What Is Fawning? The Trauma Response That Looks Like Being Nice

I grew up knowing about two stress responses: fight or flight. I found out in my thirties that there are four.

It's called fawning. Your body handles a threat by keeping the other person happy. You agree before he's even done talking. You say "no worries!" to plans you didn't even want.

And because it looks like being nice, I never once thought of it as a stress response.

Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn

I knew fight and flight from high school bio. Freeze made sense the first time someone described it, that blank, deer-in-headlights thing. Fawn was the one I didn't have a word for.

The term comes from therapist Pete Walker, who wrote about it in Codependency, Trauma and the Fawn Response. The way he describes it, you try to stay safe by giving the other person whatever keeps them calm, even if that means dropping what you need.

For me, it's my boss sending a "quick call?" text at 6pm, and me typing "of course!! whenever works for you" before I've even checked whether I'm free.

Why Nobody Flags It

I got praised for it constantly. People called me easygoing, and every report card I ever had said I was "a pleasure to have in class." So I kept doing it, even on weeks it wore me out.

This one surprised me. Back in 2000, psychologist Shelley Taylor and her team at UCLA wrote about a stress response they called tend-and-befriend. Basically, when some people get stressed they go take care of everyone around them, and Taylor's team thought women might do it more. Reading it, I felt a little less weird about how automatic my people-pleasing was.

Walker says it usually starts when you grow up around someone you had to keep happy so the house stayed okay. If you kept a parent calm to stay safe, you got really good at reading the room. I could tell from the way my mom set her keys down on the counter what kind of night it was going to be.

What It Costs You

Dana Crowley Jack spent years interviewing depressed women, and she kept hearing a version of the same story: they'd stopped saying what they actually thought so the relationship would stay okay. She and Diana Dill turned that into the Silencing the Self Scale in 1992, and the women who swallowed what they thought the most were also the most depressed.

For me it looked like being wiped out every Friday, and a nap didn't fix it. I'd spent all week managing everyone else's mood, and I honestly couldn't have told you what I wanted for dinner.

Once you're calm, shadow journaling is a good place to start figuring out which of those feelings were actually yours.

How I Tell Fawning From Being Nice

From the outside they look exactly the same, so I go by what my body's doing. These are my tells:

• My chest gets tight right before I say yes.
• I do this scripted "haha" laugh, even in texts.
• I spend the drive home overthinking the conversation.

When I say yes and feel a little sick afterward, I ask myself what I was scared would happen if I'd said no. Usually it's something like "she'll be annoyed with me," and most of the time she's over it by the next day.

A 7-Day Experiment That Helped Me

My coach suggested one small no a day for a week. I picked the smallest ones I could think of. Telling the Starbucks drive-thru they forgot my oat milk. Texting a friend "actually, can we do Thursday?"

My heart was pounding at the drive-thru, over oat milk, lol.

By day four I tried a bigger one and told my manager I couldn't take on another project this month. I did a Daily Check-in in my car first, cause my brain goes blank when I'm that nervous.

I felt so much guilt. A couple of times it hit hard enough that I almost texted "never mind, it's totally fine!" For that moment I used Ride the Storm and waited it out instead of taking the no back.

Nothing dramatic happened. My manager said "okay, makes sense," and that was it.

Note: this isn't medical advice. If you've been struggling for a while, talk to a doctor or therapist.

The Attached App Makes This Easier

If you're the one keeping everyone calm at work and at home, I'd start by writing down what you actually want. Attached gives you prompts that help you work out which feelings were actually yours.

• Shadow journaling for the needs you keep putting last
• CBT journaling for the guilt after you say no
• Forward-looking journaling for learning secure attachment, growth, and new behavior

Because changing doesn't come from writing the same wound forever. Changing starts when the page asks a better question.