Fawn-to-Fit as a Trauma Response

In October 2021, I attended a 100-hour advanced teacher training at The Shala – Cape Town Yoga School. I came into this experience feeling unusually reticent and unable to connect with others. I had a kind of complex PTSD after a series of shock encounters with death (both human and wildlife). I was also adjusting to the high energy of city life after returning from a long period in the bushveld.

I decided to stay with this feeling—not to force myself to be “friendly”, “vivacious”, “nice”; words often used to describe me.

I decided that I would not fawn to over-compensate for the way I was feeling. I would remain as quiet as I felt. I would retreat when I needed to. I acknowledged the terrifying possibility that I might not fit in, or be liked.

I first came across the concept of ‘fawning’ as a trauma response through the work of US-based somatic therapist and educator Luis Mojica. It’s not an exaggeration to say that his podcast, Holistic Life Navigation, has changed my life.

Luis has offered me a language for things I knew or that niggled, but that I couldn’t explain or express—for example, that we may have very good reasons for so-called procrastinating, or that New Age “manifestation” has its flaws. His work, which he shares vulnerably and generously, has also helped me better understand the nuances of my (sensitive) nervous system.

Freezing was my default response for years—a smart coping mechanism in a relatively high-conflict family environment and ethically deplorable society (I grew up during Apartheid). Friends often commented on how calm I was—one friend calls me “Zen Ren”.

Sometimes this was true: I can be hyper-focused and pragmatic when I need to be, an advantage in emergencies (I would call this healthy fight though, not freeze). But in my everyday life, I was often numbing out anxiety and overwhelming emotions.

Less obvious to me, though, was my tendency to fawn.

South African somatic therapist Emma Wright has helped me to understand that fawning happens in the social nervous system—it is appeasement, acquiescence, niceness. It can be a way of finding belonging, no matter the cost.

My own fawning often takes the form of mediating, or protecting who I perceive to be the most vulnerable. When taken to the extreme, these otherwise great skills becomes a fixed role, an exhausting identity.

I suspect I chose this rather than fight (already too much conflict) or flight (harder to do as a child/teen in South Africa) because I’d learned that being nice and kind was usually rewarded.

But I have become tired of (and from) pretending that I don’t feel how I do feel… now that I know when I’m pretending.

The yoga training, a big gathering where openness tends to be valued—even expected—offered the perfect opportunity to start shifting a pattern. A course like this is always a little intimidating and, in this case, many of the students had already gotten to know each other on a previous module.

I resolved not to “try hard”; to instead give myself over to the learning experience. I soaked up the embodied practices, and their strong focus on the digestive and lymphatic systems. I relished the mental stimulation of the anatomy and nutrition lessons, and the reminder to aim for balance, not perfection. I waded deep into my frustration over the harsher elements of yoga philosophy (more on this another time).

The shift came about halfway in. The heaviness lifted from my body and my spirit. My love of silliness returned. Without huge effort, I made (just a few) special friends, including fellow philosophy rebel Kat Scriven.

And the PTSD?

Well, it took about a month for the flashbacks (related to the wildlife deaths) to stop, and a whole lot longer for the pain from all those losses (including the death of an adored friend) to lessen. When another incident occurred not long after, I realised that I will need to find support for this very particular kind of trauma if I am going to live where I live.

Here, in the bushveld, we are exposed all the time to the cycles of life and death. Handled honestly and sensitively, we can develop a quite-beautiful resilience to and acceptance of this. It is the tragedies though—the poaching, the accidents, the ego-driven actions—that hurt. This is where my biggest challenge, and opportunity for growth and healing, lies.

A huge thank you to animal communicator Kate Muller, whose powerful “Animals: Death and Dying” course was the first time I felt safe enough to explore the pain of my animal-related grief. I have also begun, very recently, to speak in detail about past nature-related traumas with a counsellor and coach, Dr. Ronelle Joubert, who uses mind-body tools.

PHOTO: Anouk Anansi