Fawning: Trauma, People-Pleasing, and Healing

Trauma overwhelms an individual’s capacity to cope with stressful incidents. FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE and FAWNING are the four known fear responses. Fawning refers to a coping mechanism which is characterized by resorting to people pleasing and submissive behaviors. It aids in avoiding conflicts and ensuring safety from the potential dangers. It is a way to comply to the culprits in order to prevent the situations from escalating further. People tend to assent to the potential stressors not because they consented to abuse or assault but in order to prevent the same. This mechanism once reinforced makes the person not tend to their own needs in unhealthy ways.

According to Pete Walker, M.A., Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) is often associated with a fawn response. He’s a marriage family therapist who is credited with coining the term fawning, in his book – Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. People tend to develop fawning into their routine habit which leads to catering to all the needs of the perpetuator, eventually ignoring one’s own. This coping style is endured into the adulthood where they might be devoured by the narcissists, creating a dangerous cycle of codependency. Abusers may exert control over finances, behaviors, and interpersonal relationships while also gaslighting those who fawn, causing them to doubt their own perceptions and further reinforcing their dependence on the abusers.

Trauma affects personality traits like emotionality and agreeableness (Weinberg et al; 2021). This further leads to forfeiture of one’s own needs, preferences and desires. Appeasing to the potential threat’s demands one often finds it difficult to build healthy boundaries. Signs to identify fawning
response:

• Curbing one’s own needs at the expense of the perpetuator
• Inability to express one’s ideas, desires and self
• Difficulty in saying NO
• Over-apologizing
• Fixing problems of people
• Flying under the radar
• Catering to the demands of others
• Believing an unambiguous event related to the abuser as one’s fault
• Issues with maintaining healthy boundaries
• Denial of one’s pain, discomfort and agony
• Disturbance in self-identity or authentic self
• Low self-esteem
• Codependency and reliance on others
• Seeking external approval or validation
• Maintaining a sense of emotional safety
• Altering one’s preferences to align with others
• Feeling exhausted when around new people/social situations

Physical signs and symptoms:

• Restricted or shallow breathing
• Pale skin, coldness and numbness
• Jittery movements/uncontrollable shaking
• Immobility of muscles
• Immune system dysfunction
• Eating disorders
• Hypersensitivity
• Disturbances of gut microbiome
• Heaviness in eyes
• Jaw pain

Activating the neural pathways responsible for appeasement presents a significant challenge to the nervous system and is not an easily accessible behavior. Instead, it necessitates a recalibration of the autonomic state, which strategically inhibits the adaptive threat responses of the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) or the dorsal vagal system (freeze/collapse).

Fawning is a maladaptive survival response while repressing the fight response of trauma. Fawning is related to the relationship between a child and the caregiver. Neglectful and authoritarian parenting styles during one’s childhood may lay the foundation of fawning as a trauma response. It is accompanied by feelings of inadequacy, shame, guilt and often includes childhood abuse, neglect and isolation.

Read More: Different Parenting Styles: How it Affects the Development of the Child

Moreover, this can lead to conforming behaviors like choosing a vocational stream only to please one’s parents or complimenting an abuser to avoid conflicts. Fawning isn’t an act of kindness, humanity or generosity, it rather stems from trauma subjected to individual differences. A child might develop this coping mechanism in order to avoid punishment from an abusive or non-nurturing parent and thus ends up resisting abuse by being non-assertive. Furthermore, children displaying signs of fawning are preoccupied with their caregiver’s emotional needs and might be overly cautious while engaging in conversations.

Fawning might evolve as a trauma response due to insecure attachment styles developed during childhood as one might feel not important enough when their needs were unmet by the caregivers leading to low self-esteem thus one eventually engages in people pleasing behaviors. One is likely to
seek external validation thus enforcing a vicious cycle of codependency. Codependency or relationship addiction makes an individual not enforce interpersonal boundaries and someone else exerts control over one’s everyday activities. Michelle Halle quoted that codependency is an outgrowth of unmet childhood needs. Thus, one tends to engage in people pleasing activities to meet these needs of belonging, affection, praise and recognition.

Traumatic events which leads to development of fawning response:

• Small t trauma – Bullying, harassment, interpersonal conflicts, childhood neglect: they are not recognized by the society and is less in intensity but it’s cumulative effect adds up to the stress quotient as it’s frequency is more.
• Big T trauma: Domestic violence, childhood abuse, systemic abuse: they are high in intensity and are recognized by the society.

“It ends with us” was released on 9 th August, 2024 in cinemas across the globe encircling the vicious cycle of domestic violence. The protagonist, Lily Bloom, endures a traumatic childhood as she witnesses her father viciously beating her mother. Despite the physical abuse, her mother remains with him, often giving in to his demands to avoid his violent outbursts. This cycle comes full circle when Lily’s husband, Ryle Kincaid, slaps her while she tries to help him. Later, he pushes her down the stairs, and despite the abuse, she lets him care for her and consoles him again, completely overlooking his wrongdoing. Ryle then attempts to assault her on the couch; Lily repeatedly expresses her love and pleads with him to stop. Nevertheless, she continues to care for him, exemplifying a pattern of fawning behavior. The film ends with Lily giving birth to a daughter, declaring an end to the cycle of violence, and she finally breaks free from her fawning response and forgiving nature.

An individual portraying signs of fawning might involve in tactical acts of excessive love, compromise and peacemaking so that they end up feeling exhausted. Imagine a full tank of water that is gradually drained, ounce by ounce, as a person constantly prioritizes the needs of others. This continues until they feel completely exhausted, empty, and hollow, with no one to replenish their tank. This perpetual depletion leaves them feeling unable to stand up for themselves, as their resources are utterly exhausted.

Self–help tips for fawning:

• Practice self-compassion: It prevents from blaming oneself for unambiguous events
• Connect with oneself: This aids in discovering one’s desires and needs which were repressed
• Paying attention to bodily sensations: Fawning leads to disconnection with one’s emotions, listening to bodily sensations helps one to rejuvenate with their feelings and retaliate the maladaptive thoughts
• Journaling: It helps to reflect upon one’s actions and behaviors

Therapeutic Interventions:

• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): It’s a somatosensory modality which helps one reprocess traumatic events through various eye movements (bilateral stimulation). Since, trauma is often stored in nonverbal and implicit memory systems, getting access to bodily sensations helps retrieve those traumatic incidents.
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): This helps one challenge negative and maladaptive techniques and reinforce positive ones for the overall wellbeing.
• Trauma-focused therapy: Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) and trauma – informed PTSD treatment focuses on processing traumatic incidents, maintain healthy boundaries and practice self-compassion.

Thus, becoming aware about one’s pattern of behaviors is a crucial step in overcoming fawning. Furthermore, one needs to validate their feelings and experiences to change their maladaptive thoughts. Building mutually-fulfilling and satisfying relationships requires setting healthy boundaries and limiting contact to those who hinder the same. Benefits of social support substantially affects one’s resilience, coping styles and facilitates healing from traumatic incidents. Lastly, valuing oneself by catering to one’s hobbies, desires and goals aids in accomplishment of freeing oneself from seeking external approval and validation of self-worth.