People-pleasing can keep us safer, but is not the only way to defend ourselves. When we are in stressful or dangerous situations, our animal brain takes over with an instinctual response instead of logically evaluating the situation.
Reyyy!!! I have SO MUCH to say about this. I am actually working on something about my own fawning right now. But I love what you have written here. As always, I love your gentle way of looking at things. Your acceptance and growth. It is such a special and safe space. <3
Thank you so much, River!! That means a lot coming from you. I really appreciate your kind feedback. Looking forward to reading your piece about fawning if you share it. I'd love to read your insights.
This is really interesting. I hope that someone who knows more about this can answer a question it's brought up for me: My understanding of fight/flight/freeze responses is that they are an automatic reaction when our sympathetic nervous system engages due to stressors/trauma. We don't have control over which response we use; we all have slightly differing nervous systems, and we can't consciously control our reactions once the sympathetic system is in control. Is that correct? If not, can someone clarify/correct my statement? If it is correct, how is it that we can be trained to fawn instead of fight/fly/freeze? I'm missing something...
This is a really interesting question, LC, thanks for asking. It feels right to me from my own experience that I do not consciously choose one of the nervous system responses. But I also feel like as I've gotten older my responses have changed from more freeze and fawn to more fight and flight. I think the training we do when we're not in a sympathetic nervous system activated state influences what the responses will be.
I was thinking a lot about how some of these reactions involve trained behavior but feel involuntary in the moment. For example, for a person who trains in boxing, a fight response might be punching someone in the face. For someone who doesn't know how to punch, a fight response might be a shove or a slap. A person who runs regularly could run away much faster in a flight response. A flight response could also be excusing yourself from the table and sitting in the bathroom, a learned behavior. A fawn response seems to involve the most learned, least instinctual behavior.
I think the response is not learned, exactly, but the behavior we do during the response absolutely can be learned. Of course, this is just my opinion/thoughts on the topic and I imagine others may have entirely different experiences. Interesting stuff to consider!
As much as I know about trauma, I know that you are correct here: if an action is habitual to the point of being ingrained, it can be an automatic (ie, unconscious/unintentional) response. That's one reason why I wonder if possibly, fawning *might* actually not be a separate type of response, and might be an adapted fight or flight response. I don't know enough to know if that is a feasible question, but it makes sense to me. Regarding your comment about your response changing over time: most of my knowledge on this subject comes from my most favorite mentor, who is a psychologist and SE (Somatic Experiencing) practitioner, and also a yoga teacher and social justice activist. She has been specializing in trauma-informed practice since years before this all got to be a mainstream thing, and I consider myself very fortunate to have learned from her. I think the most important aspect of her approach is that "self-regulation," and the practices/tools we can use to become more skilled at it, can - if practiced consistently - shift our nervous systems in very significant ways. Embodied mindfulness practices (martial arts, yoga asana, tai chi, etc.) can be incredibly helpful in learning/practicing self-regulation (which does take practice, because we live in a culture that socialized us to prefer suppression and disregulation instead of self-knowledge and liberation). So with your dedicated practice it is no surprise that, over time, your reaction to stressors has shifted in a more self-affirming way.
I'm going to step out on a limb and suggest that history, resources and circumstances play into how one might respond to a particular circumstance at a particular time.
Rey mentions the socialization that we all experience. Socialization has elements of both history and the way we develop resources. For example, if you are taught/told that girls do this or that boys do that and it is conveyed by someone you respect, depend upon, or fear, you might not be willing to challenge what they have said and then act in a way that is contrary to the admonition. Part of a limited response might be a fear of imagined consequences. But then imagine you change environments or you hear from others that you might have more options. Say that leads you to speak up or push back, even in just a "minor" way. Then imagine that the consequences you were taught to fear don't come to pass. Now you have personal experience that says, don't believe everything you've been told - and now you might begin to question what else you might have been told.
This might be one way (an admittedly simplistic example) that people break free from other people, organizations and society at large telling them who they can be and how they can behave while developing a broader range of potential responses to threatening circumstances.
Oh, yeah, I think this is all spot-on. I think that what you are referring to here is related to ongoing systemic trauma; we are pressured - based on social positionality - to adapt to certain roles/behaviors, and our particular mix of privilege vs. marginalization greatly influences both how we are taught to behave in the world, and also how we perceive ourselves, especially in the context of social power dynamics. Trauma responses, though, aren't necessarily going to align with social conditioning. They do to a large degree, but there's also a lot of times they don't. A good low-stakes example might be how some people laugh at funerals. That behavior goes squarely against social conditioning, yet some people do it without having any disruptive intent, or conscious choice to do it. It is, on a very fundamental level, an unconscious physiological need that allows the person to release energy that the nervous system can't tolerate containing. I don't know this for a fact, but I think probably most times we react to stress in a way that makes no sense to us in retrospect, it is because our automatic reaction is a trauma response that was not informed at all by cognitive choice.
The physiology behind a "trauma response" is much different than other reactions. When we are stressed to a point that we perceive mortal danger, the autonomic nervous system (the branch that is responsible for routine involuntary things like breathing, heartbeat, etc. It has two main divisions: sympathetic and parasympathetic) hands control over to the sympathetic ("fight/flight") system. It is much faster than the parasympathetic ("rest/digest") system because it bypasses decision-making processes; the "thinking" part of the brain is virtually offline at this point, so it is much harder to exert conscious decisions about how to react. While what I've described here is a crude over-simplification, it explains why/how we really do have much less access to decision-making when our sympathetic nervous system has been activated. It gets fuzzy, though, because we don't have to actually be in mortal danger for the sympathetic system to take over - we just have to believe that we are. Since our perceptions are highly subjective, and we have evolved to err on the side of expecting danger, we are prone to overestimating the severity or immediacy of a threat. So it gets a bit dicey when we start trying to decide if/when there is choice involved in our or others' actions, especially if we are interested either in evading accountability for our own actions, blaming/judging someone else for theirs, denying or minimizing the actual potential for damage, etc. All that is to say that I don't know how useful it is to try to figure this all out on a theoretical level - there is so much variation depending on context/situation, social positionality, power dynamics, access to healing resources, etc.
FWIW, I honestly do not know but I've seen both sides argued. You mention "choice." Robert Sapolsky would argue that there is no such thing as choice, just the illusion of choice (free will).
I just read the article. It's really thought provoking. The thing is, though, he says he doesn't believe in free will at all, but then he's talking about what we need to do about this all. I think what he's actually saying is not that we have no self-determining power at all, but that it is a myth that we are capable of making choices unaffected by our life up to this moment. This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart, and I really appreciated his point about how this all comes back to matters of social justice. I don't get the sense from this that his definition of "free will" is that every single thing we do/think/say is predetermined. At the point where he is describing how he would expect someone to prove they do have free will, he describes the outcome of that as being proof that a person's actions can happen in a vacuum, where the choice-making mind has the latitude to do whatever it wants, regardless of context. Based on that, the way I interpret his statement that we have no free will is that he is stressing that the choices/decisions available to us are significantly restricted and filtered based on our life up to that point. That does not necessarily mean that we have no ability at all to decide how to act - it just means that because our range of feasible choices is so strongly shaped by circumstance and physiology, it is not equitable to judge or punish people for choices we don't approve of. To me, that is the key takeaway. We could argue forever about whether or not free will exists, but what is more important is understanding the injustice of holding others to standards that are not compatible with their existence.
Absolutely! It's tricky, though; for any one person who, because they are understood to not have a choice, are not persecuted when they might have been, there will also be those who claim that lack of free also let's themselves off the hook for their oppressive reactions.
I feel like this topic is a really good argument in favor of shifting society away from punitive justice and towards restorative justice. If our aim is truly to encourage equitable solutions to "crimes," we have to stop assuming that the way to (possible) redemption requires the transgressor to suffer and be stripped of their humanity.
I've been a Sapolsky fan as far back as the 1990's when he was studying baboons in Kenya and assessing the differences in social roles and impact role has on the development of cardiovascular damage (documented the deleterious effects of being a 'middle management' type of baboon).
