Fight, Flight, Fawn?: Trauma-Based Codependency

All of us know someone who could be described as a people-pleaser. Maybe it’s the always smiling friend who says yes to people more often than he should, and ends up with too much on his plate. Maybe it’s the wallflower who apologizes to inanimate objects when she accidentally knocks them over. Maybe it’s the person who self-implodes in an argument, terrified of speaking their mind.

Or maybe you are that person, and you don’t understand why you keep saying yes, even while your soul screams no, and why you constantly overextend yourself, squeezing yourself into the person you think other people want you to be. I wondered the same thing for a long time. In my head, I thought of myself as a unique and offbeat person, but in reality I behaved in very self-effacing and ingratiating ways in my relationships. I listened far more often than I spoke in conversations, because I was terrified of having to voice my own opinions and likes and dislikes. I lived this way for so long that I didn’t even realize this pattern until it was called out by a friend, who once described me as a doormat…and, as if to prove her point, I responded just as a doormat would by agreeing with her.

I’ve been a quiet people-pleaser for as long as I can remember, and have always had trouble saying no. Suppressing my own desires and needs to please others—and then secretly resenting them for not appreciating how much effort I put into catering to them—is the air I breathe when it comes to relationships.

Codependency

After I began learning about trauma, I realized that my tendency to suppress my true thoughts and feelings in relationships was not a defect in my personality but a trauma response. I began to see myself as a codependent who learned to adapt to less than ideal circumstances when I was young by modifying my behavior in order to gain acceptance and validation. Pete Walker defines trauma-based codependency as “a fear-based inability to express rights, needs and boundaries in relationship.”¹ The behavior stems from a deep-seated fear that you are not loved for who you are.

Rather than risk being vulnerable and share their true selves with others, codependents prefer to hide in relationships by assuming the role of listener and eliciting other people’s thoughts and feelings. Rather than express their personal preferences, they feel at ease when another person takes charge of making plans. Rather than disagree with someone, they feel far more comfortable agreeing with their ideas and stifling their own opinion.

Over time, this habit of self-abandonment in relationships leads to a fractured sense of self. Every time you suppress your true thoughts and feelings, you fragment that part of yourself; you leave that essential part of yourself at the door to gain a modicum of validation and approval from others. But instead of gracefully bowing out of sight, those parts eventually rear their ugly heads again and start showing up as anxiety, depression, and the inability to focus.

It’s not sustainable for us to fragment parts of ourselves in this way because we were designed to live as our whole and integrated selves. Even though I felt safe playing the part of sounding board in many of my interactions, in reality my nervous system was on high alert, and I was outsourcing my need for safety and comfort onto other people, which never fully worked at the end of the day because it was only my false self being validated at best.

The Fawn Response

Many of us are familiar with the fight-or-flight response, the physiological response in the body that occurs in response to a perceived threat. This reaction primes the body to fight against a particular threat or run away from it. Pete Walker expands this concept by introducing the fawn response. When under threat, some of us choose to fight, some of us choose to flee, and some of us choose to fawn, which is to ingratiate ourselves and people-please to disarm danger. This kind of response to danger usually stems from childhood.

For example, a toddler who learns that protesting abuse from a parent leads to even more retaliation can adapt by giving up their boundaries and healthy assertiveness, and seeking safety instead in being perceived as helpful and useful to their parent. Often, the child only receives validation and love when they assume a role with greater responsibility, such as taking care of the emotional needs of their parents or becoming a helper to their siblings. The fawn response is a survival strategy adopted by the child, which often develops into codependency by adulthood. The loss of self usually happens at such a young age that it can be very hard for codependents to undo patterns of people-pleasing and self-abandonment.

Healing

Healing starts with grieving over having such a diminished sense of self for so long. As codependents, we never learned the healthy developmental skills of self-assertion and self-protection because we felt compelled to please others in order to feel safe. Often, piecing together the story of trauma that stunted our capacity for self-expression is necessary in the healing process. For many of us, codependency stems from being attacked and shamed for being selfish in moments when we simply expressed ourselves in a healthy way. The fear of being attacked for being selfish often drives codependents to continue giving up their boundaries and needs in relationships. Staying present to this fear is important to prevent being triggered automatically into the fawn response.

Healing from this kind of wound takes time, but I promise it’s so worth it, and every step you take in this journey will bring you closer to knowing and accepting who you truly are. And cultivation of that self-acceptance will open the door into true vitality and intimacy and connection with others. But it begins with saying “no” more, and getting in touch with those parts of yourself you cut off long ago, like anger. Only when all of your parts are recognized and integrated can you discover who you truly are—your one unified self that was meant to be celebrated from the start.

1. Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Azure Coyote, 2021. ↩︎