The Fawn Response: When Being “Nice” Is Really About Survival
I remember feeling so incredibly uncomfortable. But it felt rude to stop talking to this man I didn’t even know, so I made myself stay and suffer through it.
I was maybe 19 years old, in massage school, and, of course, anything bodywork-related caught my attention. At an outdoor market with a friend, I spotted a chiropractor’s tent filled with interesting devices. Curious, I walked over and struck up a conversation.
And suddenly everything in me screamed, “RUN.” My chest tightened, my stomach dropped. He wasn’t being inappropriate—at least not in any obvious way. On the surface, he was just being nice, but something about him made me super uncomfortable. Still, I forced myself to smile, to keep asking questions, to ignore the part of me that wanted out.
Finally, after what felt like an “appropriate” amount of time, I walked away. My friend rushed up to me: “You looked so uncomfortable talking to him. Was he being rude?”
I couldn’t explain it. I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t understand why.
That experience stuck with me. Why did it feel so wrong to walk away from someone I didn’t even know? Why did I ignore my instincts and focus instead on how he might feel?
Over time, I began to see this pattern everywhere. I rarely shared my true opinions because I didn’t want to upset anyone. I always wanted others to feel comfortable ..even if I wasn’t. And it became incredibly important to me to be “nice,” no matter the cost.
Have you ever felt like you disappeared in order to keep the peace? If so, you’re not alone.
For years I thought this was just my personality. But as it turns out, it was something deeper: a survival response.
What Is the Fawn Response?
The first time I heard the phrase “fawn response,” something in me instantly lit up. Suddenly all of these little behaviors I thought were just part of my personality had a name.
Therapist Pete Walker coined the term fawn response to describe the trauma-driven pattern of people-pleasing. It’s when your nervous system believes the safest way to avoid conflict or abandonment is to be agreeable, helpful, and accommodating—even at your own expense.
But how is this a nervous system response? When our threat response is triggered, our initial instinct is to fight, flee, or freeze. It’s not a choice; it happens automatically. But when fighting, fleeing, or freezing aren’t available options, the nervous system may default to fawning as a way to maintain connection and reduce risk. The idea is: If I can’t get away, I’ll try to appease the threat so they don’t hurt me.
Over time, this survival strategy becomes so automatic it can feel like part of your personality, when really it’s your body doing its best to keep you safe.
Unlike fight, flight, or freeze, fawning can be harder to spot because it doesn’t look like fear. On the outside, it looks like loyalty, compassion, or being “so nice.” But underneath, it’s a survival strategy wired into the body to preserve safety and connection when other options aren’t available.
Why It’s So Hard to Recognize
One of the reasons the fawn response is so difficult to recognize is because society actually rewards it. We praise people for being selfless, dependable, “easygoing,” or “resilient.” We celebrate the helpers, the ones who never say no, the ones who make life easier for everyone else. And while genuine kindness is a beautiful thing, fawning isn’t really kindness; it’s survival.
I’ve seen this response come up for me over and over again throughout the years. It’s more than just a lack of boundaries; it’s this desperate need to be liked, to be wanted, to fill the needs of everyone around you even when you have nothing left.
I remember a friend once saying to me, after I had helped her through a very difficult situation, “My sister was worried that you were taking on too much, but I told her you were fine. You’re so resilient and so willing to help, so I told her not to worry about you.”
And those words honestly felt like being stabbed with a knife. Because I wasn’t fine. It was way too much to carry, but I didn’t know how to say no. And it hurt that my friend couldn’t see that. In her eyes, I was strong and dependable. But in reality, I was drowning, and too afraid of disappointing someone to admit it.
That’s the tricky thing about the fawn response—it often earns praise from others, even while it leaves us exhausted and unseen on the inside.
What It Looks Like in Everyday Life
The fawn response can slip into so many areas of life that it often feels invisible. You might not even realize it’s happening, because on the outside it looks like being kind, flexible, or “easy to get along with.” But underneath, it’s really about keeping the peace at your own expense.
In the workplace, fawning might look like always saying yes to extra projects, tolerating a boss’s mistreatment, or downplaying your own achievements so you don’t stand out.
In relationships, it might mean biting your tongue instead of sharing how you really feel, apologizing for things that aren’t your fault, or agreeing to plans you don’t want to do just so no one gets upset.
As a parent, it can show up as over-functioning for your kids, shelving your own needs because everyone else comes first, or avoiding boundaries because you don’t want to deal with pushback.
And sometimes it’s even more subtle—like making sure the other person feels comfortable, even when you’re not.
On their own, these things are not always bad. But when it’s coming from a place of fear, it ends up doing damage.
The Cost of Fawning
The cost of fawning is quiet but real. Over time, it chips away at both your health and your sense of self.
