From a clinical psychologist and expert in complex trauma recovery comes a powerful guide
introducing fawning an often-overlooked piece of the fight-flight-freeze reaction to
trauma—explaining what it is why it happens and how to help survivors regain their voice and
sense of self. Most of us are familiar with the three Fs of trauma—flight fight or freeze.
But psychologists have identified a fourth extremely common (yet little-understood) response:
fawning. Often conflated with “codependency” or “people pleasing ” fawning occurs when we
inexplicably draw closer to a person or relationship that causes pain rather than pulling
away. Fawning explains why we stay in bad jobs fall into unhealthy partnerships and seek out
dysfunctional environments even when it seems so obvious to others that we should go. And
fawning can serve a purpose—it’s a protective response to an unsafe situation. But when fawning
turns from an emergency coping mechanism into an everyday habit it stops being useful and
starts being a real problem. The good news: we can break the pattern of chronic fawning for
good once we see it for the trauma response it is. Drawing on twenty years of clinical
psychology work—as well as a lifetime of experience as a recovering fawner herself—Dr. Ingrid
Clayton has written a groundbreaking book that brings this emerging concept into the mainstream
conversation. Readers will learn WHY we fawn HOW to recognize the signs of fawning (including
taking blame conflict avoidance hypervigilance and caretaking at the expense of ourselves)
and WHAT we can do to successfully “unfawn” and finally be ourselves in all our imperfect
perfection. A landmark book full of empathy and understanding Fawning offers trauma survivors
the vocabulary to discuss their experiences—and in so doing gives them the tools to finally
heal.
