When danger strikes, people often imagine the same instinctive sequence: fight back or run. But trauma does not always look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes, survival can look like cooperation.
A person facing a frightening or threatening situation may remain unusually calm, comply with requests, try to keep the other person happy or simply behave as though everything is normal. To an observer, that reaction can seem puzzling, even suspicious. Why would someone cooperate with a person they fear?
