“Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others.” - Pete Walker “Fawn is the process of abandoning self for the purpose of attending to the needs of others.” - Dr. Arielle Schwartz Fawning is taking care of others by suppressing my own emotions, ne
Fawning is taking care of others by suppressing my own emotions, needs, or identity. It’s something I’ve done since I was a very small child, and it’s something that I observe people doing around me almost every day. Fawning is a trauma response, and it’s also an expected social behavior in western cultures. We are conditioned to perform *prosocial behaviors in almost every social setting regardless of our internal state.
In terms of polyvagal theory, when we neurocept (subconsciously perceive) a certain level of danger, the fawn response is one of the possible trauma responses that our body uses for survival purposes. The fawn response involves both Fight/Flight and Freeze activation at the same time. This is like pushing the gas pedal on a car while the emergency brake is engaged - and why fawning as a habitual long-term protective strategy causes major health problems. The Fight/Flight (sympathetic) system provides the power or fuel for movement and micro-movements that meet the needs of others. The Freeze (dorsal vagus) circuit causes dissociation and disconnection to suppress any expression that does not meet others needs and to protect our psyche from the loss of autonomy involved in the survival performance.
In one sense prosocial behaviors are any behaviors that are positive, helpful, and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship. However in practice, prosocial behaviors are more narrowly defined to enforce neurotypical socio-cultural values such as eye contact, verbal conversations, interest in large group social activities, direct social engagement, turn taking, etc.
Autistic people and other neurodivergent people are greatly impacted by biased cultural assumptions about what Safe states look like and what trauma responses look like. Our fawn responses are often misread as Safe states, and our Safe states are often misread as trauma responses. This leads to ineffective and potentially traumatizing “care” that is aimed at “healing” our supposed trauma responses so that we will appear to be in a Safe state more often.
Now I understand, for many neurodivergent people, increasing our access to the Safe state will do the opposite. When we are fawning less, we show less stereotypical social behaviors. Fawning less frequently may not be safe in certain environments or situations and should not universally be held up as a goal for treatment.As I seek to bridge a positive neurodiversity paradigm with Porges, it feels more and more important to me to distinguish between the fawn trauma response and the Safe social engagement state for myself and for other self-healers and for professionals.
