Refers to a trauma response in which a person immediately moves to try to please a person to avoid any conflict and re-establish a sense of safety
If you feel like you are always last on your list, you may be acting in response to internalised trauma. Here’s what you should know about fawning:
You feel like you are giving your all in your relationships but getting very little back in return. You’re overwhelmed with work and personal commitments, but still somehow unable to say no when someone makes another request of your time. You may feel taken advantage of, worn down, and deeply hurt. To top it all off, you might be becoming aware that life has been this way for a very long time.
People have different ways of coping with past trauma, and mental health professionals have identified one response as “fawning,” or excessive people pleasing. The fawn response involves people-pleasing to the degree that an individual disconnects from their own emotions, sensations, and needs.
In childhood we require healthy, caring, and attentive adults to assist in developing social and emotional intelligence. When children are supported, they learn that stressful moments are only temporary and they can resolve into positive experiences of resiliency, or deeper connections in relationships. However, children who are abused are faced with a conflict between their need to flee a dangerous environment and their need to attach to caregivers. We are biologically driven to form an attachment to a parent or caregiver even when they also a source of critical, shaming, neglectful, or abusive behaviours.
Fawning is developed as a way to attempt to avoid or mitigate further trauma, and tends to result in co-dependency, toxic or abusive relationships, and emotional withdrawal.
Understanding the Four Different Types of Trauma Responses
Fight
If you see establishing power or dominance over others as a critical way to protect yourself, you may be exhibiting the “fight” response to trauma. This can take many forms, such as the use of physical or verbal aggression to overpower others, having extremely high standards or demands for perfection, or being unfair or harsh in personal relationships.
Flight
When a stressful situation arises — you feel the need to escape, this could be part of a “flight” response. This may include having to actually leave a situation (or attempting to avoid it entirely), engaging in obsessive-compulsive behaviour, or burying yourself in work or exercise. People dealing with a flight response often report challenges with relaxation or even simply sitting still.
Freeze
If your response to stress is like hitting a “power off” button, you are likely showing a “freeze” response to trauma. Freeze involves dissociation, and so those who respond this way are mistrustful of relationships and generally prefer to be alone. This response can also result in difficulty making decisions or getting motivated.
Fawn
A “fawn” response is brought about by the attempt to avoid conflict and trauma by appeasing people. For children, this can be defined as a need to be a “good kid” in order to escape mistreatment by an abusive or neglectful parent. As an adult, this means that in relationships, you are consistently ignoring your own needs, values, and boundaries so as to conform to what you believe others expect of you.
How to Tell if you are “Fawning” to Cope:
- You Have an Inability to Say “No”
- You Find it difficult to stand up for yourself and what you believe
- Your Guilt and Anger Go Hand-in-Hand
Often suppress own feelings and overly sympathise with the other person, even when you don’t agree.
- Disconnect Emotionally
You feel like you have no identity and its difficult to identify your feelings.
- Your Emotions Erupt in Unusual Ways
Regular suppression of emotions are often released in unrelated situations – and when you least want to.
- You Feel Responsible for the Reactions of Others
In your relationships, you are constantly explaining someone’s bad behaviour as somehow your fault.
You Feel like No One Really Knows You
Moving Past Trauma – being Free of Fawning
Through therapy, individuals who use this type of response as their default way to deal with others can learn effective strategies to create and maintain boundaries, to talk about their feelings and emotions, and to learn how to interact with others without feeling the need to constantly please.
