type or a fawn type?" we might ask "What patterns am I noticing in how this person's system responds to different conditions?" The shift is subtle but significant. We're looking at process rather than imposing categories.

Expect variability. Healthy systems show complex variability, not predictable regularity (Goldberger et al., 2002). Someone who always responds the same way to threat may actually be stuck in a rigid pattern that indicates dysregulation. Flexibility—the capacity to shift responses as context changes—may be a better indicator of healing than consistent adherence to any single pattern.

Hold models lightly. Whether it's Polyvagal Theory, attachment styles, or the ever-expanding alphabet of trauma responses, models help us organize observations and guide interventions. But they're tools, not truth. The moment we mistake the model for the actual complexity of the person in front of us, we've stopped being truly present.

Honor irreducibility. Some aspects of human experience simply can't be reduced to models. The grief of the parent who lost a child, the rage of the person whose trust was violated, the despair of someone who sees no way forward—these aren't symptoms to be categorized; they are human responses that deserve to be witnessed in their full, terrible specificity.

The Fractal Nature of Recovery and Healing

If trauma responses show fractal, self-similar organization, what might this suggest about recovery?

Traditional treatment models often present healing as a linear progression: from acute symptoms to reduced symptoms to eventual resolution. But fractals aren't linear. They're recursive, with patterns repeating at different scales. Recovery works this way too.

Someone might resolve acute PTSD symptoms; the flashbacks and hypervigilance diminish, sleep improves, they can talk about what happened without dissociating. Real progress. Yet years later, in a different context, they might encounter an experience that activates a familiar pattern at a different scale. Not a failure of treatment but rather the self-similar quality of nervous system organization revealing itself.

This suggests that recovery isn't about permanently eliminating patterns but rather about increasing flexibility—the capacity to move through patterns without getting stuck, to recognize them without being controlled by them. It's about adding complexity rather than achieving some imagined perfect stability.

Levine (2010) describes this beautifully in his Somatic Experiencing work: healing happens not by forcing change but by creating conditions where the nervous system can complete cycles that trauma interrupted. We're not fixing broken people; we're facilitating natural processes that got stuck. The nervous system already knows how to heal; our job is to stop interfering with that knowing.

The Humility of Uncertainty

After four decades of clinical work, I'm less certain about trauma responses than I was when I began. I've watched too many people defy categories, recover through means that weren't supposed to work, fail treatments that should have succeeded. I've witnessed healing emerge from relationships that had nothing to do with trauma expertise, and I've seen technically excellent trauma treatment accomplish nothing (I see that most often).

This uncertainty isn't resignation. It's recognition that human beings are genuinely complex—not just complicated in ways we haven't figured out yet, but complex in ways that resist complete mapping. Models help us navigate this complexity, but they're provisional tools, not final answers.

Not everything that matters can be measured. Not everything that helps can be manualized (even though I wrote a manual!). And not every person will fit the model, no matter how comprehensive we make it.

Reflection Questions for Clinicians and Clients

• What patterns do you notice in your own responses to threat or stress? Do these patterns shift across different contexts, or do you tend toward one primary response?
  
• When you think about your own healing or growth, does it feel more like a linear progression or like a process with repeating themes at different scales?
  
• How might it change your clinical work (or your understanding of your own experience) to think of trauma responses as temporary attractors in a complex system rather than as fixed types?

Sources

Beer, R. D. (2014). Dynamical systems and embedded cognition. In K. Frankish & W. M. Ramsey (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of artificial intelligence (pp. 128-150). Cambridge University Press.

Favela, L. H. (2020). Cognitive science as complexity science. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 11(6), e1525. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1525

Goldberger, A. L., Peng, C. K., & Lipsitz, L. A. (2002). What is physiologic complexity and how does it change with aging and disease? Neurobiology of Aging, 23(1), 23-26.

Haeyen, S. (2024). Polyvagal theory and art therapy: Theoretical and clinical perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1352025.

Herman, J. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

Herman, J. (2023). Truth and repair: How trauma survivors envision justice. Basic Books.

Ivanov, P. C., Amaral, L. A., Goldberger, A. L., Havlin, S., Rosenblum, M. G., Struzik, Z. R., & Stanley, H. E. (1999). Multifractality in human heartbeat dynamics. Nature, 399(6735), 461-465.

Klocek, A., Premus, J., & Řiháček, T. (2023). Applying dynamic systems theory and complexity theory methods in psychotherapy research: A systematic literature review. Psychotherapy Research, 34(6), 828-844. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2023.2252169

Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.

Porges, S. W. (2021). Polyvagal theory: A biobehavioral journey to sociality. Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology, 7, 100069. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpnec.2021.100069

Porges, S. W. (2023). Our polyvagal world: How safety and trauma change us. W. W. Norton.

Seguin, C., Sporns, O., Zalesky, A., & Calamante, F. (2023). Network communication models improve the behavioral and functional predictive utility of the human structural connectome. Network Neuroscience, 7(2), 661-684.

Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. MIT Press.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.

Werner, G. (2010). Fractals in the nervous system: Conceptual implications for theoretical neuroscience. Frontiers in Physiology, 1, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2010.00015