How to Stop Fawning: A Trauma-Informed Shadow Work Practice for Safety in Conflict

Fawning may look gentle and calm on the surface, but it often disguises extreme fear

There are moments when your whole body knows you’re not safe, even if no one has laid a hand on you.

Maybe someone is raising their voice in a bullying way. Maybe you’re being interrupted, ignored, dismissed or shamed. Maybe someone you love is suddenly speaking with ice in their tone, deadness in their eyes, or a passive aggressive threat on their lips. Or standing too close, towering over you with a menacing air. You freeze in shock. You shut down. Or you start over-explaining, justifying, apologising, softening your words to try and fix it.

You know something’s not right, that connection has been lost, but instead of protecting yourself, you move to soothe them. Maybe you immediately apologise, even when you haven’t done anything wrong. You might minimise your needs and feelings, ignore your instincts, agree when you disagree, or laugh off something painful as nothing to worry about. Perhaps you modulate your voice, shift your stance and change your facial expression to show in every way that you are non-threatening, that there is no attack here.

This is what we call fawning: a survival response that doesn’t always get the compassion it deserves. It’s not a flaw. It’s not weakness. It’s a brilliant, protective strategy that was at one time, probably the only option you had, and it worked. So well in fact, that here you are today, reading this article.

The term ‘fawn response’ was coined by Peter Walker in his work on Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), a variation of PTSD which is formally recognised in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the diagnostic manual used in the UK. Walker observed that some people, especially those with a history of childhood trauma or neglect, developed this specific coping mechanism because in their specific circumstances, the other, more well-known survival responses, such as fighting or fleeing, either escalated danger or were not available. By exhibiting appeasing, submissive behaviour which is reminiscent of that of a fawn, the individual attempts to diffuse the situation, placate the aggressor and thereby stay safe and avoid harm. Walker made it clear that by adulthood, this is largely not a conscious response but an automatic reaction that has been deeply ingrained into the nervous system over time as a way to navigate difficult or threatening situations.

So Why Do We Need to Fawn?

When we’re little, our survival completely depends on maintaining connection. We can’t feed ourselves, soothe ourselves, or make sense of the world without the presence of a caregiver. So if the adults around us are volatile, blaming, withholding, or emotionally unpredictable, even through no fault of their own, we will be very alive to it and will do whatever it takes to preserve that bond.

We learn that authenticity without regard for the other is dangerous. That showing our frustration pushes our caregivers away. That our needs, when inconvenient, can cause punishment or withdrawal. And so the inner logic becomes:

- If I can understand what’s happening for them…
- If I can soothe them, manage them, calm them down…
… Then I’ll be safe.

This pattern doesn’t always disappear when we grow up. It often gets more sophisticated. You might find yourself trying to regulate someone else’s nervous system in the middle of being mistreated, like some part of you still believes their comfort equals your survival. The way the response manifests may become more subtle, less about loud or obvious protestations and more about silently disconnecting from your own body, and reaching out energetically, like invisible tree roots or tendrils, towards their invisible nervous system, hoping to create harmony again. And mostly this will be unconscious, because so much of developing a healthy ego is about learning to fit in to our environment at all costs. So over time, we just do this by default, and it becomes a chronic shadow pattern that reinforces a disempowering narrative about us and our lives, one that got set up in our early years.

But the good news is, you aren’t that child anymore. You have agency and can reclaim authenticity and autonomy. And this is where the PAUSE practice comes in.

The PAUSE Practice

This is a trauma-informed tool I created for my coaching clients to help them stay anchored in self-connection when the heat rises. It’s somatic-centred and designed especially for those who default to fawning, freezing, or over-functioning in moments of relational stress. It is of course not the whole answer, I recommend working with a somatic practitioner who can help you rewire this circuitry over time, but this can be a useful first step in practicing not giving your power away.

It’s neither about confrontation nor being ‘calm and composed’ but rather about staying with yourself and doing what’s right for you in a truly responsive way. I like the word PAUSE because if you remember nothing else when under pressure, this is the opposite of what fawning has you do. In reality, we only have a very small window of time before our default responses kick in when we are first trying to make change in our lives, so whilst this takes a while to explain, it can all be done within a minute, if you can remember to pause.

P ~ Pause and Propriocept

Take a long deep breath. Place a hand on your heart. Or press your feet firmly into the floor. Or clasp your hands together beneath the table.

Any strong, steady contact or light pressure that helps you to feel yourself inside your body and remember: I am here. I exist. I have a boundary, a physical boundary of being inside my own body.

