Fawn response

What is the fawn response?

The fawn response (Dutch: fawn-reactie) is the alarm reaction where someone starts pleasing and going along to disarm a threat. Alongside fight, flight and freeze, it is the fourth way your body responds to danger. In sex, fawning is the hardest form of not wanting to spot, because from the outside it looks like joining in.

How the fawn response works

The fawn response is an automatic defense, not a choice. Psychotherapist Pete Walker named it the fourth F alongside fight, flight and freeze: fawn types seek safety by merging with the other person’s wishes and demands. That pattern often forms in prolonged, relational trauma, where going along was once the safest way out. Kasia Kozlowska and colleagues describe in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry (2015) how such defense reactions kick in on their own in the face of an inescapable threat, outside your will. Your body picks the reaction, not you.

Why fawning is hard to see in sex

From the outside fawning looks like joining in, and that is exactly what makes it so hard to recognize. Someone smiles, agrees, even helps along, while inside everything has gone still. That agreement does not come from desire, but from the reflex to take the tension away. Anna Möller found in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica (2017) an involuntary freezing in nearly three quarters of women after an assault. Going along and freezing belong to the same family of reflexes. So joining in out of fear is not consent, and if you recognize this in yourself, the cause does not lie with you.

Where to turn

The fawn response belongs in the consulting room, not on a glossary page. If you notice that under stress you automatically please and that it comes from old, deep experiences, your doctor is the first step. Thuisarts.nl explains that talking with a psychologist helps you process such experiences. I am a gigolo, with a background as a psychotherapist but not your practitioner in this role, and nothing on this page replaces that conversation. What I do know is how fawning shows up in bed: I watch the difference between saying yes and meaning yes, and I would rather take the time than have someone go along to do me a favor.

Sources

• The 4Fs: a trauma typology in complex PTSD. Pete Walker. Provides the fawn response as the fourth F: fawn types seek safety by merging with the other person’s wishes, needs and demands.
• Fear and the defense cascade: clinical implications and management. Kasia Kozlowska, Peter Walker, Loyola McLean and Pascal Carrive, Harvard Review of Psychiatry 23(4), 263-287, 2015. Backs up that defense reactions to an inescapable threat kick in automatically, outside your will.
• Tonic immobility during sexual assault: a common reaction. Anna Möller, Hans Peter Söndergaard and Lotti Helström, Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica 96(8), 932-938, 2017. Backs up that nearly three quarters of women reported an involuntary freezing after an assault.

Related terms

The fawn response belongs to the fight-or-flight response, the stress response of which fawning is the fourth form.

• Fight-or-flight response. The pillar: the alarm system that fawning belongs to alongside fight, flight and freeze.
• Complex trauma. The form of trauma in which a fawn pattern often develops.
• Consent. Why joining in out of fear is not consent.
• Co-regulation. How another person’s calm helps settle your nervous system, so pleasing no longer feels necessary.