Fawning: When People-Pleasing is a Trauma Response
In a previous article, I talk about what people-pleasing is and how to recognize it in yourself. In this article, I talk about what trauma is, and common responses to trauma. I focus specifically on a less frequently talked about response to trauma called fawning, and how it can relate to people-pleasing.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is the enduring emotional response to an event or a series of ongoing events that are difficult, scary, distressing, and overwhelm the nervous system’s natural ability to cope. A traumatic event is when there is a significant threat to your life or safety (including emotional or relational safety). After going through something traumatic, many people experience ongoing impacts to their sense of self, physiological impacts, difficulty in relationships, difficulty trusting others or the world, as well as changes to their emotions, thinking, and behaviours.
Common Trauma Responses
Trauma responses are the various ways that our body and nervous system responds to instinctively to protect us when we are faced with a threat. The most common trauma responses that are often discussed are fight, flight, and freeze. We will talk about a fourth one as well, called fawning.
Fight: If our brains assess that we are big enough and strong enough to fight or defend ourselves from the attacker or threat, then our body goes into a fight response.
Flight: If we cannot fight the threat, the body prepares us to flee, run away, or escape the danger.
Freeze: If our brains assess that we cannot fight or escape the threat, our bodies may freeze, shut down, ‘play dead’, and feel paralyzed.
Fawn: Appeasing, placating, or pleasing others as a way to protect ourselves from harm or danger or to avoid potential conflict, rejection, or abandonment.
Fawning can sometimes be a reasonable protective strategy that may help you survive or cope in moments of danger or threat, in which the other available protective responses may not be available.
It’s important to note that these trauma responses are automatic and happen instinctively based on the brain and nervous system’s quick assessment and are meant to protect you and help you survive. Sometimes we can have an incomplete trauma response, meaning your body may have really wanted to fight or escape, but were unable to, so your nervous system didn’t get the chance to complete the full response and might feel “stuck” in a certain response pattern.
Fawning: The Lesser-Known Response to Trauma
Fawning is the instinct to appease, placate, or over-accommodate others in order to avoid conflict or danger. The term fawning was first coined by Pete Walker, who described it as a response to trauma in which someone uses appeasement or compliance to seek safety in relationships.
For many, the fawn response may have developed in childhood, when they learned that keeping others happy was essential for their survival or safety. For some people growing up, they learned that expressing needs, disagreement, or conflict could led to rejection or punishment, so fawning became a survival strategy that allows them to remain in connection with caregivers. Over time, they might have learned to placate others, agree to things they don’t want to do, and put other’s needs first, in order to prevent rejection or abandonment.
As an adult, if these patterns have become ingrained, it may look like agreeableness, people-pleasing, and self-abandonment - all as an unconscious attempt to stay safe in relationships.
How is Fawning Linked to People-Pleasing?
Fawning itself is not a problem - the problem becomes when we start to apply fawning as a response to all scenarios. When a once-protective strategy becomes the go-to response, it can become generalized to scenarios where another strategy (like fight, flight, or freeze) might actually be more helpful.
When fawning becomes the go-to strategy, this may look like chronic people-pleasing:
Avoiding conflict at all costs.
Saying “yes” when you want to say “no.”
Minimizing your own needs so others feel comfortable.
Trying to predict other’s needs or read their minds.
Difficult expressing needs or asking for help.
Imbalance in relationships (giving more than receiving).
Struggling with guilt when you set boundaries.
Self-abandonment: Losing touch with your sense of self (who am I really? what do I want/like?).
Healing becomes about restoring choice, and broadening the option of responses available, so that fawning isn’t the only go-to strategy.
Strategies to Shift Out of Fawning
Awareness is the first step. If you notice yourself slipping into people-pleasing or over-accommodating, here are some ways to begin shifting:
Notice the Body
Fawning often comes with physical cues: tension in the chest, a knot in the gut, clenched fists, or shallow breathing. Noticing these signs can alert you to when you’re defaulting to appeasement. Ask yourself: What is my body telling me right now? How can I slow down and listen? What are some important signals coming from my nervous system?Pause Before Responding
Practice slowing down your automatic responses to others, especially if you automically say “yes” before seeing if you actually want to agree to something. Even a simple, “Let me think about that,” creates space to consider what you truly want. Your nervous system acts automatically, as a way to quickly protect yourself. When you slow down, pause, and let yourself evaluate the situation and explore options, it creates more space to choose to respond differently. It will take some time to rewire these automatic responses, but it’s possible through lots of repetition and practice.Identify Your Needs
Knowing how you feel, what you need, and what you value is a big step in undoing these patterns. Spending some time journalling, doing mindfulness practices, or attending counselling can help you reconnect with your needs and preferences. It can take time to give yourself permission to prioritize your own needs, particularly if it’s felt unsafe and unfamiliar to acknowledge your needs in the past.Practice Small Boundaries
Start with low-stakes boundaries: telling a friend you’d rather meet at 6pm instead of 5pm, asking for a different table at a restaurant, or returning a food order that was incorrect. Practicing asserting yourself in these lower-stakes environments can help your nervous system learn that you can actually tolerate differences, handle conflict, be assertive and still be safe. Eventually you can work up to setting bigger boundaries.Use other Responses: Fight & Flight
Sometimes we use fawning when another response might be helpful. By engaging in other responses such as fight or flight, you may feel more mobility in the nervous system and less “stuck”. Engaging in the flight response by walking away, setting a boundary, or leaving a harmful situation could help you feel safe. Or engaging in fight by defending, standing up for yourself, being assertive, or addressing conflict head on (it doesn’t mean you have to physically fight anyone, just to use your natural protective mechanisms to defend yourself emotionally).
Reframe Conflict
In the past, conflict or differences with others was probably linked to the threat of danger, rejection, or abandonment. The work is about giving yourself new experiences where you can have healthy conflict with others, and remain connected and safe, so that eventually you will be able to view conflict as something that can be handled with care, not as something to be avoided at all costs.Seek Support
Working with a counsellor or therapist can help you explore whether fawning has become a pattern that is no longer serving you, and help you build new ways of relating that feel safe and authentic.
If you are interested in exploring how you may be using fawning or people-pleasing as a protective strategy in your relationships, and want to work on shifting those patterns through online counselling, feel free to read more about the counselling services I offer. As a trauma and relationship therapist, I work on exploring how patterns such as fawning and people-pleasing may have been a protective response developed from experiences with relational trauma, and help people be able to connect with others in ways that allow them to stay grounded in themselves and their own needs.
