Reflections on Fawning

Fawning can disregard another’s sense of power and self-efficacy. It is often a trauma response to decrease future conflict.

Our nervous system has four trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Many of us in the helping profession, and those defined as high empaths, default to fawning. Fawning is a way of decreasing conflict; it often looks like a form of care or nurturing, but it is done at the expense of yourself. We take on the problems of another and, in turn, seek to solve them. Fawning is often present in relationships defined as codependent. Fawning behaviors allow us to take responsibility for another and place it on ourselves. The fawner is exhausted as they try to control, through care, the often-unpredictable behaviors of another. The recipient of our fawning behavior’s is disempowered, and their sense of self-efficacy is diminished.