Fawning is about being big on pleasing people and engaging in pacifying behaviors. In fawn trauma response, the victim prioritizes appeasing people and receiving approval. We know it feels great to be liked by the people around you. But it is utterly useless if you are losing yourself while at it. And this is what fawning is all about; people abandon themselves to get the validation of the people around them. 

Fawning often happens when you don’t feel seen. This way, you will go to any lengths to get noticed and validated while leaving behind your emotions, thoughts, and body sensations. 

What is Fawn Trauma Response? 

You must have heard of fright, flight, or freeze responses to trauma. These are the most talked about, and they happen when you are faced with potential physical danger. However, a less known response to trauma is the fawn trauma response. 

If you find yourself overly concerned with the needs of others while forgetting your own, then you are fawning. 

According to Pete Walker, a marriage family therapist, a fawn trauma response is all about being more appealing to the threat. And one easy way to know you are fawning is when you have a problem saying “no.” This happens when you lack firm boundaries in your relationships or cannot create them. 

Why Do People Fawn?

People fawn to avoid disapproval, criticism, judgment, and rebuke. Think of this situation; you offered to babysit a friend’s child on some weekends. However, one weekend, you have tickets to your favorite musician’s concert, and you had already made it a routine to help babysit on Sundays. 

Now you are stranded and afraid to turn down your friend. So you must cancel your trip to the concert because of what your friend will think or say of you. Yes, they can babysit their child this one Sunday, but you feel like you have to do the duty to avoid disapproval or appear to be friendly and caring. 

And this is all about pleasing your friend and being afraid of breaking your relationship; or being seen as the not helpful friend. It is not about you wanting to help genuinely. This exemplifies how you can forfeit your needs, thoughts, boundaries, and preferences. 

Research shows that a fawn trauma response often develops after a child grows up in a shame-based environment and has to take up parent roles. Fawning doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be simple as not mentioning your favorite restaurant when a group of friends selects where to dine. To avoid disapproval, you are better off always dining in their favorite restaurant. 

Note: Do not confuse fawning for compassion, kindness, or selflessness. These acts are not at your cost. However, if you fawn, the action affects you negatively, but you keep doing it anyway. 

What Type of Trauma Causes Fawn Response?

A single event such as an accident does not cause fawning. Repeat events such as childhood trauma and complex trauma, especially where the child had to keep appeasing the abuser, result in fawning. Fawning is often associated with relational trauma or trauma that developed in a relationship context. 

Signs of Fawning

Below are both common and uncommon signs of fawning:

• Denying your pain, trauma, discomfort, complaints, and needs, 
• Constantly flying under the radar, 
• Changing your thoughts or preferences to align with others, 
• Taking responsibility for the emotional reactions of others, 
• Over-apologizing, or even apologizing when you have not made any mistake, 
• Depression linked to trauma, 
• Finding challenges with authentic self-expression.      

How to Deal with Fawn Trauma Response?

Breaking the fawning habit can be difficult because it is often linked to childhood experiences and relationships. Here are some ways to unlearn the pattern. 

#1: Set Firm Boundaries

It is essential to keep a distinct line between your feelings and other people’s feelings. Start by recognizing that your feelings belong to you and nobody else. And, even more importantly, it is not your job to carry the burden of other people’s feelings. Be in a relationship where you can say “no” when your boundaries are overstepped. 

#2: Be More Gentle with Yourself and Validate Yourself

If you notice that you fawn a lot, it is time to be more compassionate to yourself. Observe yourself when around others and try to be kind to yourself. When you notice that you are fawning, do not scold yourself. Just nudge yourself gently and promise yourself to do better the next time. 

Validate your feelings and emotions even when people around you are bringing you down. Practice affirmations such as:

• I am valid even if my critics do not see my strengths!
• I am doing better than I did yesterday!

Learn to sit with the anger and disappointment of others because it will happen when you stop fawning. 

#3: Go to Therapy

As we have stated, fawning often develops due to childhood trauma. The best way to deal with childhood trauma is to talk to a professional therapist. Attending therapy may help you be more aware of your behaviors. The awareness that comes with therapy may help you manage the following questions well:

• Is what I am doing aligning with my values?
• Am I doing or saying this to appease someone else? And are my actions at my own expense? 
• Am I being true to myself, or am I doing this entirely for the other person’s benefit?

Remind yourself to stick to your actual values if you notice you are big on fawning. Step by step, you will get there. 

#4: Put Yourself First

Wait until you are asked for help to give help. Sometimes, people want to speak about their problems. They are not looking for solutions. However, in your fawn habit, you may find yourself offering to help in ways that may be beyond your means. Do not offer help until you are asked. 

And even more importantly, do not offer help if you do not mean it or if it will overstretch you. In putting yourself first, let your opinion be heard. Do not constantly change your opinion to align with others.

Was your father present in your life growing up? How would you describe your relationship with him? Was it the same as how he treated your mother? Fathers have a significant role in shaping your character, consciously or unconsciously. And while a mother wound affects your femininity, a father wound affects your masculinity. So what exactly is a father wound, what symptoms do you manifest, and how can you heal it? We will answer these and more in this article.