Reyyy!!! I have SO MUCH to say about this. I am actually working on something about my own fawning right now. But I love what you have written here. As always, I love your gentle way of looking at things. Your acceptance and growth. It is such a special and safe space. <3
Thank you so much, River!! That means a lot coming from you. I really appreciate your kind feedback. Looking forward to reading your piece about fawning if you share it. I'd love to read your insights.
This is really interesting. I hope that someone who knows more about this can answer a question it's brought up for me: My understanding of fight/flight/freeze responses is that they are an automatic reaction when our sympathetic nervous system engages due to stressors/trauma. We don't have control over which response we use; we all have slightly differing nervous systems, and we can't consciously control our reactions once the sympathetic system is in control. Is that correct? If not, can someone clarify/correct my statement? If it is correct, how is it that we can be trained to fawn instead of fight/fly/freeze? I'm missing something...
This is a really interesting question, LC, thanks for asking. It feels right to me from my own experience that I do not consciously choose one of the nervous system responses. But I also feel like as I've gotten older my responses have changed from more freeze and fawn to more fight and flight. I think the training we do when we're not in a sympathetic nervous system activated state influences what the responses will be.
I was thinking a lot about how some of these reactions involve trained behavior but feel involuntary in the moment. For example, for a person who trains in boxing, a fight response might be punching someone in the face. For someone who doesn't know how to punch, a fight response might be a shove or a slap. A person who runs regularly could run away much faster in a flight response. A flight response could also be excusing yourself from the table and sitting in the bathroom, a learned behavior. A fawn response seems to involve the most learned, least instinctual behavior.
I think the response is not learned, exactly, but the behavior we do during the response absolutely can be learned. Of course, this is just my opinion/thoughts on the topic and I imagine others may have entirely different experiences. Interesting stuff to consider!
As much as I know about trauma, I know that you are correct here: if an action is habitual to the point of being ingrained, it can be an automatic (ie, unconscious/unintentional) response. That's one reason why I wonder if possibly, fawning *might* actually not be a separate type of response, and might be an adapted fight or flight response. I don't know enough to know if that is a feasible question, but it makes sense to me. Regarding your comment about your response changing over time: most of my knowledge on this subject comes from my most favorite mentor, who is a psychologist and SE (Somatic Experiencing) practitioner, and also a yoga teacher and social justice activist. She has been specializing in trauma-informed practice since years before this all got to be a mainstream thing, and I consider myself very fortunate to have learned from her. I think the most important aspect of her approach is that "self-regulation," and the practices/tools we can use to become more skilled at it, can - if practiced consistently - shift our nervous systems in very significant ways. Embodied mindfulness practices (martial arts, yoga asana, tai chi, etc.) can be incredibly helpful in learning/practicing self-regulation (which does take practice, because we live in a culture that socialized us to prefer suppression and disregulation instead of self-knowledge and liberation). So with your dedicated practice it is no surprise that, over time, your reaction to stressors has shifted in a more self-affirming way.
I'm going to step out on a limb and suggest that history, resources and circumstances play into how one might respond to a particular circumstance at a particular time.
Rey mentions the socialization that we all experience. Socialization has elements of both history and the way we develop resources. For example, if you are taught/told that girls do this or that boys do that and it is conveyed by someone you respect, depend upon, or fear, you might not be willing to challenge what they have said and then act in a way that is contrary to the admonition. Part of a limited response might be a fear of imagined consequences. But then imagine you change environments or you hear from others that you might have more options. Say that leads you to speak up or push back, even in just a "minor" way. Then imagine that the consequences you were taught to fear don't come to pass. Now you have personal experience that says, don't believe everything you've been told - and now you might begin to question what else you might have been told.
This might be one way (an admittedly simplistic example) that people break free from other people, organizations and society at large telling them who they can be and how they can behave while developing a broader range of potential responses to threatening circumstances.
