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.
Pete Walker coined the term fawn and defines it through the following: “The Fawn response is one of four defensive reactions to ongoing trauma. Those who fawn tend to put the needs and wants of others ahead of themselves at the cost of the health of their own egos, and the protection of and compassion for themselves.”
A fawn response, also called submit, is common among codependents and typical in trauma-bonded relationships with narcissists and abusers. When fawning, we seek to please and appease someone to avoid conflict. Internally, we're unable to regulate our emotions. We frantically look to someone else to normalize them.
Fawning is an unconscious attempt to keep us safe and maintain connection in an unsafe environment or relationship. Fawning can become habituated, appearing like personality, without ever knowing its origins as a traumatic response to threat.
The fawn response is when an individual tries to avoid or minimize distress or danger by pleasing and appeasing the threat. Someone responding in this way would do whatever they can to keep the threat, or abuser, happy despite their own needs and wants.
What is fawning? Fawning is a trauma response where a person develops people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict and establish a sense of safety. In other words, the fawn trauma response is a type of coping mechanism that survivors of complex trauma adapt to "appease" their abusers.
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.
Fawning is a trauma response that is typical in trauma-bonded relationships and common in codependency. Fawning behavior is an attempt to appease or please our partner to avoid conflict. When fawning, we prioritize our attachment in order to feel safe.
Childhood trauma is often a root cause of codependency. They don't always result, but for many people codependent relationships are a response to unaddressed past traumas. One reason may be that childhood trauma is usually family-centered: abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or even just divorce and fighting.
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.” “I was always walking on eggshells; I never knew when they would explode”
Fawn & the Polyvagal framework
In terms of polyvagal theory, when we neurocept (subconsciously perceive) a certain level of danger, the fawn response is one of the possible trauma responses that our body uses for survival purposes. The fawn response involves both Fight/Flight and Freeze activation at the same time.
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are a broader collection of natural bodily reactions to stressful, frightening, or dangerous events. This sympathetic nervous system response dates back to our ancestors coming face-to-face with dangerous animals.
Fight: facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight: running away from danger. Freeze: unable to move or act against a threat. Fawn: immediately acting to try to please to avoid any conflict.
But repetitive, nearly constant apologies for every little thing—or, what Psychologist Paige Carambio, PsyD calls, “apologizing for existing”—can actually be an after-effect of trauma, a self-preservation technique survivors may think they still need to utilize in order to protect themselves.
Over-explaining means describing something to an excessive degree, whereas oversharing is the disclosure of an inappropriate amount of information and detail about your personal life. These fall under the fawn trauma response (see podcast #302 for more information on the different trauma responses).
In adolescents or adults, fawning behaviors can develop in response to an abusive relationship with an intimate partner. Fawns learn to overly accommodate the scary person so that they can manage their own fears. A fawn believes "if you're ok, then I am ok."
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.
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.
Fawn Trauma Response
The Fawn response entails identity confusion, having no boundaries, codependency, and being a people pleaser. This response involves a need to appease the perceived threat, often at the expense of our own needs and well-being.
The Fawn response is a trauma response that is characterized by self-abandonment in relationships and overly-focusing on the needs of others. The Fawn Response is chronic, compulsive people-pleasing, which most often begins in childhood as a result of relational trauma.
The responses are usually referred to as the 4Fs – Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn and have evolved as a survival mechanism to help us react quickly to life-threatening situations.
There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'. 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.