What is fawning? Fawning is a trauma response where a person develops people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict and to establish a sense of safety. In other words, the fawn trauma response is a type of coping mechanism that survivors of complex trauma adopt to "appease" their abusers.
In a nutshell, “fawning” is the use of people-pleasing to diffuse conflict, feel more secure in relationships, and earn the approval of others. It's a maladaptive way of creating safety in our connections with others by essentially mirroring the imagined expectations and desires of other people.
What types of trauma cause the fawn response? The fawn response is most commonly associated with childhood trauma and complex trauma — types of trauma that arise from repeat events, such as abuse or childhood neglect — rather than single-event trauma, such as an accident.
Fawns will often be seen lying curled up or on their abdomens, flattening themselves to the ground. A fawn lying flat out on its side with its legs extended is in severe distress. A hungry fawn will cry out for its mother.
The fight response is your body's way of facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight means your body urges you to run from danger. Freeze is your body's inability to move or act against a threat. Fawn is your body's stress response to try to please someone to avoid conflict.
Understanding the Fawn Response
The fawn response involves trying to appease or please a person who is both a care provider and a source of threat. Examples of fawning include: “I hoped that by caring for them they might care for me.” “I never showed my true feelings for fear of retaliation.”
Masking is a form of “social camouflage” where a person adapts their behaviour in order to be accepted in an environment. Fawning is an attempt to avoid conflict by appeasing people.
Smiling when discussing trauma is a way to minimize the traumatic experience. It communicates the notion that what happened “wasn't so bad.” This is a common strategy that trauma survivors use in an attempt to maintain a connection to caretakers who were their perpetrators.
Middle English speakers adapted an Old English word meaning "to rejoice" to create the verb faunen, which shifted in spelling over time to become fawn.
Fawning or people-pleasing can often be traced back to an event or series of events that caused a person to experience PTSD, more specifically Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD.
(transitive) To praise excessively in order to get a favor.
Some key signs of the fawning trauma response include: You look to others to see how you feel in a relationship or situation. You have trouble identifying your feelings, even if you're alone. You feel like you have no identity or authentic self.
The 'fawn' response is an instinctual response associated with a need to avoid conflict and trauma via appeasing behaviors. For children, fawning behaviors can be a maladaptive survival or coping response which developed as a means of coping with a non-nurturing or abusive parent.
A fourth, less discussed, response to trauma is called fawning, or people-pleasing. The fawn response is a coping mechanism in which individuals develop people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict, pacify their abusers, and create a sense of safety.
The fawn response, a term coined by therapist Pete Walker, describes (often unconscious) behavior that aims to please, appease, and pacify the threat in an effort to keep yourself safe from further harm.
The freeze, flop, friend, fight or flight reactions are immediate, automatic and instinctive responses to fear. Understanding them a little might help you make sense of your experiences and feelings.
The silent treatment can stem from trauma, such as attachment injuries, trauma bond relationships, and childhood trauma, so it may also be especially helpful to consider individual therapy. This can help each individual dig deeper into their individual behaviors and help improve relational and communication skills.
Fight: facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight: running away from the danger. Freeze: unable to move or act against a threat. Fawn: immediately acting to try to please to avoid any conflict.