Fawn Response: Adding to The Fight, Flight, or Freeze Framework (2024)

FAQs

What is the fight, flight freeze fawn response? ›

The fight response is your body's way of facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight means your body urges you to run from danger. Freeze is your body's inability to move or act against a threat. Fawn is your body's stress response to try to please someone to avoid conflict.

What Does Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn Mean? “Fight,” “flight,” “freeze,” and “fawn” are terms that represent the most common trauma responses to incidents of high anxiety or stress. Some people fight or become aggressive, while others flee the scene.

The fawn response is when an individual tries to avoid or minimize distress or danger by pleasing and appeasing the threat. Someone responding in this way would do whatever they can to keep the threat, or abuser, happy despite their own needs and wants.

A fawn response, also called submit, is common among codependents and typical in trauma-bonded relationships with narcissists and abusers. When fawning, we seek to please and appease someone to avoid conflict. Internally, we're unable to regulate our emotions. We frantically look to someone else to normalize them.

The fawn response is most commonly associated with childhood trauma and complex trauma — types of trauma that arise from repeat events, such as abuse or childhood neglect — rather than single-event trauma, such as an accident.

For example, you may yell at your partner for pushing you into agreeing to speak at a conference when you don't feel ready (fight). Or you avoid going to a party or leave early because you don't feel comfortable around unfamiliar people (flight). Or, your mind goes blank when your boss asks you a question (freeze).

For example, if you feel yourself getting extremely anxious before a date and are considering canceling, notice this fight or flight response - you are trying to “escape” a perceived “threat.” In reality, you are not in physical danger, even though this is what your body is preparing you for.

What is a fawn personality type? ›

If you're a fawn type, you're likely very focused on showing up in a way that makes those around you feel comfortable, and in more toxic relationships, to avoid conflict. But the downside to this is that you're not necessarily being your most authentic self.

Examples of fawning include: “I hoped that by caring for them they might care for me.” “I never showed my true feelings for fear of retaliation.” “I was always walking on eggshells; I never knew when they would explode”

It is characterized by people-pleasing and appeasing behaviors specifically towards the perpetrator, but might also generalize to all of the trauma survivor's interactions with others. Common signs of fawning in adults and children might include: Being overly apologetic.

Fawning is when people try to appease other people, even at the expense of their own needs. Instead of confronting (fight), running away from (flight), or blocking out (freeze) the threat, people who go into the fawn response try to neutralize the threat by pleasing the abuser at whatever cost.

Suppressing painful feelings (freeze) or attending to the perpetrator's needs to minimize attacks (fawning) are the likely trauma responses. Both freeze and fawning can cause a lack of agency and can undermine helping oneself.

Fawning is a trauma response that is typical in trauma-bonded relationships and common in codependency. Fawning behavior is an attempt to appease or please our partner to avoid conflict. When fawning, we prioritize our attachment in order to feel safe.

In fact, instead of demanding special attention from others in recognition of their superiority, the Shy/Covert Narcissist may actually fawn over people whose accomplishments they envy while secretly harboring strong feelings of resentment and contempt.

Pete Walker coined the term fawn and defines it through the following: “The Fawn response is one of four defensive reactions to ongoing trauma. Those who fawn tend to put the needs and wants of others ahead of themselves at the cost of the health of their own egos, and the protection of and compassion for themselves.”

What is fawning the fourth trauma response? ›

The trauma response of fawn – also called 'please-and-appease' – generally sees people develop people-pleasing behaviours to avoid conflict, often taking steps to placate the aggressor.

People Pleasing

Many who experience quiet BPD identify with people-pleasing behaviors, but what is often occurring is a fawn response. Fawning is a component of the fight-flight-freeze response that usually develops during childhood to evade abuse and mistreatment from adults.

Masking is a form of “social camouflage” where a person adapts their behaviour in order to be accepted in an environment. Fawning is an attempt to avoid conflict by appeasing people.

