The Fawn Response

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

— Lao Tzu

You might have heard of the "fight-flight-freeze" responses, some of our natural reactions to danger and trauma. But not as many people have heard of the "fawn response," a fourth kind of survival response.

What is the fawn response?

The fawn response is the instinct we have to appease and meet imagined expectations in order to avoid conflicts and emotional trauma. Fawning entails sensing emotional and social cues, worrying about what other people think or feel about us, and responding with "appropriate" behavior. This psychological survival strategy is sometimes called the "appease" response because it revolves around protecting ourselves by people-pleasing.

The term "fawn response" was coined by Pete Walker, a psychotherapist who specializes in complex trauma. Like the fight, flight, and freeze responses, the fawn response is a survival instinct. However, more often than not, the harm response does more harm than good, and it is extremeley harmful to one's mental health if it becomes a long-term behavioral habit.

How is fawning related to mental health?

Fawning and mental health issues

People who fawn in the face of discomfort will do everything they can to avoid direct conflict and stepping on toes, even if it means setting aside their own wants, needs, and desires. For the fawner, other people's discomfort feels more threatening than their own discomfort.

Because the survival response places others first, people who habitually fawn are vulnerable to mental health struggles such as:

• Depression
• Low self-worth
• Toxic shame
• Self-loathing
• Self-blame
• Social anxiety
• Codependency in relationships

The mental health issues that come with fawning also show up as behavioral challenges. When the fawn response becomes a long-term maladaptive behavioral habit or default way of being, the fawner finds it much more difficult to:

• Stand up for themself
• Make their needs known
• Establish healthy boundaries
• Criticize others
• Be okay with other people's discomfort
• Separate feelings from reality

Fawning and codependency

Ever since people first existed, they have been doing all the things we label 'codependent.' They have worried themselves sick about other people. They have tried to help in ways that didn't help. They have said yes when they meant no. They have tried to make other people see things their way. They have bent over backward to avoid hurting people's feelings and, in doing so, have hurt themselves. They have been afraid to trust their feelings. They have believed lies and then felt betrayed. They have wanted to get even and punish others. They have felt so angry they wanted to kill. They have struggled for their rights while other people said they didn't have any. They have worn sackcloth because they didn't believe they deserved silk. —Melody Beattie, Codependent No More

The fawn response goes hand in hand with codependency. People who fawn often don't feel enough self-worth or trust to make their needs explicitly known—for fear of damaging or endangering their relationships. They will hide their suffering and let their feelings bottle up. When they can't endure anymore, they may resort to passive aggressiveness, unhelpful or toxic protest behaviors, and even relational sabotage—symptoms of codependency.

Pete Walker provides an excellent definition of codependency in this context:

Codependency is defined here as the inability to express rights, needs and boundaries in relationships; it is a disorder of assertiveness that causes the individual to attract and accept exploitation, abuse and/or neglect.

Even if they aren't asked to or lack emotional capacity, more often than not, a fawner will attempt to tend to others' needs to "earn" affection. They will struggle invisibly instead of making themselves or their needs known—often to the point of feeling exhausted, drained, and lost with compassion fatigue. The fawner may then start to feel resentful, because they've cared for someone else and done all this work, but feel as though they've received nothing in return.

These are examples of the toxic behavior and patterns that are present in all codependents and codependent relationships.

What causes the fawn response to trauma?

The fawn response to trauma most commonly stems from a hostile, non-nurturing early environment in which a child never learned healthy ways to express their thoughts and emotions. Such an environment is invalidating and can leave the child feeling as though they aren't allowed to be themselves.

One fairly common denominator was having a relationship, personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people. But a second, more common denominator, seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships. These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable, or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one's self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change—however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. —Melody Beattie, Codependent No More

Ideal primary caretakers—parents or guardians—are responsive to their children's feelings. The parent's emotional task is to make their child feel safe in the world and comfortable in their own skin. This means sensing and properly reflecting some of their child's inner experiences as a way to let them know it's okay to feel what they feel.

However, parents who failed their emotional duty may have reinforced fawning by being:

• Overly controlling parents: Controlling parents often place their own needs before their children's. They set expectations and want things done "their way"; they don't listen to and respond to their children. A controlling environment makes it seem like "good behavior" will minimize conflict and let a child "earn" love and attachment. Children in such an environment begin to base their value on whether they meet their parents' expectations, and love becomes a conditional affair. This carries on into life, where the fawner constantly seeks external validation and feels as though they need to prove themselves before they can belong and be loved.
• Neglectful, absent, or inconsistent parents: A neglectful, absent, or inconsistent parent isn't present with their child's emotional state. They fail to respond to their child's feelings in a way that teaches the child that it's okay to feel or be as they are. When a child feels ignored and invalidated for long enough, they will begin sinking into a trauma survival response. Fawning may have been the only way to get attention or affection, and this becomes a self-harming habit moving forward.
• Overtly abusive parents: This includes the more obvious physically, verbally, or emotionally abusive parents. Such parents often directly disrespect and invalidate their child's feelings—for instance, by verbally abusing their child for "talking back" or being "worthless." Abusive parents make the world a frightening and hostile place for their children. And a child who grows up with such a parent will struggle to feel self-worth, safety, and belongingness in the world.
• Emotionally immature parents: Emotionally immature parents are commonly described as "distant," "self-involved," "narcissistic," "rejecting," or even "childish." Whatever the case, an emotionally immature parent has not developed to the point where they can sense and reflect their child's emotions. A child with immature parents might find themselves taking on the parental role, and they become caretaker to their own parent's feelings and emotions. They never get a chance to be heard or taken care of and naturally begin to feel out of touch with themselves.

