You may be familiar with the survival response of “fighting, flying, or freezing.”
But there is another word “f”. Although fawn responses are not very recognized, they are the things I see most commonly as a psychotherapist and what I have experienced in my life.
Fawn is to relieve real or perceived threats and to be content. When we are in the fawn’s reaction, we move towards the threat rather than leaving it. These people can make you feel anxious when you have absolutely no reason.
Here’s how to find and handle fawn responses:
Where does the fawn’s response come from?
There are many situations that feed the need for fawns, but the threads are the same. “No one feels safe until everyone is satisfied with me.”
Whether your body is perceived as a real threat (the lion is chasing you), or if it is perceived (the boss is a bit independent), detecting any threat can make you feel the same as your nervous system.
Maybe you grew up in a house where you had to hold your breath and monitor your parents’ moods. Or, having a very critical parent and being “perfect” was a way to precede criticism. I can certainly relate to it.
A prime example of a fawn’s reaction is the instinct where you may have to ask someone, “Are you mad at me?”
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What does a fawn’s response actually look like?
To be clear, fawns are not a bad thing. This is an automatic survival mechanism and you may need to fawn whether you get a salary or be safe instantly.
However, we often separate and ignore ourselves because we are overfitted with other people’s moods, reactions, and perceptions. Here are some common fawn response behaviors to note:
Continuously rethink social interactions. You can’t say no, set boundaries, res or res. You are afraid of conflicts and people you think you don’t agree with them. opinion.
All of this will become visible and unsettling. If these patterns resonate, I think at some point they are really kind and protective. So the body thinks: Hey, this works, let’s continue with it. Even if it doesn’t help us, the familiar things always feel safe.
How to get out of the fawn response cycle
Fawns’ reactions are unconscious patterns, so the first step is to notice them and bring them to the forefront of your mind. There are several practices that we would recommend to patients.
Pause. Before going to an overly apologise, shrink yourself, push down your needs, and get lost in the spiral thinking too much – pause. Please check in yourself. “What do you need now? What do you think about this? What do you feel?” asks. It’s great to care about others, but it’s not the case that you abandon your needs in the process. Let’s say your parents text you while you’re in the middle of something, and your direct instinct is to respond so that you don’t let them down. Instead, you’ll finish what you were doing and respond when you’re free. This can be all about releasing urgency, and sometimes it’s not useful. By slowing down, we communicate with our bodies that we are safe. Look inside. On a daily basis, practice expressing your needs in a relationship that feels safest for you. For example, when your partner asks what you want for dinner, instead of saying, “Whatever you want!”, you take a little time and say, “What do I actually want?”, “What do you allow yourself to express it? And don’t be afraid to do so.
When conditioned to believe that we are not allowed to have needs, it may be difficult for us to set up as a responsibility to manage the emotions of others. Many of us may be afraid of setting boundaries as cold or mean. But I like to think of boundaries as a way to strengthen the relationships we really want in our lives.
Meg Josephson is a licensed psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book “Are you angry at me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Other People Can Start Live For You.”
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