Fight: facing any perceived threat aggressively. Flight: running away from danger. Freeze: unable to move or act against a threat. Fawn: immediately acting to try to please to avoid any conflict.

There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'. The freeze, flop, friend, fight or flight reactions are immediate, automatic and instinctive responses to fear. Understanding them a little might help you make sense of your experiences and feelings.

Freeze – Feeling stuck in a certain part of the body, feeling cold or numb, physical stiffness or heaviness of limbs, decreased heart-rate, restricted breathing or holding of the breath, a sense of dread or foreboding.

A stressful situation, whether environmental or psychological, can activate a cascade of stress hormones that produce physiological changes. Activation of the sympathetic nervous system in this manner triggers an acute stress response called the "fight or flight" response.

Deep breathing, relaxation strategies, physical activity, and social support can all help if you are feeling the effects of a fight-or-flight response.

The responses are usually referred to as the 4Fs – Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn and have evolved as a survival mechanism to help us react quickly to life-threatening situations.

A fourth, less discussed, response to trauma is called fawning, or people-pleasing. The fawn response is a coping mechanism in which individuals develop people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict, pacify their abusers, and create a sense of safety.

What gender is a fawn? ›

The only way to tell the sex of a fawn is to inspect between its legs where the important parts are – just like the doctor did when you were born. In fact, it is impossible to distinguish the sex of newborns of most any species unless you physically examine them.

In most cases, people-pleasing behavior is motivated by insecurity and low self-esteem caused by trauma bonds in childhood. People who were neglected, mistreated, or abused by their caregivers tried to please them in the hope of receiving attention and better treatment.

There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'. The freeze, flop, friend, fight or flight reactions are immediate, automatic and instinctive responses to fear. Understanding them a little might help you make sense of your experiences and feelings.

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn: the four types of trauma response. Healthy stress responses aren't inherently negative; they can help you stand up for yourself in the short term.

The trauma response of fawn – also called 'please-and-appease' – generally sees people develop people-pleasing behaviours to avoid conflict, often taking steps to placate the aggressor.

The responses are usually referred to as the 4Fs – Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn and have evolved as a survival mechanism to help us react quickly to life-threatening situations.

In the most extreme situations, you might have lapses of memory or “lost time.” Schauer & Elbert (2010) refer to the stages of trauma responses as the 6 “F”s: Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Flag, and Faint.

The four F's are: Facts: An objective account of what happened. Feelings: The emotional reactions to the situation. Findings: The concrete learning that you can take away from the situation. Future: Structuring your learning such that you can use it in the future.

Positive Characteristics of the Four F's

Flight types: disengagement, healthy retreat, industriousness, know-how, perseverance. Freeze types: acute awareness, mindfulness, poised readiness, peace, presence.

Courage, Self-Love and Complex Trauma (CPTSD)

Is oversharing a trauma response? ›

If you live with complex trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), trauma dumping or oversharing could be a natural trauma response and coping mechanism.

Hyper-Rationality is a trauma response and coping strategy. Overthinking, over-analyzing, and over-rationalizing are coping strategies that we learned early on to help us make sense of an unpredictable environment that at some point made us feel unsafe.

What types of trauma cause the fawn response? The fawn response is most commonly associated with childhood trauma and complex trauma — types of trauma that arise from repeat events, such as abuse or childhood neglect — rather than single-event trauma, such as an accident.

The fawn response involves trying to appease or please a person who is both a care provider and a source of threat. Examples of fawning include: “I hoped that by caring for them they might care for me.” “I never showed my true feelings for fear of retaliation.”

General adaptation syndrome is how your body responds to stress. There are three stages to stress: the alarm stage, the resistance stage and the exhaustion stage.

The fight, flight, or freeze response refers to involuntary physiological changes that happen in the body and mind when a person feels threatened. This response exists to keep people safe, preparing them to face, escape, or hide from danger.