Do you find yourself being the friend that fits around other people’s plans? Do you present an attentive bubbly personality, whilst inside you’re constantly questioning whether what you said was correct and if you could have done better? Are you always on alert to the needs of others, second guessing what might make their life easier, often to the detriment of your own wellbeing?
If you recognise yourself in these questions, this may be your fawn response in action. The least well known of the four trauma responses, fawning shows up in my counselling practice much more prevalently than fight, flight or freeze. I’ve previously written about the well-known three and you can find links to those pieces at the bottom of this page. In this post, I’ll describe what the fawn response is, how it shows up, issues it causes and why it’s so overlooked.
What is fawning?
Fawning is a safety mechanism which involves pleasing and accommodating people who made you feel unsafe.
The term originates from the work of Pete Walker, a specialist in complex trauma1 . I like his definition of fawning – seeking ‘safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others’2. This gives sense to the enmeshment that’s symptomatic of the response and can make it so difficult to become aware of.
As a child, fawners are likely to have discovered that when they tried to assert themselves or fight back, it was met by punishment or admonishment. In order to feel safe in their home environment, they chose a different approach. They discovered the best approach for them was to be useful and supportive to others. Thereby, merging with the expectations of the threat to remain safe rather than standing up for themselves.
Unlike trauma responses triggered by a single event, fawning typically develops as a response to ongoing relational events. This falls under the definition of complex trauma. And the issue with complex trauma is that it’s insidious. It becomes your normal. Therefore, it can become hard to distinguish between the reality of dealing with other people’s difficult behaviour and second guessing whether it’s just your inability to cope.
A key aspect about the circumstances under which the fawn response comes into being is that usually other adults – e.g. another parent – colluded with the abusive parent rather than providing the emotional support the individual needed. As a result, the fawner learnt they couldn’t rely on anyone else and became fiercely independent.
How fawning shows up in everyday life
Fawning can be hard to comprehend because it shows up in differing ways. For some, it can mean they amp up who they are by pushing themselves to be more successful, generous of their time or socially active. But for others it means becoming less of themselves. This can show up in low self-esteem, withholding their opinions and fitting into parameters set by others.
Some of the ways in which I spot it showing up in my clients include:
- Outsourcing their intuition by putting more emphasis on what others might think about them, than they do on what they truly believe themselves
- Putting effort into trying to fix things in their home life/workplace/relationships, in the hope they can change the behaviour of others
- A terror of telling people how they really feel or providing their opinion because of concern for the other person’s reaction
- Overcompensating through perfectionist behaviours, with a focus on anticipating the needs of others and avoiding anything which might attract criticism
The strength of fawners
It’s important to not think of a fawner as represented by an image of a shy doe-eyed deer. Fawners may play a supportive role but there’s nothing weak about them. It takes strength and guts to stay in their position. The fawners I know are not quitters. They’re the people others rely on when the going gets tough.
Why fawning is hard to detect
Fawning can be disguised as other things, such as low self-worth, anxiety, low mood, inner critic, perfectionism. And as fawning is not well known and understood, it’s hard to detect.
Where it can be discovered is when people are at a crossroad or have become frustrated with feeling stuck. When they’ve got to a point where they know they’re encountering the same patterns, in relationships, in their career, in their sense of having unfulfilled potential. Or when the demands of other issues such as their eating or mood propel them to seek help or answers.
At this point, looking at events and embodied messaging from childhood can reveal patterns and root causes which are consistent with fawning. And because we’re talking about complex trauma, it might be a whole childhood and adolescence of drip, drip instances which have created the underlying issues. Although, it’s important to note that singular traumatic events, like sexual abuse, can additionally happen to fawners but they can become normalised because the fawner’s DNA is to keep their own needs hidden from view.
The cost of fawning
Fawners have typically lost a lot, whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. For some individuals, it can be as if their growth was stunted. That their joie-de-vivre got lost in childhood. The ease and laughter of their early years ended because it was replaced by the need to curb any exuberance that might generate disapproval.
Instead, the individual minimised their own feelings and personality because their focus was on other people’s. Their needs took second place – or lower – and over time became hard to even identify. I often see how clients are detached from their true values and desires after a lifetime of not believing they deserve to have them.
The cost of fawning also includes finding it hard to relax. This is because fawners are constantly on alert to their environment. What might have started out as sensitivity to a parent can morph into being a target for a school teacher, a workplace bully or a dominant partner. The pattern can keep repeating itself. So the fawner stays on edge, scanning their environment, becoming an over analyser, constantly troubleshooting, even becoming a light sleeper.
Fawners can also be riddled with self-criticism and feel shame and embarrassment for what’s happened to them. This further depletes their sense of self-worth. They become constant strivers. Seeking out a world where they can fulfil their potential and gain the recognition they’ve been yearning for so long. Their inner worlds are often far, far removed from what they present to the world. Their internal reality is battling with the discomfort of lying and shapeshifting to maintain their shield and how at odds it is with their innate integrity and kindness.
Becoming your true self
A lot of my work with fawners begins with creating a safe space where they can finally draw back the curtains and let someone see their inner world. It’s not unusual to be the first person they’ve spoken to about the reality of their sense of self. And with fawners, it can be an entry into a whole reality they’ve hidden from view.
Once trust is established and we’ve identified presenting conditions e.g. anxiety and low self-esteem, a timeline of their life can be a valuable place to explore where their fawning began. Exploring childhood memories can be challenging because they may be absent or stifled. Or because discussing them can create guilt about criticising the people they’ve worked so hard to please. As complex trauma is central to fawning, it can also be common for a fawner to downplay what they’ve experienced. But that’s where understanding the impact of the drip, drip impact of fear and discomfort can be so important.
Alongside identifying the root causes, we look at how they are playing out in their thoughts, emotions and behaviours. We put in place new editions of beliefs which reflect who they really are. Underneath the coping strategies of an adult fawner is often a nervous system still stuck on a setting from childhood. So recovery involves finding ways to help regulate their nervous system that feel calming and supportive. Activities and routines that mean their minds can rest and they become more able to relax their bodies.
Conclusion
Recovery from fawning is, at its essence, a process of coming back to your true self. Beneath all the scaffolding built in service of others – the people pleasing, the shape shifting, the continual anticipating – there’s a person with their own values, desires, opinions and needs. Someone with real integrity and kindness that has, until now, been directed everywhere but inside themselves.
Part of coming back to your true self is learning to put yourself top of your own list. For fawners, radical self-care is not an indulgence, it’s an essential act. After a lifetime of placing others first, learning to attend to your own needs with the same care and attentiveness you have given to everyone else is hard but necessary work. Because on the other side of this is the person and life you’ve been striving to find.
If you’d like to read other posts in my series about trauma, you can find them via the links below:
The Fight Response – When Protection Looks Like Anger
The Flight Response – When Escape Feels Like Safety
The Freeze Response – When Stillness Becomes Survival
1 Pete Walker, M.A. Psychotherapy. (2003). Www.pete-Walker.com. https://www.pete-walker.com/codependencyFawnResponse.htm
2 Pete Walker, M.A. Psychotherapy. (n.d.). Www.pete-Walker.com. https://www.pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm
