What is fawning?
In response to a perceived threat, like meeting a threatening animal in the wild, the primitive part of our brain (limbic system) is wired to trigger our autonomic nervous system into a response that will help protect us from danger, and ensure our survival.
If we are able to retaliate with strength that can overpower the threat, we engage the ‘fight’ mechanism. If we are able to run away, we engage the ‘flight’ mechanism. If we can’t get away at all using fight or flight, the ‘freeze’ mechanism is engaged and we shut down to numb the pain associated with the experience, and help us cope. In the wild this would be seen as ‘playing dead’. Until 2013, these were the 3 most documented stress responses to perceived threat. They are automatic, controlled by the autonomic nervous system and are there to ensure our survival.
In 2013, Pete Walker in his book ‘Complex PTSD, From Surviving to Thriving’, coined a term to describe the fourth stress or trauma response, ‘Fawning’.
Fawning is a strategy, or learned response to trauma, often initiated in childhood as a result of living in an environment, or being exposed to circumstances where it felt unsafe for a child to express their true desires, feelings and preferences.
Fear of big emotions from caregivers or siblings including anger or rage, fear of chaos or conflict in the home, an environment or caregivers that are stressed, fear of abuse, emotional neglect or experiences of judgment, authoritarian or hyper-critical parenting, unrealistic standards or expectations all contribute to this learned response.
Even the lack of an attuned caregiver (or what we could commonly describe as an emotionally unavailable adult) can lead to the child forming this kind of response. For example, if as a child you felt sad, unhappy, angry, confused, bewildered, lonely or bullied, and you had no-one to speak to or confide in, those feelings had to go somewhere. They are denigrated and buried deep within.
In order to survive in this kind of environment as a young person who is still highly dependent on one’s caregivers for survival, and developmentally predisposed to taking everything they experience from their caregivers personally, adapts who they are, how they are, what they say, how they say it and what they do, in order to get their needs met and maintain a sense of safety, security, love and connection.
This is the tension between authenticity and attachment. If it is not safe to be authentic, the child will adapt themselves in whatever way they can in order to maintain attachment.
With all of the conditions stated earlier, you can see how and why this learned response is so prevalent in our modern world.
Though this is an adaptation that served well in childhood years, as an adult where there is no further danger to one’s survival, it becomes maladaptive and sets the stage for patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that lead to a lifetime of emotional, psychological, relational and physical health challenges.
Some of the common issues that people who have learned to fawn encounter, include:
Feeling like they are wearing a mask - smiling when feeling anything but happy underneath
Appear to be functioning well on the outisde - I’m fine
Overriding their own needs to please or appease another
Afraid to ask for what they want, or not even know what they want or need
Dull themselves down, not wanting to be too big, too bright, too loud etc.
Codependence in relationships
Overexplaining or oversharing
Fear of rejection, criticism, judgment and conflict
Struggle around receiving ‘real love’ as love has always felt conditional
Struggles with boundaries, often surrendering them and finding it difficult to say no
Anxiety around disappointing or upsetting another
Hypervigilance around other people’s emotions and feelings - reading others to know how to respond (this pattern by the way is very common in therapists - case in point!)
Deferring authority to others - “I’m not sure what I want, you choose”
Feeling disconnected from themeselves, not knowing what their heart really feels
Suppressing or repressing emotions
Pre-thinking what you have to say and anticipating others reactions
Feeling guilt, shame and experiencing self-criticism and self-judgment
Feeling lonely even when with others
Feeling like nobody really knows you
Difficulty with ‘letting go’ and having fun, feeling free, allowing the inner-child to play
Coping mechanisms including using food for comfort, shopping, alcohol, overexercising, overworking, overfunctioning, overthinking etc.
Being externally focused on validation around weight, image, credentials, success etc.
Internally drained from peace-keeping
Live with a general experience of not feeling ‘safe’
In therapy the person who fawns might want to ‘please’ the therapist
Regulate their own anxiety by pointing out their own perceived issues
In terms of physical health, because the adaptation is designed to ‘numb’ and shut down one’s internal compass and natural impulses, it can lead to a host of chronic health issues as one learns to suppress their feeling life and disconnect from the body.
Gabor Mate, in his latest book ‘The Myth of Normal’ discusses this at length in his recollection of working with clients with chronic health issues. He offers numerous examples of chronically ill patients who’s healing journey, (alongside conventional and/or complimentary health support) has been profoundly supported by doing the work to reclaim their authenticity after years of denying themselves the freedom to feel the entire range of their human emotions, and the right to be themselves. He says the common denominator amongst all the people he has seen significant healing in was supported by questioning everything they had thought and felt about themselves, retaining only what serves their wholeness. A return to the authentic self.
Gabor (2022) states “Can we acquire that learning, before life forces it upon us? Do we have to wait to “suffer into truth”? (pp. 403)
For most of us, suffering into truth is the gateway and we begin looking inside when a crisis arrives:
Relationship Challenges
Divorce
Family/Parenting Challenges
Professional Challenges
Health challenges
Financial Challenges etc.
In terms of our physical health, we know that a regulated nervous system creates the optimum conditions for overall wellbeing, and a dysregulated (stressed) system predisposes us to stress related conditions.
On this basis alone, and with the understanding that this pattern leads to many additional challenges in our emotional, psychological and relational lives, devoting the time to come back to who we are as our most authentic self is an incredibly valuable gift to ourselves.