Dr. Gabor Maté writes extensively about how suppressed emotions and chronic people-pleasing show up in the body. In his book When the Body Says No, he shares how people with ALS often share the same “personality” traits: extreme selflessness, caretaking at their own expense, and an inability to say no. Over time, these patterns don’t just shape relationships—they can wear down the immune system, increase inflammation, and keep the body locked in survival mode.
Even if it doesn’t lead to illness, the psychological toll of fawning is heavy. Some of the hidden costs include:
Emotional exhaustion and burnout from constantly managing other people’s comfort.
Resentment and repressed anger, which eventually spill out in ways that feel confusing or shameful.
Loss of identity, because your own needs and preferences have been pushed aside for so long you barely know what they are.
Anxiety, depression, or dissociation, fueled by the stress of ignoring your body’s signals.
Strained relationships, because fawning blocks true intimacy. You can’t be authentically close to others when you’re disappearing to keep them happy.
The hardest part is that these costs don’t show up all at once. They build slowly, almost invisibly, until one day you realize you’re running on empty, disconnected from yourself, and unsure how you got there.
Why It’s Not Your Fault
If you recognize yourself in these patterns, please hear this: it’s not your fault.
The fawn response isn’t weakness, and it isn’t a broken part of your personality—it’s your nervous system doing its job. When you grew up in an environment where it wasn’t safe to say no, to express anger, or to have needs of your own, your body found the most intelligent survival strategy it could: keep others comfortable, keep the peace, and stay connected at all costs.
And here’s the important piece—long before it ever showed up as exhaustion, resentment, or even health challenges, fawning was protection. Dr. Maté’s research shows how chronic self-suppression takes a toll on the body, sometimes even contributing to serious illnesses. But that doesn’t mean you “caused” your symptoms by being too nice. It means your nervous system was trying to keep you safe, over and over again, until it no longer had the energy to do so without consequences.
If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t I just stop people-pleasing? Why can’t I just say no?”—this is why. You weren’t choosing it. You were surviving.
And survival isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s something to honor.
What Healing Looks Like
Healing from the fawn response doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not about flipping a switch from “people-pleaser” to “boundary expert.” It’s about slowly retraining your nervous system to feel safe enough to show up authentically.
Here are a few small but powerful steps that can help:
Notice the pattern and reconnect with your needs. Pause to ask, “What do I want right now?” Awareness is always the first step.
Practice micro-boundaries. Start small—like saying no to a minor request or voicing a preference about where to eat. Each time you do, your nervous system learns it’s safe to hold your ground, it’s safe to have your own voice and opinion.
Build tolerance for discomfort. Fawning avoids conflict, so part of healing is learning to sit with the unease of disappointing someone or having a hard conversation.
Use somatic tools to regulate. Breathwork, grounding exercises, tapping, and movement help your body feel safe enough to try new responses.
My personal practice:
What helped me so much here was getting comfortable with saying no. I wanted to be known as reliable and helpful, so saying no felt like it was in direct conflict with that. But saying no doesn’t mean you’re unreliable—it means you know your limits. Sometimes practicing saying no out loud can be incredibly powerful. (Yes you’ll feel silly at first, but then it becomes so empowering! Try this alone in your car. Then you can say No as loudly as you want!)
The other thing that helped tremendously was learning how to feel anger. I suppressed anger in myself for such a long time because it felt like a “bad” emotion. Angry and nice don’t go together. But anger is sometimes the appropriate response.
Now when I catch myself getting angry, instead of shoving it down, I notice it. I let it build, then I keep digging. Why am I angry right now? What about this is upsetting? I journal how I feel or talk to a friend. I allow myself to express it in a safe way. I allow myself to have a voice.
I still believe in being a reliable, kind person, but now I know the difference between choosing that from love versus from fear.
When I was fawning, kindness came at the cost of myself. My reliability meant overextending, my generosity meant neglecting my own needs, and my self-sacrifice was fueled by fear of rejection or conflict. It looked like love on the outside, but inside it felt like disconnection and exhaustion.
Now, when I offer kindness or show up for others, it feels different. It comes from a grounded place, not from panic. It comes with choice. I can say yes when I mean it and no when I need to. And that difference—choice versus compulsion—is everything.
If you see yourself in these patterns, please know this: your kindness is real. Your compassion is real. Your loyalty is real. Those qualities don’t disappear when you stop fawning. In fact, they become even more powerful, because they’re no longer tangled up with fear.
So if you’ve ever felt like you had to disappear in order to keep the peace, take heart. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to have needs. You are allowed to be fully and unapologetically yourself.
And the truth is, when your kindness flows from authenticity instead of survival, it both heals you and creates the kind of connection and safety you were searching for all along.
