Recognizing the Fawn Response – What You Need to Know
Trauma isn’t a straightforward experience simply defined by a tragedy or life-changing event. It can be caused by any kind of emotional disturbance that causes a person to struggle with coping. It can impact us physically, emotionally, and mentally. Many people experience trauma emotionally and physically throughout defined periods in their lives, and everyone experiences and manages their trauma differently through the four types of trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
The fawn response is often a coping mechanism that can be developed early on in life, growing up in an unpredictable home or with an abusive parent. It doesn’t just start in early childhood. You can develop a fawn response anytime in life if you’ve ever been with an emotionally abusive partner and dealt with narcissistic abuse from anyone in your inner circle.
With fawning, you become more appealing to the threat when the situation becomes more threatening, and you do everything in your power to avoid the conflict and create a safe space. The fawning response can be an unhealthy coping method that can damage your mental, emotional, and physical health.
What is the Fawn Response?
The fawn response is a reaction to a traumatic situation where you become a soft, loving, people-pleasing fawn to calm down someone big, angry, and emotionally abusive to establish safety and security.
People who have experienced psychological or physical abuse or dealt with a non-nurturing individual can develop the fawn trauma response to survive and cope.
It’s a way to avoid conflict altogether. Many people who develop a fawn response turn it into a normal behavior pattern that can manifest in high-conflict relationships where emotional abuse is prevalent. Narcissists are dangerous to people with fawning behaviors. They will single them out and build a relationship with them and create a sense of codependency which can be difficult to escape from.
How to Recognize the Fawn Response
The fawn response is difficult to identify when a person has already normalized the behavior due to it developing in childhood. But when you’re an adult, you may just recognize it as a defense mechanism. It can appear with other symptoms of PTSD or on its own. Some of the common ways to recognize the fawn response include:
- Having difficulty saying no and setting boundaries with friends, family, and colleagues
- Monitoring the people around you for their moods
- Feeling the need to make anyone around you happy with affection, flattery, gifts, and more
- Putting other’s needs, feelings, beliefs, and preferences before your own
- Avoiding conflict in any way
- Difficult expressing yourself
- You struggle with expressing your emotions or feelings even on your own
Fawning tends to take over your life and make you feel as if you are not yourself and being yourself is no longer safe. Recognizing the fawn response is the first step toward finding peace and healing.
How to Free Yourself from Fawning
Once you recognize the symptoms of a fawn response, there are ways to heal and improve your overall health. When you’re in a narcissistic or emotionally abusive relationship, it can be harder than just beginning to work on yourself. You have to realize that you’re in an abusive relationship before you can improve your life.
The number one thing you can do for yourself is to start coaching with someone you can trust. They can help you identify the roots that have taken shape throughout the relationships in your life and help support you in your growth. While it’s never an easy path, you can break free from fawning and help you become confident, happy, and feel safe in your environment as you are.
If you feel like you can relate to and recognize the abuse patterns in your relationships, my relationship recovery course can set you on the path to healing and developing a happy and safe life. Learn more here.