![]() The more aware we are of our emotional guidance system, who we are as people, the closer we can move to holding ourselves. The good news is that fawning is a learnt response that we developed in childhood that we can also unlearn. Loss of freedom to be your authentic self.Feeling a loss of identity and sense of self.Becoming disconnected from your feelings.Falling prey to toxic and abusive relationships.As a fawn, it is easy to be empathetic, kind and compassionate towards others but it can be difficult to be compassionate and protective towards ourselves. In other words, fawns have learnt the only path to safety in relationships is to forfeit their own sense of self, wellbeing, needs, and boundaries. As one way of surviving childhood trauma, fawning is learnt to appease the ‘wishes, needs, and demands of others’. The concept of fawning was first identified by Pete Walker, a psychotherapist who discusses fawning in his book ‘Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving’. As a result of childhood trauma, we can subconsciously become over-reliant on a particular survival response in adulthood when faced with external stressors. These survival responses are the body’s automatic response to threat and danger and are controlled by our brain’s autonomic nervous system. A fourth, less well-known survival response is the fawn response. Three commonly known survival responses are flight, fight and freeze.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |