Fawning: The Fourth Trauma Response After Fight, Flight, Freeze

But beyond the fight-flight-freeze options, there's a fourth trauma response that we seldom acknowledge: fawning.

Put simply, we are run by an unconscious belief system—what social psychologist Ronnie Januff-Bulman calls our assumptive world1. Most of us believe that good things happen to us, the future is good, and the world is a benevolent place. However, a traumatic incident can shatter our assumptive world, leading us to tell ourselves different stories. Because the world is a dangerous place and bad things happen to us, we display a different set of behaviors to protect ourselves.

Importantly, it's not only childhood experiences that can create this trauma response. Something that happens anywhere along your timeline can change you forever.

Whether or not it's your fault, you take too much responsibility. You blame yourself, and you needlessly say sorry all the time. When that happens, you're training your brain to think you're at fault, reinforcing the self-blame, guilt, and shame.

While it's normal to say "I'm good!" even if your day's been crappy as a response to the cashier, it's hard for people who fawn to express what's really going on to close ones. This might be because you don't know how you're feeling, you're overthinking things, you're overly considerate about how that might make the other party feel at your expense, or you simply don't know how to articulate it. 

Too many emoji and question marks because you need to be that rah-rah! cheerleader or you're afraid of accidentally offending someone. You're the one who ends every chat thread, and you will respond to everyone because you don't want to seem rude, even if it's often unnecessary or the other party is making you uncomfortable. 

Even if someone repeatedly hurts you, you always see it from their perspective. It's a toxic cocktail of having too much empathy, avoiding conflict, and people-pleasing. While it's one thing to understand why people do the things they do, it's another to forget your own needs, saying yes when you mean no. Worse still, to thrust the burden upon your shoulders to make them feel better or rescue them. As a result, you can suffer from empathy burnout, trauma from abuse, and feel taken advantage of.

In a word, fawning makes us obsequious. We look for all sorts of ridiculous ways to praise someone, never mind if the compliments are vague and empty, in a way that brings to mind courtiers and eunuchs within ancient court systems. 

Here's how to stop:

First up, know that boundaries are the "Hell no's" in your life—the things that you absolutely do not tolerate. Be clear about what they are. Some of us know them, but we don't believe we have permission to have them. Here's where we have to rewrite the script. All of us have the right to have boundaries that must be enforced should they get tread upon. And anyone who repeatedly violates your boundaries is doing that on purpose. 

Human Nature 101: We lie to ourselves all the time. We can trick ourselves by saying the cost of not avoiding trouble is too high, or we're dealing with someone with great power at work, or we don't want to wake the children up. Yes, there are times it's not worth engaging, especially if it's a short-term cost/benefit thing or the relationship/interaction is one you can exit easily. But let's remove the blinkers.

We tell ourselves we're too well-mannered to create trouble. Again, standing up for ourselves isn't about being pugnacious; there are many ways to do it respectfully. If uncertain, practice writing and running scripts with someone you trust, so you're confident about what to say.

Start with simple experiences like, "This hot tea feels soothing" or "I feel joy when I listen to this song." Start to sharpen your emotional vocabulary with a feelings wheel. Locate an experience within your body—where do you feel it, what color would you give it, and what name would you give it? This way, you know how your thoughts, feelings, and physicality are linked.

People who fawn downplay themselves. Your personality is what makes you shine. Chances are, you're so aware of social rules and situations, you won't push too many limits. Ask your closest friends:

Practice expressing a side of you that you keep under wraps. If you have a secret talent or hobby, share it with people who care or who are similar. Or post it on social media, because the world needs to be inspired by you.

"Thank you for waiting." "Excuse me." These are things you can say instead of "sorry." This way, when you actually have to apologize, you're truly sincere. Not sure? You can flowchart with the questions, Have I hurt someone? or Have I been rude or disrespectful? If the answer is yes, you should probably apologize. If no, move on.

The most sincere compliments are specific, appropriate, and delightfully unexpected. Instead of blanket words like "You're so lovely" or "Amazing!" that don't mean anything, praise only when the situation calls for it and say exactly what's great about the person. Also, go beyond the obvious. Perhaps someone's a great accountant so they're awesome at math and detail; if they happen to have excellent taste in music, talk about that, how you (truly) admire that, and ask them how that came to be.

You update the OS of your phone all the time. It's time you update the OS of you.