This is called proprioception, the ability to locate yourself in space and time. When you’ve been trained to orient around others' needs, actions or moods, returning to your own internal reference point under stress can be radical.

A ~ Assess (Not Agree)

Take a moment to assess what’s happening, in terms of actual data. When we learned to fawn, we tended to focus on what we need to do for them, rather than allowing their behaviour to land with us:

- “This person is shouting at me.”
- “They are interrupting me and aren’t listening.”
- “They’re continuing to pressure me to say yes when I have said no.”
- “They’ve entered my personal space and are looking down at me.”

This doesn’t mean you have to fight, confront, or walk away (although you might do any of these things if the moment calls for it.) It simply means you stop denying your own perception.

When we grew up with manipulation or emotional volatility, our default might be to assume we’re the problem or we misunderstood them. That’s how we protected the bond. That’s how we stayed safe. As children, it is much easier to think that we have done something wrong, because ultimately even though it might feel painful, we retain a sense of agency. If we are at fault, it means we could do something differently, or learn to be better, to fix the situation and avoid the same pain in the future. It is far more terrifying at a young age to consider that our caregivers don’t know what they are doing, or are in some way untrustworthy, so much so that some Jungian analysts and spiritual practitioners say it would be a soul-injury that we might not psychically be able to bear. So our authenticity and our nervous systems take the hit instead.

Additionally, because most people aren’t driven by consciously malevolent intent, but rather cause harm through leaky shadow projection, lack of thought, capacity, skill or care, their ego will want to defend them against accepting the responsibility for the failure. This is because to accept responsibility requires being willing to look at oneself with honesty and humility, without collapsing into shame or self-hatred, and many people struggle with that, and need to blame the other person instead. As a result, we might have acquired all sorts of internalised voices along the way that originally came from others who didn’t, or couldn’t, take us seriously in moments where we reached out for help because something happened that hurt us. Those might include the denier: “you’re imagining things, dear”, the ‘rose tinted glasses’ one: “oh don’t be silly, it’s not that bad, that’s just how he is, he just likes to feel important”, the narcissistic gaslighter: “wow you’re crazy, that could never have happened, you need help”, the minimiser: “well, yes, people behave badly, perhaps you should go look at why it matters to you so much”, the one who always needs to one-up you: “how can you make this about you when I am going through so much stress, you’re not special you know, I don’t have time for this”, the spiritual bypasser: “this is just another opportunity for growth, when you are as evolved as me, these things won’t bother you anymore” or the endlessly forgiving saint: “oh but we must feel sorry for them, they must be so wounded to behave like that, come on now, be more compassionate.” I could go on, but you get the picture.

These kinds of environmental responses are some examples of why you might have been left with no choice in the past but to fawn, if you wanted to avoid feeling totally alone, ashamed and abandoned. But none of it serves your growth or your health in any way, and it all comes from someone else’s inability to do the right thing. That’s why, in this second step, Assess, it’s important to take time to honour and affirm your reality with your own eyes and heart. You stop trying to parent or placate the perpetrator. You let go of the fantasy that if you’re nice enough, soft enough, or understanding enough, they’ll stop hurting you. You reject the subtle suggestions that maybe it’s somehow your fault, that you just need to be more resilient and detached. Instead, you let yourself know what you know, deep in your bones.

U ~ Understand What’s Happening in You (Not them!)

Ask yourself: What’s happening for me right now internally?

You might notice:
- “I feel small.”
- “My heart’s racing.”
- “I’m afraid and want to run.”

That’s enough. You don’t need to figure anything out beyond that.

And unless you feel totally safe and emotionally resourced, this is not the time to get curious about what’s happening for them, you can come to that later.

Again, if you’re someone who learned to fawn, especially if you were a parentified child, your impulse may be to analyse, empathise, and smooth it over immediately by figuring out what they need. But this is where self-abandonment happens. So instead, I’m recommending that you redirect your energy inward. You choose to tend to your body, your fear, your truth.

S ~ Self-Soothe and Space

If you can, create distance. Step away. Take five minutes alone. Go to the bathroom. Let yourself breathe.

This is your chance to say to the small, exiled parts of you:
- “I’ve got you now.”
- “You’re not alone anymore.”
- “You don’t have to hold the burden of making everything okay.”

And, if relevant, to identify the inner critic within you for what it is, the internalised voices that are mentioned above rather than the truth, and firmly stand in your knowing of what just happened, and how you are feeling as a result.