Oh, yeah, I think this is all spot-on. I think that what you are referring to here is related to ongoing systemic trauma; we are pressured - based on social positionality - to adapt to certain roles/behaviors, and our particular mix of privilege vs. marginalization greatly influences both how we are taught to behave in the world, and also how we perceive ourselves, especially in the context of social power dynamics. Trauma responses, though, aren't necessarily going to align with social conditioning. They do to a large degree, but there's also a lot of times they don't. A good low-stakes example might be how some people laugh at funerals. That behavior goes squarely against social conditioning, yet some people do it without having any disruptive intent, or conscious choice to do it. It is, on a very fundamental level, an unconscious physiological need that allows the person to release energy that the nervous system can't tolerate containing. I don't know this for a fact, but I think probably most times we react to stress in a way that makes no sense to us in retrospect, it is because our automatic reaction is a trauma response that was not informed at all by cognitive choice.
I know that trauma feels different but does a traumatic experience result in a response that is fundamentally different than other learning? Or, is
the resultant learning similar but of such an intensity that it isn't recognizable?
The physiology behind a "trauma response" is much different than other reactions. When we are stressed to a point that we perceive mortal danger, the autonomic nervous system (the branch that is responsible for routine involuntary things like breathing, heartbeat, etc. It has two main divisions: sympathetic and parasympathetic) hands control over to the sympathetic ("fight/flight") system. It is much faster than the parasympathetic ("rest/digest") system because it bypasses decision-making processes; the "thinking" part of the brain is virtually offline at this point, so it is much harder to exert conscious decisions about how to react. While what I've described here is a crude over-simplification, it explains why/how we really do have much less access to decision-making when our sympathetic nervous system has been activated. It gets fuzzy, though, because we don't have to actually be in mortal danger for the sympathetic system to take over - we just have to believe that we are. Since our perceptions are highly subjective, and we have evolved to err on the side of expecting danger, we are prone to overestimating the severity or immediacy of a threat. So it gets a bit dicey when we start trying to decide if/when there is choice involved in our or others' actions, especially if we are interested either in evading accountability for our own actions, blaming/judging someone else for theirs, denying or minimizing the actual potential for damage, etc. All that is to say that I don't know how useful it is to try to figure this all out on a theoretical level - there is so much variation depending on context/situation, social positionality, power dynamics, access to healing resources, etc.
FWIW, I honestly do not know but I've seen both sides argued. You mention "choice." Robert Sapolsky would argue that there is no such thing as choice, just the illusion of choice (free will).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-doesnt-exist-according-to-robert-sapolsky/
I just read the article. It's really thought provoking. The thing is, though, he says he doesn't believe in free will at all, but then he's talking about what we need to do about this all. I think what he's actually saying is not that we have no self-determining power at all, but that it is a myth that we are capable of making choices unaffected by our life up to this moment. This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart, and I really appreciated his point about how this all comes back to matters of social justice. I don't get the sense from this that his definition of "free will" is that every single thing we do/think/say is predetermined. At the point where he is describing how he would expect someone to prove they do have free will, he describes the outcome of that as being proof that a person's actions can happen in a vacuum, where the choice-making mind has the latitude to do whatever it wants, regardless of context. Based on that, the way I interpret his statement that we have no free will is that he is stressing that the choices/decisions available to us are significantly restricted and filtered based on our life up to that point. That does not necessarily mean that we have no ability at all to decide how to act - it just means that because our range of feasible choices is so strongly shaped by circumstance and physiology, it is not equitable to judge or punish people for choices we don't approve of. To me, that is the key takeaway. We could argue forever about whether or not free will exists, but what is more important is understanding the injustice of holding others to standards that are not compatible with their existence.
Both interpretations (an absolute absence of free will or something less than an absolute absence) have massive social justice implications.
Absolutely! It's tricky, though; for any one person who, because they are understood to not have a choice, are not persecuted when they might have been, there will also be those who claim that lack of free also let's themselves off the hook for their oppressive reactions.
I feel like this topic is a really good argument in favor of shifting society away from punitive justice and towards restorative justice. If our aim is truly to encourage equitable solutions to "crimes," we have to stop assuming that the way to (possible) redemption requires the transgressor to suffer and be stripped of their humanity.
I love Sapolsky - I'm a great fan. I will definitely check out the link.
I've been a Sapolsky fan as far back as the 1990's when he was studying baboons in Kenya and assessing the differences in social roles and impact role has on the development of cardiovascular damage (documented the deleterious effects of being a 'middle management' type of baboon).