What is a Father Wound?

We all possess feminine and masculine energy. A mother imparts feminine energy, while a father imparts masculine energy. And while the feminine leans more toward the inner self, intuitions, and nurturing, the masculine energy represents being assertive and confident. So from your mother figures, you learn sensitivity, respect, patience, sensuality, and similar traits. From your father figures, you learn self-worth, confidence, stability, courage, boundaries, etc. 

This influence doesn’t necessarily come from your birth father or a father figure around you, but it emanates from anyone in your life who radiates more masculine energy. 

What happens if your masculine energy is shaky? You can’t face the world with confidence, you always find yourself compromising healthy boundaries, you feel worthless, and you can settle for anything. Do any of these resonate with you? That right there describes a father wound. 

A father wound can result from an absent father (both physically and emotionally), an overly critical dad, or one who is abusive, whether directly towards you or the people you love, like your mother. 

Luckily, there’s hope, and you can heal and start over. But first, let’s discuss these characters even deeper.  

The Symptoms of a Father Wound

#1: Low Self-Esteem

Do you always second-guess yourself? Like you feel you’re not good enough no matter how much effort you put in? That could be a result of a father wound. Children, in their innocence, don’t understand that their parents can have flaws. They blame their parents’ reactions on themselves. Once they transition into adulthood, they feel incapable of handling life independently. For example, a child who was constantly abused or overly criticized by the father will grow up believing they are dumb and never good enough. However, the truth is that their father could not see past his flaws.  

#2: An Endless Search for Love

Are you wondering why you still can’t settle for “the one” after dating several partners? This happens a lot, especially with women who never experienced fatherly love. You keep searching, but no one can truly quench your thirst for love. It’s also common for such people to get married and divorced multiple times. 

#3: Lack Self-Motivation

This character mostly shows in school as a child and at work as an adult. You will be most comfortable taking and following orders but never have the courage to make new initiatives. 

#4: Poor Social Life

Because you lack confidence and self-motivation, you rarely open up to your peers or even try to start a meaningful conversation. Friendships and relationships are not your things. So you believe you are an introvert while, in a real sense, it is the father wound in you. 

#5: Problems with Creating and Maintaining Healthy Boundaries

You are either the tough knuckle who sets strict boundaries or the one who can settle for anything. Either way, you can’t seem to strike a balance with boundaries. Victims of father wound often have trouble with boundaries. For example, if your father was always late or even missed important milestones in your childhood, you’ll tend to have very strict limits. You are not flexible in rescheduling appointments and might be unforgiving to people who show up late.  

On the other hand, if your father was the strict type, always criticizing you and never appreciating your little milestones, you tend to develop loose boundaries. All you want in life is to seek approval and a sense of appreciation. As a result, you find it hard to say no. Sadly if you get entangled with a narcissist, they may want to take advantage of this weakness.  

#6: An Over Surge of Emotions

Most father wound victims experience emotions such as anxiety, anger, and depression. See, your father was supposed to offer you unconditional love. And when you notice your peers enjoying this love, it’s not easy to understand why you can’t have the same. So you grow up bottling emotions of disappointment which eventually turn to anger and resentfulness. 

#7: Poor Choices of Relationship Partners

Due to anger and resentment, some father wound victims will turn to drug and substance abuse while others rush into relationships to fill that void. In addition, if you grew up watching your father abuse your mother, you will probably think that is how relationships work and therefore stay in an abusive relationship.      

How Can You Heal Your Father Wound as an Adult?

You’re probably reading this because you might have discovered a cycle of abuse in your family. Your father was abusive, and now you’re taking out your anger on your little ones. Can this cycle end? Absolutely. And it all starts with you first acknowledging the problem. 

Journal your childhood and try to identify the loopholes. Unmasking your childhood might be painful and uncomfortable, so you could consider inviting a therapist.

Sometimes, you can also consider confronting your father to get closure. However, if your underlying issues are not as grave, re-train your mind to disengage from the behaviors and beliefs you might have adopted from your father wound. Then make a deliberate effort to be a better version of yourself and journal your achievements every week, no matter how small they are. With repetition, new behaviors become a part of our lifestyle eventually.  

The Parting Shot

Please don’t let a father wound define your future. You have a lot of potential if you can only learn to believe in yourself. Now that you understand why you view the world differently, work towards healing your wound because a bright future awaits. 

What is that one thing you can think of passed down to you or your parents from your ancestors? It could be stories, heirlooms, or genetic traits. Recent studies suggest that even trauma can pass down through the generations. If you have someone in your family history that bears the scars of past trauma like racism, slavery, sex trafficking, or being a survivor of the holocaust, such an experience gets transmitted from one generation to the next. 

What is Transgenerational Trauma?

Transgenerational trauma is the physical and psychological effects of trauma from past generations affecting subsequent generations. This trauma transfers from the first generation of the survivors to the second and further generations of their offspring via a complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanism. Hence, most victims of transgenerational trauma have no direct experience of the original trauma. 

