What is a fawning trauma response?

Carley Trillow LICDC MSW LSW

What is a fawning trauma response?

Despite feeling like people are innately good, many people are critical in the world we live in. Feeling a sense of competition in our personal and professional lives, people pleasing can be seen as a negative thing.

However, it tends to come from a place of safety. Many people grew up in emotionally unstable or emotionally immature homes. Parents don't always remain consistent in their moods and don't always express their emotions in a way that kids interpret as safe. Which leads to a guessing game psychologically. Many people have heard of the fight or flight response! They rarely hear about the freezing or fawning responses!

Because psychology research has focused so much on male participants, these responses were documented less. People raised as female, tend to respond to trauma differently. A disclaimer, these statements about sex/gender are generalizations and there are always exceptions as everyone has individualized experiences. Women are often socialized to be "smaller" or have less needs. They are socialized often to be helpers of others.

In the fawning (people pleasing) response, people learn that the way to stay safest is to "stay on the good side" of caregivers/those they are in relationship to. Like many coping mechanisms, this is helpful until it isn't! At some point, this once useful strategies starts to add more stress than good in our lives. It's at that point that people tend to see their people pleasing/fawning as a problem and want to heal that trauma.

If this sounds like you, I would love to chat with you for a free 30 minute consult call. If you feel like you're unsure, don't sweat it! You can keep learning through checking our my blog (linked in the bio) or following my page!

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