Like the name Oprah, most households know who “fight/flight/freeze” is even if they struggle to recognize it in themselves. Fight/Flight/Freeze is, of course, the well known physiological response to anything we perceive as threatening to our existence. Animals of all kinds run if they feel a predator is considering eating them for lunch. If an animal assesses their
odds of surviving are better fighting, they fight. If there is not time to flee and not enough inner resources to fight, they might play dead- freeze. Cats, dogs, jaguars, and humans, we all do this.
Chemicals are released in our bodies as these different responses occur energizing our ability to do what needs to be done to survive. There is another “F” that we don’t talk about as much even though it is every bit as much of a survival mechanism as fight/flight/freeze… this 4th “F” is FAWN. You may be a fawner and don’t even realize this survival mechanism has been hijacking your life- relationships with family members, encounters with bosses and co-workers, romantic partners, even interactions with people on social media.
Most people think of fawning as the more commonly known “people pleasing” and/or codependency. What is vital to get a handle on, however, is that fawning is often not a choice; it’s a survival mechanism that subconsciously kicks in when you perceive danger. Sometimes this perceived danger is warranted by a true threat, sometimes it’s a perceived threat that isn’t actually threatening yet reminds you of a previous threat in your life, and sometimes the perceived threat is both a true threat in the moment as well as reminiscent of a threat from the
past. Regardless of the category, what they all have in common is that you feel there is a threat and your brain kicks into survival gear by pleasing the person that shows potential for harm. The reptilian part of your brain recognizes you can only feel safe if you can please the person in front of you. In many ways your pleasing behavior is regulating the nervous system of the person before you. Somewhere inside (consciously or subconsciously is the narrative), “If I can get them to stay calm and don’t get rattled, then I’m safe.”
Some time ago, I found the most articulate and helpful definition of fawning I had ever read. The definition was so descriptive and straight forward that it rocked my world with its clarity. It comes from a website created in the UK for understanding PTSD. The website offers concise examples of fight/flight/freeze and fawn. After outlining various characteristics of fawning such as people pleasing, spacing out, fears of saying no, avoiding situations that can lead to conflict, a hypervigilance about other people’s emotions while denying your own emotions, being overly polite and agreeable, it says this…
To outsiders, the fawn response can mask the distress and damage you’re suffering. If you were really being mistreated, why would you be trying to please the person responsible? It can also be the response that engenders the greatest sense of confusion and guilt in someone with PTSD or C-PTSD. This person has treated you – or is treating you – badly, Yet, yournatural instinct is to attempt to soothe them, instead of distancing yourself or fighting back.
Fawning (or misplaced attachment) is a common reaction to childhood abuse. The victim responds to an abusive parent or some other authority figure by being highly agreeable, pressing down their own needs and their knowledge that the abuse is wrong. In later life, it can manifest as being highly submissive, looking to others to shape your reactions and relationships and struggling to make sense of yourself or your daily life on your own. Characteristics of fawning behavior also include over-dependence on the opinions of others and lacking boundaries. It makes you highly vulnerable to narcissistic people, or anyone who tends to control and manipulate others.
Just as the description states, this is often a learned response in childhood when a child clearly doesn’t have the agency or resources to flee or fight, and freezing fails to prevent harm. Some children develop excellent antenna for registering potential harm to themselves, their siblings and/or friends, maybe even pets. And, they learn to deescalate people who appear to be dysregulated, upset, angry, mean, harsh, and/or harmful whether that person be a parent, teacher, coach, dance teacher, family member, older kid on the playground or neighbor. The child creates a bit of a “sixth sense” for potential threat and without even knowing it kicks into this fawn response as a way of engaging an illusion of reducing the potential harm and threat to themselves and others. What is tricky is that it isn’t just an illusion. The fawning behavior sometimes really does reduce harm and threat because the person who could create harm is more regulated. What is an illusion is that the fawning will always “work”. It doesn’t. It only works sometimes, but a child will keep using a survival mechanism even if it doesn’t have a perfect batting average because it’s their only semblance of control over harm. Better to try something than nothing.
I have worked with women and men, though, who even without obvious childhood trauma (little t or Big T traumas), who kick into this fawn response when faced with a narcissist and/or other personality disorder such as antisocial personality disorder. The depth of dysfunction within the person with the personality disorder can illicit a natural survival mechanism from others. It is a healthy response to flee or fight from these individuals. When you are in the face of danger, you want your survival mechanisms to kick in. You need to get away from danger and take care of yourself. When someone freezes or fawns with someone with a personality disorder, mayhem can ensue.
A lot of fawners reason their people pleasing behavior as trying to “help” the troubled person creating harm. If they can just stay calm enough and offer the troubled person enough peace, maybe they will not only harm in this moment, maybe they will change their ways. I’ve watched how the Christian faith has been used to reinforce this kind of thinking and behavior. Men and women alike telling themselves that “A good Christian has the responsibility to help people better themselves and not turn away from anyone.” They’ll say, “Maybe it’s my purpose to save this person from their destructive ways.” And, sometimes it’s as simple as “Loving someone means staying no matter what.”
I’ve also become attuned to how women especially in the South are taught to people please. So many women feel it is their job to make everyone feel comfortable. We’re taught to not rock the boat. We’re taught to put other people’s needs in front of our own, and some of us are instructed in a number of ways that it’s really better if we leave our needs to the side- no needs is better. It’s possible for this learning to take place in relatively innocuous ways; however, when these “lessons” are learned with even the slightest bit of shame (and most of these lessons are shared with the understanding that veering from them will create upset, upheaval and possibly being kicked out of the tribe), people pleasing can morph into fawning (survival mechanism) quickly.
So for some people, they aren’t only working with a survival mechanism, the fawning is backed up with religion and social mores. Is it any wonder that fawning is so very hard to detect for the maladaptive survival mechanism that it is?
What is so hard about navigating these physiological survival mechanisms is that they are so ingrained, they can be hard to detect and even more so difficult to be seen and appreciated for how deeply harmful they are to us and the people around us, even though the origin of the survival mechanism is good- to protect and stave off harm.
EMDR can assist clients in rewiring their neurological pathways around not only fight, flight, freeze, but also fawn. By zeroing in on the situations in life that have elicited the strongest stress responses, our fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses have the opportunity to both desensitize and reprocess. Life can be incredibly freeing when we aren’t trapped in such strong reactivity cycles. You’ll be surprised and maybe even in awe when you can move through your daily life connected to yourself, your own emotions, and needs, while having compassion and empathy for others. You might even find yourself advocating for yourself for a change and speaking with clarity and compassion for both you and others. By Caroline Vogel