Fight flight freeze fawn cptsd9/1/2023 ![]() To be clear, there are times that “fawn” can save your life – for example, appeasing a kidnapper may keep you alive for enough time for you to escape. Their minds and bodies are conditioned to revert back to these trauma responses as a way of life. ![]() As a result, they learn to silence their inner voice and defer to others. Survivors who grow up in chaos are accustomed to being punished and berated for speaking out. Here are three powerful ways you can battle a fawn trauma response effectively: Regulate your nervous system on a daily basis. For complex trauma survivors especially, the fawn response can also arise in response to psychological threats like the threat of abandonment, heightened emotional and psychological abuse, or fear of retaliation which may have been life-threatening situations in childhood and can feel similarly in adulthood. Sometimes the threat that leads us to fawn is not a physical threat but a psychological one. People who experience traumatic experiences as adults can also react by “fawning” – for example, in situations of domestic violence, sexual assault, kidnapping, hostage situations, chronic manipulation, or situations where trauma bonding and becoming enmeshed with the predator can act as key survival mechanisms. You may be experiencing fawn trauma responses if you find yourself regularly people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, overapologizing and overexplaining, attempting to overly meet the needs and expectations of others while neglecting your own, and forfeiting your boundaries to avoid abandonment by predatory people. This is a deeply ingrained and embedded subconscious survival response that they can carry onto adulthood. They learned that in order to survive threatening situations and maintain access to food, resources, shelter, and to avoid abandonment, they had to obey the demands of their abusers. According to licensed therapist and complex trauma expert Pete Walker who coined the term, “Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others.” Children who grow up in abusive and chaotic environments can find themselves “fawning” to their caretakers out of a need to survive. But have you heard of “fawn?” Fawning is a trauma response characterized by appeasing a predator or complying with their demands to avoid danger and mitigate threat. You’ve likely heard of trauma responses like fight, flight, or freeze.
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