No matter the situation, the problem is the same: A parent or caretaker failed to adequately nurture their child and hold space for their emotions. The early environment did not support healthy emotional expression. Instead of learning to feel and express themselves, the fawning child was forced to fend for themself and "earn" love and affection by pleasing or caretaking their parents.

The fawning child grows up subordinating their needs and feelings. They become used to pleasing others and responding to others' emotions instead of their own:

• The fawner often ignores and suppresses their own feelings.
• The fawner may be ashamed of their own feelings or feel as though they are wrong for having their feelings.
• The fawner becomes overly concerned with others' feelings and reactions—if the fawner can act "correctly," then maybe they can "earn" love and affection.

Note that a fawn response to trauma can be reinforced by non-parent-child relationships as well, such as unhealthy friendships, romantic relationships, and more. Any relational trauma can cause or worsen mental health struggles.

What does the fawn response look like?

I saw people who had gotten so absorbed in other people's problems they didn't have time to identify or solve their own. These were people who had cared so deeply, and often destructively, about other people that they had forgotten how to care about themselves. [They] felt responsible for so much because the people around them felt responsible for so little; they were just taking up the slack. —Melody Beattie, Codependent No More

Someone who defaults to the fawn response to trauma might call themselves, "highly sensitive" or "empathic." One might even think of themselves as an "empath." However, these labels give a misleadingly positive spin to unhealthy coping behaviors that harm both the individual and those around them.

Someone who has relational trauma and responds with fawning will often exhibit:

• Self-abandonment.
• An inability to stand up for themselves.
• A lack of healthy boundaries.
• A world of expectations and "shoulds."
• An inability to share and be vulnerable.
• A constant search for external validation.
• Victimhood mentality.
• Self-suppression--they suffer invisibly while trying to caretake others' emotions.
• No trust in others' ability to manage discomfort.

This website features an article that more comprehensively covers the signs of the fawn trauma response. To learn more, be sure to read it!

Challenges for the fawner

Psychologist Pete Walker considers fawn-oriented trauma survivors to be some of the most lost human beings of all. Why? Because fawners surrendered their wants and needs for the sake of the people they depended on—any mistake or failure to meet their caretakers' needs might have meant abandonment or rejection.

People who tend toward the fawn response often don't know their own wants or needs. They didn't have an environment that made it safe to be themselves and never had a real chance to healthily connect with their own thoughts and feelings.

The biggest challenges for the fawner revolve around reconnecting with and reclaiming themselves:

[T]he heart of the definition and recovery lies not in the other person—no matter how much we believe it does. It lies in ourselves, in the ways we have let other people's behavior affect us and in the ways we try to affect them: the obsessing, the controlling, the obsessive 'helping,' caretaking, low self-worth bordering on self-hatred, self-repression, abundance of anger and guilt, peculiar dependency on peculiar people, attraction to and tolerance for the bizarre, other-centeredness that results in abandonment of self, communication problems, intimacy problems, and an ongoing whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief process. —Melody Beattie, Codependent No More

The steps to unlearning the fawn response trauma include:

• Prioritizing yourself: Because of their own relational traumas, fawners lack a solid sense of self. They often feel deep shame about themselves and don't feel as though they are allowed to exist. The fawner must learn to connect with themselves, accept themselves, and discover their own wants and needs, even if it means having to say "no" and let others feel uncomfortable. Mental health journaling and psychotherapeutic practices such as parts therapy can help the fawner re-connect with themselves.
• Unlearning people pleasing: You can't make everyone happy or be liked by everyone. You can't control how other people will treat you, think about you, or feel about you. And it's not your job to make sure everyone feels okay. The fawner must learn to take responsibility for themselves, and only themselves.
• Finding self-worth from within: No amount of acknowledgement or external validation will give the fawner the piece of mind and comfort they seek in their own skin. And any acknowledgement can be just as easily taken away. The work of self-worth and self-love happens from within.
• Learning to trust again: Fawners struggle to ask for help because they don't trust their feelings will be respected and heard. They often feel guilt and shame for having wants and needs, and they feel burdensome in relationships. As a result, they bottle up feelings and discomfort until the pain becomes unbearable. In order to connect with others again and have space to breathe, the fawner must learn to trust that it's okay to be themselves, and it's okay if others aren't always happy or feeling good.

Healing fawning trauma

Although the fawn response might seem harmless on the surface, in truth, it is one of the most damaging mental habits. The fawn response is ultimately an act of self-betrayal that leads to unnecessary suffering. It benefits no one.

Luckily, fawners can learn how to stop pleasing people and develop a healthier sense of self. If you tend toward the fawn response to trauma, you can learn to love and accept yourself and set boundaries in your relationships with others:

• Explore the roots of your fawning behavior with a trauma-informed therapist.
• Consult books and resources like Pete Walker's Complex PTSD and Melody Beattie's Codependent No More.
• Get in tune with yourself by spending alone time, reflecting, and journaling for mental health.