Trauma Responses: Understanding The Fawn Response

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. ⁠ Get Matched With One of Our Therapists ⁠ at The Therapy Group! ⁠ShrinkChicks on Instagram⁠ Our ⁠Know Yourself Grow Yourself Journal⁠ !! Check out ShrinkChicks on YouTube by subscribing here! ⁠ A special thank you to this week's sponsors for supporting ShrinkChicks! We have these exclusive offers for our listeners: AG1: Go to DRINKAG1.com/SHRINKCHICKS to get an AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 for FREE in your AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1subscription order Air Doctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com and use promo code SHRINKCHICKS to get UP TO $300 off today Quince : Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠quince.com/shrinkchicks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping and 365-day returns on your next order GreenChef: Head to Greenchef.com/50shrinkchicks and use code 50shrinkchicks to get 50% off your first month, then 20% off for two months with free shipping Pique Life: Unlock 20% off and establish your powerful foundation for sustained well-being at Piquelife.com/shrinkchicks See Privacy Policy at and California Privacy Notice at .

You can listen to Trauma Responses: Understanding The Fawn Response online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Trauma Responses: Understanding The Fawn Response is an episode from ShrinkChicks by Jennifer Chaiken, LMFT and Emmalee Bierly, LMFT.

This episode is 00:44:58 long.

This episode was published on Mar 9, 2026.

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