The fawning trauma response is one of the ‘4 F’ survival responses to trauma. The term ‘fawning’ was coined by Pete Walker, the psychotherapist who wrote the excellent book about childhood trauma ‘Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving’, which is in my recommended reading list.
Fawning
Ingrid Clayton is a clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, and trauma survivor speaking on the intersection of Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma. She combines her personal experiences of childhood trauma with her clinical background to educate others on trauma responses, trauma bonding, and trauma re-enactment. She has a free PDF ‘Trauma Recovery Self-Care Toolbox’. In the following video, she explores the fawning trauma response in further depth.
Ingrid Clayton and the fawning trauma response
The ‘4 F’ trauma responses are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. These are survival responses in which our sympathetic nervous system is overactivated: These are instinctual responses to a perceived threat. These are not conscious choices. The fawning response is where we abandon ourselves in order to seek safety. It is like extreme ‘people-pleasing.’ Fawning puts everyone else’s needs above ours. We do this out of fear: “I am not going to be ok unless you are ok.” It feels like our own survival depends on us making other people feel safe and ok. There is a lack of reciprocity. When we are stuck in the fawning trauma response, we don’t see that we need to do things differently, we think we need to keep trying harder and harder. The response is there to protect us, but it leads us to judge ourselves harshly. There is wisdom in the trauma responses and we can learn from them. Ingrid Clayton says that the "Instincts of our instincts are beautiful" to her. We subconsciously use the trauma responses to defuse conflict, when actually we should simply become present and leave the drama triangle. Fawning is a mirroring of other people's desires. In fawning, we surrender our boundaries, and there is an urge to appease, a lack of assertivness, a complete submission, an over-accommodation, even to someone who has harmed you.
So you can see that through fawning, we are inadvertently and subconsciously putting ourselves in harm's way, even as we are attempting to keep ourselves safe. Fawning is masochistic, codependent, and is not loving to oneself. When you become aware of it you can stop it and be loving and compassionate to your Self. You have been through so much. There is a solution. We can become well. The solution is to not hurt ourselves and be loving to ourselves.
Fawning is a common response after complex trauma. It is often seen in dysfunctional family systems. You find your Self privileging other people's needs. It can become a stuck, 'chronically on' trauma response. We then don't just do it when we feel threat or danger, we do it all the time. We do it even when we don't need to do it. We abandon our own sense of Self. It can be hard to get out of and to ask what you need your Self.
Fawning often goes hand in hand with trauma re-enactment. The reason for this is that safety as a child was found in allowing your Self to be exploited, emotionally abused, and people-pleasing. We found a tiny connection in this and we chase this sense of safety in our adult lives. Those were our tools as children and we keep using them. We become stuck in feeling that we only exist when we are of service to others. We need to look at how we are perpetuating those old wounds. We need to find our sense of safety that are not just all about someone else.
Fawning tends to be coupled witha low sense of Self worth, as is often seen after complex trauma. It perpetuates the idea that we are not worthy or lovable. A part of consciously coming out of a fawning trauma response is to stop looking at others to fixing everything. We need to turn our gaze back towards ourselves and choose ourselves even if we have never chose ourselves before. Over time, we learn to set healthy boundaries and choose ourselves no matter what. We then get felt experience that we are more than enough. The more we choose us the more it changes our own brain chemistry. Self-love, self-compassion, and self-care become very powerful. It is a reclaiming of ourselves and our self-worth.
Fawning can look like kindness, service, and altruism, but it is none of these things if it is at the cost of abandoning ourselves. It's not kindness or true service if we are not self-compassionate at the same time.
Heidi Priebe discusses the fawning response further in the context of day to day living and being ‘too nice’.
Heidi Priebe and fawning
Heidi Priebe says that fawning is not being too nice. No-one can be too nice. We live in a brutal world that is not considerate. The problem is not that we are too nice.
A fawn response is when we are ignoring our own wants and needs and we submit to others' wants and needs. This is how we train and condition children to behave in our current society. Children are punished if they don't listen to authority figures. We confuse the fawn response with being a nice person. Being a nice person means making your own wants and needs clear, and also listening to other people's wants and needs, and finding solutions that work for everybody. We need to tune in to our own wants and needs. Kindness is not equivalent to beind a door-mat.
According to Priebe, a fawn response occurs when what we authentically want is at odds with what another person wants, and we either dissociate from what we want, or are dishonest about what we want in order to keep the peace. This leads to resentment.
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