The more consistently you offer yourself this kind of attunement, the more your nervous system begins to believe:
“I’m not under duress anymore. I’m allowed to feel what I feel and know what I know. I’m allowed to walk away, or say no to this kind of behaviour.”

E ~ Express or Engage (If and When It’s Emotionally and Physically Safe)

Later, once your system is more regulated, you might choose to return to the situation.

You might express a boundary. Or name what didn’t feel acceptable to you. Or ask for repair. Or… not.

Sometimes the most powerful choice is not to re-engage, especially if the dynamic is harmful, repeatedly unsafe or you are being framed as the perpetrator when in fact you were on the receiving end of harm. If you choose not to engage, then find a way to express yourself and your truth, ideally with someone who will affirm and support you, and offer empathy. Your healing is what matters, and it is important to experience a ‘win’ internally, for the courage it took to try something new in the face of fear. So engage with someone supportive, not critical or combative.

The key is this: you get to decide how you move forward from a place of clarity and self-protection, not collapse.

And a note, you have every right to do this on your timeline, not theirs. It is emphatically not your job to feel sorry for the person who is hurting you or to yield to their protestations that by not engaging, you are causing them stress. You are internally experiencing a lot of stress, and have been taught to minimize it. But how’s that working for you? I would assert that the more they push and bully you, try to make you the villain and caretake their discomfort, tell everyone else what a terrible person you are, the more evidence you have that it is a really bad idea to re-engage. Your responsibility is firstly to yourself. Perhaps secondly to your dependents, and I appreciate that there are some relationships that it is far less easy to maintain space within because of long term commitments, family etc, but it is important to be wise to manipulatory tactics (even unconscious ones) that are designed to pull you right back into self-abandonment and fawning.

As a wise person once said to me, “Sometimes you have to stop thinking about the other person, and let the universe re-organise itself around you for a change.” It’s true. Healthy relationships have mutual care and thoughtulness at their core. No matter how kind, peaceful and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you as deeply as they have met themselves, and will only treat you in ways that mirror their own level of healing or wounding. So even if you feel some cognitive dissonance, even if you want to resist such a statement because your values tell you it is important to be kind and generous, the question you might like to ask yourself is “Kind to who, generous to who?” You deserve your kindness and generosity more than anyone.

Can Shadow Work Help Me Stop Fawning?

Yes it can, providing its trauma-informed, somatic, and relationally held by someone who is qualified to support you over time. If it isn’t, I wouldn’t recommend it. Not everyone believes that the power of this kind of work is dependent on the quality of care that the coach offers, some see it as being mostly about the tool itself. I emphatically disagree, because I have experienced what it was like to not be held with care when I most needed it and it was highly shocking and re-traumatising.

Fawning is a survival strategy wired into your nervous system. It can’t be “talked out of” with mindset work alone, and most of us who have worked through it needed support from someone who could work relationally with us. This is obvious to me, we were wounded in some key relationships, by those who should have encouraged our instincts and inner knowing, but unfortunately robbed us of these vital life tools, and so until our nervous systems can feel what we didn’t get to feel then, in relationship, then physiologically the wound won’t heal. This is a limitation, in my view, of depth work that leaves out the relational field. The last thing someone who has a tendency to fawn needs, is to be made to feel weak or that there is something wrong with them for not being able to deal with a difficult situation alone.

When your shadow parts are witnessed with compassion and empathy on the other hand… when your nervous system is supported through gentle co-regulation (the part that depends on your coach’s ethos, level of expertise and genuine care for you)… when your body starts to believe it no longer has to perform or disconnect for safety…

That’s when new patterns become possible.

New patterns are delicate, they are like tiny saplings not towering oak trees. Therefore I also highly recommend using razor sharp discernment when choosing the environments you put yourself in as you learn to practice these new tools. That’s why I advocate above for putting your emotional (and of course physical) safety, above the comfort of whoever you’re interrupting this pattern with. Otherwise you won’t get to grow and heal, and actually neither will they, as you will just reinforce that whenever they complain and deflect, they get what they want and never have to look at their own behaviour.

If this practice speaks to something inside you, you might enjoy Rooted, my upcoming course for deep feeling, soulful women healing from people-pleasing, emotional self-abandonment, and eroded boundaries. To find out more, fill out the contact form here.

Or if you’re seeking personalised support, I offer 1:1 coaching that combines trauma-informed shadow work, Jungian psychodynamic principles and nervous system, body-based tools.

We’ll work with the very parts of you that learned to fawn, freeze, or disappear, and give them a new felt experience of safety, over time.

You don’t have to go it alone anymore.