Trauma Training Tip
Traditionally, we have thought about 3 neurological platforms that we, and all mammals, use to navigate danger and life threat – Fight, Flight, and Freeze. However, there is a fourth platform that I am noticing more and more and has come to feel so very important to explore.
Called variously the feign, fawn, “tend and befriend,” or appeasement strategy, it is defined as a purposeful action taken in order to escape danger and defuse threat. It is particularly useful when a perpetrator has more physical or social power than we do. It is an adaptive skill that may include negotiation, improvisation, “faking it” or “sucking up” – and it can save our life. Think hostage situation, sexual trafficking, or a socially marginalized person negotiating for air in a system dominated by patriarchy, white supremacy, or hetero-normative norms.
Like the other “F” management strategies (Fight, Flight, or Freeze), Fawn or Feign supports survival in a stressful situation, and it can save our life. However, it turns into its opposite when it becomes habituated. We lose our own sense of empowerment, autonomy, and self-actualization. If people-pleasing, bargaining, deferring, or “befriending” behaviors are repeated and repeated, they become our “go-to” style of relating and we lose ourselves. We may come to value others over ourselves, have exaggerated fears of abandonment or an exaggerated sense of responsibility for others. Recognizing this pattern in ourselves is critical for transforming or eliminating the shame that “Feign/Fawn” survivors may experience – blaming themselves for not fighting or fleeing an abusive situation.
This Feign or Fawn behavior may look genuinely relational – it may appear on the surface in terms of neurophysiology, as a Ventral Vagal dominated state. In Chinese medicine terms, it may appear as a voice of the Fire Element. However, if we look more closely, we will see what the Chinese called “excess” joy, and out-of-balance Fire. Underneath the “excess joy” will be high sympathetic arousal; a lot of mobilization energy that’s being suppressed – and an out-of-balance Wood Element.
We are in the transition time between Wood and Fire; Spring and Summer. This is a great time for people who have become habituated to this pattern to work with transforming it. Finding our interoceptive awareness of our true longings and the impulses underneath that awareness is the foundation. Depending on the person, acupuncture in the Wood or Fire side of the creation cycle will be very supportive.
Alaine’s Two Cents
Finn Gratton has an interesting piece on resonance and regulation on their website that has the flavor of advice for avoiding engaging a “Fawn/Feign” relationship with our clients.
Here’s a taste of what Finn has to say:
“I wish I had learned this better before I had children. Humility. Repair. Practice. I don’t want to co-regulate with anyone. I want to meet them in the resonant humming that moves in the field of life we co-exist within. I want to find the common rhythms. I want to back up the harmonies and I want to find my own harmonies, knowing others are backing me up. I want all the parts of my own being to keep finding their way to resonance with each other, to make a glorious big band of humming strands of nerves and swishing organs, all my young, old, strong, tender parts playing together to the lub-dubbing of my heart, and the deep tidal rhythm of my lungs — all separate, connected, and resonant.”
Check out their full article here.
Check This Out!
Here’s some cool beans! The Tao of Trauma is being translated into Korean and Romanian! It’s been presented to publishers for potential translation into German and Spanish and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Here in the U.S. – speaking and teaching opportunities are growing and growing.
Reviews are really helpful for exposing others to this body of work and healing for our world. If you have read it – and are willing to share your experience of it – please submit a review. Here’s some good places:
Amazon here.
Goodreads here.
Books-A-Million here.
Clinical Curiosity
Where is your clinical curiosity carrying you?
Send me a question or two and I will explore them with readers in this corner next month.
Q.
My patient is a very successful middle-aged woman. In her mid-20’s she experienced a rape. The male perpetrator climbed in her open bedroom window with a knife. She has never forgiven herself for allowing it to happen and not fighting back. She struggles now with feeling submissive and having low self-confidence. How can I help her?
A.
So glad she has you! She is a perfect example of an exemplary use of the Feign or Fawn strategy. Think about it – if she had fought back, he had a knife and was likely bigger than she is. She may not have survived. Remember, the axiom from the animal kingdom is “eat lunch, don’t be lunch” – whatever helps us survive to see the sun another day is a good strategy.
I would start with some psychoeducation on the primacy of her body making her survival choices. She likely didn’t take time to think of her options – that part of our brain works much too slowly when there is a life threatening situation. There is room in creation for the wolf who fights, the deer who flees, and the possum who freezes – all of us cultivate strategies designed to keep us alive. She responded instinctively – and her instincts protected her by not initiating a fight response. There was likely some Freeze in her response also – and that too was an adaptive strategy that helped her survive.
She will also need to find the thwarted mobilization response that likely remains behind in her tissues. She may need to experience the impulse to push him, hit him, or scream that was unavailable to her way back then. Follow her interoceptive awareness and encourage tracking what emerges in her tissues.
All good wishes to her and to you!