Trauma Responses: Understanding The Fawn Response
ShrinkChicks
Jennifer Chaiken, LMFT and Emmalee Bierly, LMFT
4.9 • 755 Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on ShrinkChicks, Em and Jen wrap up their trauma response mini-series with a deep dive into the fawn response, the often-overlooked survival strategy rooted in people-pleasing and conflict avoidance. While many people are familiar with fight or flight, fawning happens when your nervous system moves quickly to smooth things over, keep the peace, and protect the connection.
They explore how the fawn response can look like saying yes too fast, minimizing your needs, avoiding conflict, or feeling resentful after people-pleasing. Em and Jen break down how fawning develops, why culture rewards it, and how it can slowly lead to self-abandonment and shaky intimacy if left unchecked.
Listener questions cover the difference between genuine flexibility and fawning, how to practice assertiveness without triggering your nervous system, what to do when someone is fawning to you, and how resentment signals crossed boundaries.
Tune in to gain insight, awareness, and action! PS: Fast forward to around 5 minutes to skip the intro and get straight to today’s content.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The difficulty is with fawning is this is a really hard one to break. |
| 0:03.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:03.5 | Because it is so positively reinforced, it gets very socially celebrated. |
| 0:07.7 | And it's like, well, what am I supposed to do? |
| 0:09.6 | And the fear of conflict is so scary. |
| 0:12.9 | And at the end of the day, we all want to be loved and accepted and connected. |
| 0:16.4 | So my fear is that if I take this away, what happens to my connection in this world and to my people? |
| 0:38.2 | Yeah. my fear is that if I take this away, what happens to my connection in this world and to my people? Welcome back to another episode of shrink chicks. Take a seat on our virtual therapy couch and get ready to learn all about, well, you. |
| 0:39.3 | I'm Emily Beerley. |
| 0:40.5 | And I'm Jennifer Chakin. |
| 0:44.6 | And we're both licensed, marriage and family therapist and relationship experts. |
| 0:51.8 | We're the owners and founders of the therapy group, a nationwide psychotherapy practice with down-to-earth therapists just like us. Your session is starting. |
| 0:53.4 | So get ready to know yourself and grow |
| 0:55.5 | yourself. I used to wake up sneezing almost every morning, and I kept thinking, do I suddenly |
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| 1:34.9 | And as a mom to a kiddo with asthma, that's huge for us. |
... |
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