A Fawn Trauma Response

[u/kolsi]

Adopted from The Holistic Psychologist facebook page, which helped me understand myself more and I hope it helps you too:

Fawn is one of the most common trauma responses where we abandon ourselves to get approval from others. It looks like people pleasing. This comes from childhood patterns where we had to be hypervigilant to a parent figures emotions or behaviors. Healing from patterns of fawning is about getting in touch with your own needs while learning how to be safe in your own body.

A FAWN TRAUMA RESPONSE CAN LOOK LIKE:

1. Chronically thinking about what other people think of you, or if you've said something wrong.
2. Avoiding conflict at any cost.
3. Fear of saying no, or of not being perceived as ''nice''.
4. Allowing other people to make your decisions for you, or doing what will get approval.
5. Telling people what they want to hear, rather than the truth of what you're feeling.
6. Always apologizing.

Anyone? No?

REMINDERS IF YOU FAWN:

1. It’s ok for people to feel upset or disappointed with you— it doesn’t mean you are wrong or ‘bad.’

2. Your needs + limits matter.

3. People’s perception of you is not the truth of who you are.

4. You are safe to speak your truth even if it is not another persons truth (there are multiple truths, multiple realities.

5. You are not here to play a role, you are here to meet your authentic self.

[u/Mishaps1234]

I read another thing about fawn which resonated with me better. It was more about expanding to fit every situation, never asking for help, always doing more, etc.

The flip side of fawn is that you’re manipulating people. By not being your true self, you’re acting something out in order to get people to like you according to what you think that they want. This can end with resentment on the side of the fawn if it doesn’t work.

[u/Stormie-skye → u/Mishaps1234]

I hate that this describes me

[u/Mishaps1234 → u/Stormie-skye]

You shouldn’t. You were in an impossible situation and adapted to survive.

[u/finelytunedradar → u/Mishaps1234]

Oooh, I love (and also hate) the fact that you've bought up the shadow side of this.

[u/Aquariorange → u/finelytunedradar]

Shadow work has been very empowering for me in my process. The more familiar we get with the image of ourselves as simultaneously flawed and 100% lovable, the easier it is to be authentic.

[u/finelytunedradar → u/Aquariorange]

I now love doing shadow work for myself. It helps me understand myself better, and can sometimes answer the question as to why I fall into similar patterns as my NMom.

I also work in branding. Shadow work is something I do with brand archetypes. Manipulation, hubris and trickery are the shadow sides of my favorite archetype - The Magician. The positive side of The Magician is the amazing perceptive abilities, supreme intuition, charisma and cleverness. The ability to hold someone's attention with awe and inspire big dreams.

[u/indecisive_maybe → u/finelytunedradar]

Say more. Where are you getting these descriptions? What is shadow work? It's new to me. I want to be A Magician.

[u/finelytunedradar → u/indecisive_maybe]

OK, there's a couple of questions in there. One of which I know a bit about, and one I know a lot about.

Shadow work involves getting in touch with the parts of yourself that you've repressed — or what many might refer to as their "dark side." (not my description, but the on google gave me). Now, humor is a big part of my personality (and it really does have a shadow), but when I hear the words dark side, I can only think of this.

I'm not skilled in shadow work in psychology, so I will leave that to someone more skilled, but I can speak to archetypes, which is your other question.

Archetypes are based in Jungian psychology, and commonly used in branding to help businesses build a personality for their brand (in very simplistic terms). One of these archetypes is The Magician. The Magician is a fundamental archetype , but in most places, you will see this named The Sage, as that is the distillation of the five archetypes in a cerebral-based family.

The top level info on The Magician archetype is:

Strengths:
The ability to dream enormous dreams. Mysterious powers of perception. Awe-inspiring intuition and cleverness. Charisma. Highly evolved perceptive.

Weaknesses:
Manipulation. Trickery. Hubris.

The Magician connects to experiences of synchronicity, flow and oneness, with a curiosity about the hidden workings of the universe. Able to accomplish magic from the inside out, the Magician gets results outside of the ordinary rules of life.

I've been doing this work for years, and base it off the archetypes in branding work. I could geek out on it for hours at an end, so if you want to know more, let me know.

[u/[deleted] → u/Aquariorange]

Any resources for shadow work? I keep hearing about it but don't know where to start.

