The fawn response is a trauma response in which people abandon their own needs and boundaries to appease someone else. “Fawners” seek safety by merging their own needs with the wishes, needs, and demands of others. [1]
It is this sense of safety that fawners often crave, which can lead to them becoming entangled in abusive relationships with domineering partners, relatives, or other caregivers. A fawner will forego their own wants and feelings to prevent retaliation or harm from their abusive companion. [2]
Fawning can have a distressing impact on an individual's mental health; however, psychotherapy and at-home practices can help sufferers comprehend and overcome it.
- Fawning is one of four commonly described trauma responses and involves seeking safety through appeasement rather than confrontation, escape, or shutdown.
- The response can develop from childhood relational trauma and may later appear as chronic people-pleasing, difficulty setting boundaries, and suppressing personal needs.
- Therapy, boundary-setting, journaling, and other self-management strategies may help people recognize and change fawning patterns.
Understanding the fawn response
Fawning is one of the four trauma responses, alongside fight, flight, and freeze, first described by Peter Walker in 2003. [3] Unlike the others, which describe a person confronting or fleeing from danger, the fawn response is performed when these other options are unavailable, and a person instead seeks to appease their abuser.
Rather than resist the threat, fawners learn to find comfort in compliance, appeasement, and acquiescence to their abuser’s wishes. As time goes by, fawning can evolve into a go-to response in other areas of life, presenting as a chronic pattern of people-pleasing, with the fawner, in turn, showing diminished regard for their own needs. [3]
How do you develop a fawn response?
The fawn response often develops in response to childhood trauma, where a parent, caregiver, or other close adult plays the role of abuser. [4] As a child cannot fight back or escape from this person, they aim to placate them instead.
Children learn to read their parent’s moods and verbal cues, and act accordingly to avoid the abuse, which can be physical, sexual, or verbal. As the child grows, this behavior becomes hard-wired as a survival strategy across different relationships in their professional and personal lives. [4]
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn: How trauma and survival mechanisms work
When faced with a threat, our bodies are thought to exhibit one of four trauma responses. We just discussed fawning, which is one of these. The others include: [5]
- Fight: Confronting the threat head-on with an aggressive response. This can be either physical or verbal.
- Flight: Avoiding the danger is seen as a priority by physically retreating from the situation.
- Freeze: When a person’s body shuts down, rendering them immobile and unable to act.
These responses are involuntary; they are brought on by the body’s threat-detection system. An individual’s dominant response is shaped by their lived experiences. [5]
Identifying the fawn response in yourself
Recognizing the fawn response in yourself can be challenging, as the behaviors feel like ingrained personality traits rather than a trauma response. Common signs include: [4][6]
- Consistently placing others' needs above your own.
- Difficulty setting boundaries.
- Excessive apologizing.
- Finding authentic self-expression is difficult.
- Always acting agreeable to reduce conflict.
- Overexplaining the motivations behind your actions.
- Experiencing untoward emotional responses when spending time with people who you aren’t close with. These can include emotional outbursts with strangers.
- Finding the act of ‘saying no’ a challenge.
- Ignoring your own beliefs and values in favor of others around you.
Fawning presents more subtly than fight, flight, and freezing. Described as hiding in plain sight, fawning can look like empathy, helpfulness, and selflessness. [3] These are desirable qualities valued by societies around the world, meaning the internal distress felt by the fawner often goes unnoticed, both by the fawner and those surrounding them. [3]
Support
If you are concerned that you may be fawning, seek advice from your medical provider as soon as possible. They will listen with empathy, and you can map out your next steps together.
If you think you are in an abusive relationship, support is available if you need it. If you're in the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline offers free, confidential support 24/7.
- Visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
- Call 800-799-SAFE (7233) to speak with someone directly.
- Text "START" to 88788.
What having a fawn response suggests about you
Having a fawn response doesn’t reflect badly on you. It suggests that at a point in your life, appeasing someone felt like a survival mechanism. [7]
Fawning indicates that you suffered relational trauma, where advocating for your own needs felt hazardous. So, instead of doing so, you adapted to reading those around you and striving for the least harmful outcome.
There’s a strength of character that underpins that mindset. Recognizing that a fawn response isn’t a weakness, but a pattern that can be unlearned, is a helpful way of approaching the subject.
How the fawn response affects well-being
Living with a fawn response can be extremely detrimental to a person’s well-being. Though they may appear outwardly calm and conciliatory, they are suffering psychologically. [8]
Fawning can lead to: [8]
- Emotional overload and subsequent burnout.
- Depersonalization and dissociation.
- Repressed anger and bitterness.
- Depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A person can fawn for years without realizing they are harming themselves. This pattern of always putting others’ needs first can lead to a weakened sense of identity, as they aren’t conscious of what they want or need. [8]
Living in a perennial state of hypervigilance can also lead to physical symptoms, as well as mental health conditions. Fatigue, tension, and digestive issues are all potential consequences of having a sympathetic nervous system that is always on high alert. [9]
Additionally, fawning can limit the ability to make genuine social connections, due to a fawner’s desire to appease rather than from an authentic relationship built on reciprocity. This can feel off-putting to others and leave the fawner feeling resentful and further isolated. [8]
Mental health conditions linked with the fawn response
The fawn response is linked to several mental health conditions, including chronic anxiety and depression, due to the psychological toll it takes to constantly appease an abuser while neglecting our own needs. [8]
However, the mental health condition most notably linked with the fawn response is Complex PTSD, which develops from prolonged trauma starting in childhood. [7] Pete Walker, the psychotherapist who coined the term, specialized in complex PTSD (C-PTSD) [7] and wrote extensively about the interplay between fawning and codependency in children who go on to develop C-PTSD in adulthood.
Methods for reducing the fawn response
Fawning is a practice people adopt as a survival mechanism. Many fawners are replicating behavioral patterns learned while coping with traumatic relationships from their past.
Recognizing fawning as a stress response rather than a personality trait is the first step towards change. The following approaches range from methods you can refine while on your own to working with a trained professional, and they’re often most effective when combined:
Self management
As fawning feels like second nature, suppressing the instinct requires recognizing the pattern before trying to diverge from it. You can:
- Pause when you feel the urge to agree and query whether you are only doing so to appease the person you’re with. [5]
- Practice making small assertions with people you trust. You could try expressing a preference for a particular cuisine for dinner, for instance. Take note of anything you like or want; these are small steps to rebuilding your sense of self. [8]
- Write down how you feel whenever you notice yourself fawning, or when you experience discomfort from asserting your own preference. Journaling can help you identify triggers and provide an outlet for private expression without feeling judged. [5]
- Breathwork can help when feeling stressed or overwhelmed while trying to cope with your fawn response. Techniques like Cyclic Sighing, 4-7-8 Technique, and Box Breathing could all help calm your nervous system during times of distress. [10]
Professional help
Psychotherapy can be a helpful way to understand the root cause of the trauma that has brought on your fawn response before attempting to move past it with your therapist.
In your therapy sessions, you can learn effective strategies for identifying triggers, setting boundaries, and interacting with others without feeling compelled to please or appease them.
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