How Transgenerational Trauma Manifests in Families

Transgenerational trauma may manifest itself socially, biologically, emotionally, or mentally as follows: –

• Hyper-vigilance because you may have a distrust of the world  
• Isolation, emotional numbing, and depersonalization
• Impaired parental function, which shows up as overprotectiveness or unclear boundaries
• Chronic sorrow and separation anxiety
• Poor communication skills
• Chronic fear of danger
• Pressure for educational or career achievements
• Unresolved or complicated grief triggering anger and self-destructive behaviors

In addition, teens and school-going children undergoing transgenerational trauma may experience low self-esteem, have disciplinary issues at school, drop out or cut classes, and record poor grades.  

Families struggling with transgenerational trauma tend to: –

• Dismiss any talk of feelings as a weakness
• Become overprotective of their children and seniors
• Develop a neutral emotional response to tragic events 
• Have trust issues and engage in unnecessary conflicts with other families

What Does Science Say?

Most scientific studies on transgenerational trauma agree that any extreme and prolonged stress on a parent could have adverse psychological effects on their children or grandchildren. The parents may be former prisoners of war, combat veterans, victims of colonial suppression, clerical abuse in religious organizations, totalitarian political control, and terrorism. 

Here are four examples of communities affected by transgenerational trauma: –

#1: Holocaust Survivors

Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Vivian Rakoff was the first person to identify and document transgenerational trauma. In 1966, Vivian and her colleagues were researchers at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Here, they studied the long-lasting consequences of the holocaust on its survivors and descendants. 

They recorded high psychological distress rates amongst the children of the holocaust survivors. Later studies would discover that even grandchildren of holocaust survivors ended up in psychiatric care referrals, with trauma symptoms like PTSD, depression, and clinical anxiety.

#2: The Stolen Generation of the Aboriginal People

Thousands of lighter-skin-toned aboriginal children grew up without knowing their families. The kids were forcefully taken from their families and placed in orphanages run by missionaries. Some of the kids were barely a year old. They spent most of their childhood working while undergoing physical and emotional mistreatment.

Many described it as Australia’s attempt at genocide and the ultimate survival of the indigenous people. Today, the children of the stolen generation of the aboriginal people still carry the scars of transgenerational trauma. Some live in distress and struggle with attachment and disconnection from extended families. 

#3: Rwanda Genocide Survivors

The Rwanda Civil War between April 7th and July 15th, 1994, claimed the lives of up to 800,000 Tutsis, a minority ethnic group. Studies of the Rwanda post-genocide generation indicate that children born to Tutsi mothers during and immediately after the genocide developed depression and traumatic disorders. The lasting imprints of the 1994 genocide are evident in the survivors, former prisoners, and their descendants.

#4: Systematic Racism and Over-policing of the Black Communities

During the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Europeans built the foundations of America by dehumanizing Africans. They used mental, spiritual, and physical warfare to integrate white supremacy into the violence. And they skewed psychology, religion, and science to justify this treatment. 

For example, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright came up with Drapetomania. It refers to a supposed mental illness describing enslaved Africans that tried to run away. Eventually, black communities developed trauma responses to maintain survival. 

However, instead of short-term responses, the families have integrated them into their culture and passed them from one generation to the next under the guise of values and traditions. 

Today, there are cries of systematic racism and over-policing amongst the black communities. And more families are struggling with divorce, alcohol and substance abuse, child abuse, and domestic violence. And there’s a high incarceration rate in the black communities. 

Addressing Transgenerational Trauma

Note that later victims of transgenerational trauma may fail to recognize its effects. Others never acknowledge, discuss, or address it for fear of stigmatization. That way, they may never call it out or seek help. Instead, they struggle with mental health issues and continue passing down the trauma to their offspring.

Anyone undergoing transgenerational trauma should seek help to break the cycle. Otherwise, parents will continue to pass triggers to their children, affecting future generations. 

#1: Community Healing and Reconciliation

Most families undergoing transgenerational trauma stay quiet about the traumatic events for fear of stigmatization. Start by having productive discussions with family members for healing and reconciliation. In the aftermath of the Rwanda Civil War, most survivors rebuilt their lives by joining survivor support groups, creating and preserving memorial sites, and educating the next generation on the dangers of hate and extremism. 

#2: Seeking Help from a Family Therapist

Families undergoing generational trauma should work with a family therapist to identify the trauma patterns existing in the family. Likewise, children struggling with mental health problems associated with this trauma should also work with a mental health specialist for recovery.

#3: Changing Parenting Styles

Often, parents who are victims or survivors of trauma have a protective parenting style that passes the trauma to their children. Here, the parents subconsciously teach their children unhealthy survival behaviors. Or, they may develop unhealthy relationship boundaries with their loved ones. This should change to avoid passing on the damage further. 

Conclusion

Is your family dealing with trauma from your ancestors? Studies now show that parental traumatic experiences can reach subsequent generations. Yet, we can break the cycle of transgenerational trauma by investigating how these events of our shared past affect us today. More so, seeking professional help, changing parenting styles, and encouraging communication around healing and reconciliation can help families deal with the complex issues from the trauma.