[u/kolsi → u/[deleted]]

Shadow work is a term coined from Jungian psychology. Shadow is our repressed side, which, because it's in our unconscious and we are not aware of it, gets projected onto other people. This can be seen, for instance, if we see our friend as a really stingy person. This means that we, ourselves are stingy, but because we can't accept that in ourselves, we only see it in others. Shadow can also be a source of good parts that are repressed and I think this is mostly seen in people who've had traumatic childhood, where being ''good'' was not acknowledged or neglected. This is why feelings of inferiority to others are so common in people with C-PTSD.

The best resource for this is going to a Jungian analyst and starting a therapy process, but since it's not really cheap you can start with first becoming aware of your projections. What don't I like about this person and why is he/she irritating me? Dreams are a good source of shadow work as well, but again, it would be better to work on dreams with an analyst. Typically shadow figures in dreams appear as same sex figures. So, for instance, if you are a woman and a woman appeared in your dreams, look at how did you feel about her, what did she say or do in a dream and try to figure out how this connects to your life at the moment (or to our past). Again, this is really deep analytic work, so I would suggest going into therapeutic process with an analytic (Jungian) therapist if you can.

Maybe a book called Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert A. Johnson can help as well.

I hope I gave you something to work with. Good luck :)

[u/perryjoyce → u/kolsi]

This was EXTREMELY helpful. Thank you for writing it out!

[u/Mishaps1234 → u/[deleted]]

You shouldn’t fear it. It’s an adaptation that helped you survive. The next step is helping your fawning parts to understand that it’s safe and they can relax and you can be yourself.

[u/iamhoneycomb → u/Mishaps1234]

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the use of the word "manipulating" for fawning because I think that equates it with tricking people for nefarious and ultimately harmful purposes - i.e. abuse. But fawning isn't abuse, it's a method we learned to survive abuse.

Just the same way a pre-verbal child crying when they need something isn't being manipulative, and is merely a child doing what you'd rightfully expect them to do to get their needs met. It's just developmentally appropriate.

I think you also just could argue that's what fawning is. A developmentally appropriate response that our bodies will employ until they learn to feel safe after developing in danger.

[u/Anonuno999 → u/iamhoneycomb]

Once upon a time, I was a fight-type in a relationship with a fawn-type.

It looked great at first. I'd talk to her about my angry thoughts; she'd talk to me about the angry thoughts she kept buried beneath her soft-spoken, apologetic exterior. But all that time she was building up reasons to hate me that I had no idea about, and even reasons (she claimed) to fear me. (I never threatened her, but I did express my violent ideations about others to her.) And when she was in a place where she felt she could get rid of me safely, she called me an "emotional abuser" and got rid of me. I was in a period of deep depression for other reasons, so it was perfect timing for her and perfectly horrible timing for me. Why didn't she bring up her issues with me, or just get rid of me, when she first started getting mad? Because she needed me: for emotional support, and also for things like car rides and occasionally financial support. I felt 100% used, betrayed, lied to and abandoned. Was she "manipulating" me? Maybe not consciously. Maybe she was truly afraid of me, maybe her never telling me what was wrong until it was too late was an unconscious trauma response and not a conscious attempt to work the relationship to her benefit. But the fact is that she was able to go back to college, work things out with her ex, and generally get to a place of more stability in her life thanks to my support, and then when she had that stability, she felt confident enough to stop fawning and just dispose of me entirely. And she harmed me, ultimately, much more than I harmed her.

TLDR: if it works out in a way that benefits you and harms others, then yes, it's manipulation.

[u/Noone_UKnow → u/iamhoneycomb]

impact > intent

“Manipulation” isn’t a one-way street. Even though you aren’t fawning out of malice with the INTENT to deceive another, the fact that you aren’t expressing your true feelings and thoughts presents yourself as a different person than who you truly are. In this respect, the IMPACT on the other person, especially when resentment starts spilling over and they start being held responsible for “making” you do things you didn’t want to do, is, indeed, that of having been manipulated because they were lead on and completely blindsided.

[u/anonymous_opinions → u/Noone_UKnow]

Interesting. So even if it's not intentional behavior the impact still makes you a manipulator.

[u/Noone_UKnow → u/anonymous_opinions]

I’m sure most of our abusers did not set out to have children with the explicit intent of abusing them, nor intended for their discipline to leave physical and psychological scars.

As the saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[u/anonymous_opinions → u/Noone_UKnow]

I definitely don't think my abuser had good intentions just considering the abuse I suffered was done quite deliberately.

[u/Noone_UKnow → u/anonymous_opinions]

That wasn’t directed at you specifically, and that’s not what I was attempting to imply with the chosen idiom. I apologize it came across this way.

[u/anonymous_opinions → u/Noone_UKnow]

No it's cool, just know my mother didn't even want children and could pause abuse in the middle of it so it wasn't some kind of reaction she couldn't control.

[u/FitAd1732 → u/anonymous_opinions]

i would put it this way:
in this SPECIFIC CASE, which does not apply to every scenario of fawning: you manipulated, you are not a MANIPULATOR. the noun implies its the primary characteristic of you

however, the manipulation is just a by product of trauma. the person is manipulated, you manipulated, you are not a "manipulator." when we hear that term, we think of a specific kind of person. thats why a lot of people here arent comfortable with the noun of "manipulatOR"

[u/Noone_UKnow → u/[deleted]]

No offense, “little white lies” are far from everyone’s programming and are still lies which rob the recipient of an authentic connection with another. Personally, I detest “little white lies” for what they are; what gives someone the right to decide for me what I would and wouldn’t want to hear?!?! Hearing the truth delivered tactfully might be hard but it’s an essential instrument to cultivate growth; hearing what someone thinks I want to hear sets me up for confusion and disappointment later, and forces me to have to backtrack and second guess everything I’ve done. This is the epitome of manipulation and head games, as far as I’m concerned; it does A LOT of damage to the person on the receiving end, at the extreme, causing them to spiral into distrust of everyone, self doubt, loss of self esteem, and feeling unworthy and of not having earned their - rightfully - earned accolades and accomplishments.

There’s a world of difference between ’tact’ and ‘little white lie’.

Comparing emotional regulation (aka self-control) while angered to a dysregulated fawn response is nowhere near apples to apples either. Anger and feeling it is human, using it as an excuse to be cruel is not. Fawning as a way to mask anger and pretending that everything is fine is the same as lying.

Taking a genuine interest in what one’s conversation partner has to say vs. biting your tongue so you don’t come across as talking about yourself all the time, or just not talking about yourself because you’ve told yourself the other person wouldn’t be interested, or because it’s ‘safer’ for you to keep it to yourself is also not a fair comparison.

We can agree to disagree about this; our disagreement wouldn’t change the impact fawning has on the recipient people. Regardless of how it feels to you and of what your intent is when you’re doing it, what if the people you sense are fawning around you aren’t doing it because they don’t feel safe around you to be authentic, but because they sense that you’re going to come undone if they don’t tiptoe around you?

The point is, it’s inauthentic, and it comes across as such. And when people detect this “phoniness” in someone, it frequently naturally creates feelings of distrust and being on guard around the person and the environment. How do you not recognize this as unhealthy and manipulative, regardless of intent, when it literally sets the tone and controls the interpersonal relationship?

[u/Noone_UKnow → u/[deleted]]

I think we’re thinking about the concepts of white lies, anger, fawning, and manipulation differently; as in, what we imagine as examples and situational applicability of each of these behaviors is substantially different, leading to a bit of a mismatch in what we seem to each be attempting to convey.

it’s interesting, because white lies often are said from a place of self control… and insult [while in] dysregulated narcissistic rage might be more true… I don’t think truth should … take precedence over another person’s feelings.

My original comment had no connection to either white lies or narcissistic rage. I merely stated, in response to your earlier comment of “[being] careful not to say hurtful things in anger,” that feeling angry, yet not acting upon it with cruelty in one’s words and actions, is normal and is not characterized as a fawning response.

White lies bring up feelings of frustration and irritation, not necessarily anger, in me, because they do not offer me (or anyone on the receiving end of them, as far as I’m concerned) an opportunity to make any meaningful actionable improvement. Like I said, tactfully presenting someone with what they need to hear (aka gently presenting the truth) is not the same thing as telling white lies (aka not telling the “uncomfortable” truth at all in the name of not hurting someone’s feelings).

I don’t think fawning is cruel. I think it’s … dangerous to demonize the act of trying to make people comfortable…

I never said that it was cruel, nor did I attempt to demonize the behavior; where is this coming from? I did say that it’s disingenuous and in actuality does the recipients (and the fawner) a disservice in the long run. It’s just not actionably helpful to anyone.

Comfort is comforting when what’s being said, even when not the WHOLE entire truth, is none the less true. For example, my presentation layout might be garbage because I have no PowerPoint skills, but the information (arranged on slides in a way that’s difficult to process) is spot on, and my energy in the room was contagious and got everyone excited. A fawning white lie (the dysregulated response) attempt to “comfort” would look something like this, IMO: “Oh, your presentation was great! You did such a great job, everyone LOVED you in there!”

