Acute or chronic trauma behaviors

The Fawn Response – Acute or Chronic?

Fawn Response to Trauma - Please and Appease, placating and submissive behaviour

When we think about trauma responses, most people are familiar with fight, flight, or freeze. But there’s another, often overlooked response: fawn. The fawn response happens when someone instinctively appeases others to avoid conflict, danger, or rejection. It can look like excessive people-pleasing, difficulty setting boundaries, or putting others’ needs ahead of one’s own at all costs.

Habitual fawning behaviour can be an adaptive survival style developed in difficult childhood situations. However, it can also be an acute reaction to a current, often prolonged threat. In this article we will review how to spot the difference.

Fawning as an acute response to ongoing threat

Fawning is a strategy of appeasement of conflicts and submission. This behaviour develops as a reaction to being currently trapped in an inescapable situation. Imagine someone trapped in a toxic relationship or an abusive workplace. It might not be safe for oneself (or the children) to leave one’s partner at short notice. Or there may be severe (financial) consequences of fighting your boss in front of others or just disappearing.

If fighting or fleeing isn’t an option, one might instead try to resort to over-apologizing, trying to keep the peace, or suppressing their own emotions just to stay safe.

Fawning may be situational—it emerges in response to immediate stress and may fade once the person is out of danger. It’s a way to minimize harm when there’s no other way out.

Fawning as a chronic pattern (based on developmental trauma)

However there is also a chronic version of it – a deeply embedded pattern that often already started in childhood. If someone grew up in a home where love was conditional, where they had to constantly read the emotional temperature of caregivers to avoid punishment or neglect, fawning be an adaptive survival strategy. Over time, it can become part of the personality and habitual behaviour.

Given the long-term, repetitive nature of the situation during the formative years, short-term tactics morph into an unconscious, automatic pattern of behavior. The person may even become particularly skilled at using these strategies.

As a consequence affected individuals may show similar behaviours later in life: Even in safe environments, they may struggle to say no, feel responsible for others’ emotions, and prioritise keeping the peace over their own needs. Over time, this can lead to exhaustion, resentment, and a lost sense of self.

Fawning as a chronic condition can lead to unconscious, automatic behaviour. Behavioural patterns emerge that are inappropriate to the situation and do not serve the individual.

How to spot the difference

Here’s a an overview how to tell whether fawning is acute or chronic:

	Acute Response (Current Threat)	Chronic Response (Developmental Trauma)
Cause	Immediate danger or prolonged current stress	Traumatic past experiences Childhood neglect, physical or emotional abuse, or unpredictable caregiving
Trauma-Pattern	n.a.	The fawning, submissive behaviour may be based on hypervigilance / threat avoidance strategies (i.e. PTSD symptoms)
Current Trigger	Obvious current external threat (physical or social) / threatening behaviour of a perpetrator	No or only insignificant objective external triggers, i.e. relatively safe situations may still feel unsafe and trigger fawning. Internal triggers – typically imagined future situations, anticipation of triggers (often rather unconscious)
Duration	Temporary – behavioural pattern fades when the threat is gone	Behavioural pattern seems to belong to the personality Behaviour can easily be triggered, even in the absence of a real threat
Awareness	Behaviour may reflect a conscious effort to stay safe Feels unnatural and only occurs when forced	Unconscious, automatic interaction pattern Feels natural and normal to the person in the situation Only with hindsight, the person notices that the behaviour happened again

Is recovery from chronic fawn response possible?

Whether fawning is a short-term response or a lifelong pattern, therapy for fawning behaviour can support personal development. Recognizing the behavior is the first step. From there, therapy can help unpack where in the past it comes from. Furthermore, therapy can support build self-worth, and learning to relate to others in a different way. This can mean, learning to set boundaries, speak up for your needs, and trust that you deserve respect—without needing to earn it—can be life-changing.

	Acute Response (Current Threat)	Chronic Response (Developmental Trauma)
Resolution	May stop spontaneously / quickly when safety is regained	Requires often a combination of processing and integration of past trauma learning of new social skills and behavioural tactics changing environment, social relationships and social roles

Acute Response
(Current Threat)

Chronic Response
(Developmental Trauma)

Resolution

May stop spontaneously / quickly when safety is regained

Requires often a combination of

processing and integration of past trauma
learning of new social skills and behavioural tactics
changing environment, social relationships and social roles

Recovery from the fawn response depends, whether it is an acute response or a chronic pattern.

In more acute cases, it is likely to stop automatically once the individual regains safety.
However, for those with long-standing fawning behaviors, healing often requires a combination of approaches. Changing an appeaser personality may require processing and integrating past trauma, learning new social skills and behavioral tactics, and making changes in the environment – your job, your social relationships, the social roles you accept and how you interpret them.