Have you ever found yourself:
- Are you really apologizing to someone else who made a mistake?
- Do you call yourself sensitive or judgmental when someone does something that hurts you?
- Are you internally suppressing your feelings or needs by telling yourself you “shouldn’t feel this way” or “don’t need this”?
- Even if you don’t believe it, would you agree to anything to stop the situation from escalating?
- Keeping your needs inside rather than expressing them?
- Are you hypervigilant to make sure your partner is okay and lose touch with your own feelings?
If so, you know something about huntinga survival strategy in which we shrink ourselves to maintain harmony. In addition to fight, flight, and freeze, we can also pass out when faced with a relationship stress. Basically, hunting means putting others before yourself, minimizing your own emotions, and protecting yourself from harm.
Faw’s Hidden Price
Those who are fearful become pliable when threatened, leaving them vulnerable to being stretched and bent by those who are more rigid. Faw’s often demanding behavior from a partner becomes part of a pattern that elicits increasingly soothing responses. authenticity in another partner. This lack of intimacy is sensed by the partner, resulting in a less secure relationship, and thus a cycle that becomes smaller and smaller until the fawner cannot even identify with his own feelings. The hidden cost of Faw is that you lose touch with what you do, and as a result, you lose touch with others.
If you constantly put others before yourself, you start to come second, neglecting your own needs and allowing others to put your needs behind you. This can have a negative impact on well-being; Not surprisingly, research on self-extinguishment, or the tendency to suppress one’s feelings and needs in relationships, has been associated with higher depressive symptomatology (Dill, Brown, & Jack, 1992). When you lose touch with your own, you become an expert at sensing the emotions of others. Try to convince yourself, I shouldn’t feel like this or it’s not a big deal emotions don’t work like that. Research shows that suppressing your emotions instead of suppressing them leads to more negative outcomes. feeling and less positive emotions (Gross & John, 2003). When you push your own needs aside, you hide them from the people around you and contribute to less satisfying relationships. Your significant other is left out in the cold, without direct cues about how to meet your needs or make you smile, and you both freeze.
Fears under the fawn
If you’re a curmudgeon, you’ve probably been praised for this answer; people may think you are selfless, benevolent and helpful. However, what may seem like thoughtfulness may be hypervigilance in disguise: always making sure others are okay so you can finally relax. Basically, this answer reflects fear: fear of rejection, abandonment, or failure, and of disappointing others and therefore losing touch. The main fear is that you are not safe if others are upset with you. Sometimes the body’s automatic feeding response can be life-saving (Clayton, 2025). Imagine you are 5 years old and you have survived bullying childhood. Your dad’s mood can change in an instant, and you’ll quickly learn that if you agree and don’t wave, he’s less likely to explode. You become the “good boy” who gets good grades, never tries, and is hard on himself before anyone else. It helps you survive a childhood where your safety depends on someone else’s changing emotional state.
Thus, if safety depends on placating someone else, premature birth can occur. The problem is that our nervous systems often continue to use the strategies that have protected us (fight, flight, freeze, or cower) even when we are not in the danger that created them.
What does it mean to get out of Fawn’s answer?
This is an opportunity to reflect: Is hiding your true feelings and needs, keeping you emotionally distant from those you love, or protecting you? Faw’s tragedy is this: the strategy of protecting the connection can prevent real, true love. You are allowed to prioritize yourself; actually truth Your relationship depends on it.
Get out of the hood trauma Be the first to respond when you do. Do you automatically defer when asked where to eat for dinner? Or do you secretly laugh at jokes that make you feel down? Practice being with yourself and treating your feelings and needs as you would anyone else’s. Talk about your favorite cuisine or how a review resonates with you. It may seem scary at first because you face the fear of rejection, but the more you practice, the more comfortable you will become over time as you repeatedly move out of the blue and into authenticity. Protect yourself because your feelings and needs are just as important as anyone else’s.