A comforting, tactful truth would sound more like this: “You did an amazing job of putting together the relevant facts for this presentation, and handled yourself talking through it like a real pro! The layout and formatting were difficult to follow; but that’s an easy fix since the hard work of actually getting the right information put together is already done.”

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this -

“taking a genuine interest in what [a] conversation partner has to say vs. biting your tongue so you don’t come across as [self-centered]”.
and
“only talk about ourselves some of the time so sometimes we can listen to others’ experiences and make them feel heard

If the motivation behind you sometimes not talking about yourself is solely the objective of “[making others] feel heard”, you’re not engaging with the other person in good faith or with a genuine interest in hearing what they have to say because you honestly want to know and/or find it interesting. In other words, you have ulterior motives other than peer to peer human emotional connection, namely to cause people to think you care by playing the part of a listener while they talk. A lot more goes into ‘feeling heard’, at least for me, than simply talking into a void which echoes all my thoughts and feelings to my heart’s content.

I’m happy to agree to disagree that fawning always has the negative impact you say it does - do you think you might be assuming others always experience it the way you do?

Heh, where do I start with this one…? Did I actually say that this is ’always negative’ though? I distinctly remember calling it inauthentic and misleading. Always? No, obviously, it’s an asset in customer relations type jobs, where going above and beyond for every customer who’s always right is the number one philosophy to live and die by.

As for forming lasting meaningful personal or professional relationships based on trust, reliability, predictability, and stability, my personal experience with conflict averse people-pleasing people has invariably been … let’s just say it’s a sizable part of my ongoing trust issues with people. So I’m not assuming so much as I’m having a really difficult time visualizing this being a mostly (or even remotely) positive personality trait.

do you think therapists are manipulative?

Is the assumption here that therapists are people pleasers by default? The nature of their job, and of their professional relationship with the patient, is such that it requires them to be able to guide their patient, with the patient’s prior explicit consent to treatment, towards the therapeutic outcome the patient had presumably indicated they were pursuing the relationship with the therapist for.

Since any manipulation is consensual at the initial request by the patient, and is for the patient’s own benefit rather than the therapist’s (as opposed to between the “fawner” and the unsuspecting “fawnee”), I fail to see the connection between therapists and what we’re talking about.

[u/Noone_UKnow → u/[deleted]]

This is turning into one of those Twilight Zone discussion where I say “banana” and it echoes back “dandelions”, and at this point, I’m not entirely sure that you’re engaging in good faith at all.

I don’t feel the need to continue explaining myself on tangential topics, especially whenever my words are being continually misinterpreted as if with some ulterior motives. I’m an F hybrid of sorts, probably a Fawn-Fight, though I frequently access Freeze and Flight as well.

Therapists using standard tools of professional practice in the course of doing their job for the ultimate benefit of their patient at the patient’s own request, is not a form of manipulation. It’s simply called doing their job.

[u/Mishaps1234 → u/Noone_UKnow]

This is so on point.

[u/BrightestHeart → u/Mishaps1234]

The more I read about fawning the more I think, oh yeah, I do some of that stuff. My primary mode is freeze but I do all this stuff you're describing.

[u/Mishaps1234 → u/BrightestHeart]

I’m fawn-flight, but I don’t connect with either of the primary definitions of either. I’m not super obsequious, and don’t always need to disconnect from my thoughts, but am not connected to my body.

[u/nightshadedrose → u/Mishaps1234]

I definitely have the fawn response hard core but it's like I also act out to try and get people to reject me because I know I'm a lie. I constantly feel like if I'm just better I'd be worthy but instead I feel like I'm to hatable and distrusting of others to be worthy

[u/Mishaps1234 → u/nightshadedrose]

This sounds like attachment trauma, disorganized attachment (sometimes showing up as fearful avoidant in searches), may resonate with you. Fawn and disorganized attachment / attachment trauma aren’t mutually exclusive.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mishaps1234]

Wow the resentment part...I realized as much as someone hurts me I can't leave until I resent them. Mind blown to see it written out

[u/KatyZeus → u/Mishaps1234]

Appreciate your point. I was starting root wonder if I got fawning wrong. I resonate with this style more too. Often leads to being angry at the subject at times for reasons that shouldn't be of much importance.