The Fawn Response

You say yes before they finish asking. You can't remember the last time you disappointed someone without crushing guilt. You're exhausted from being everyone's reliable, low-maintenance, helpful friend, but the thought of setting a boundary feels impossible.

You're not weak. You're not broken. You're fawning.

Fawning is the fourth trauma response, the one that doesn't get talked about as much as fight, flight, or freeze. It's what happens when your nervous system learns that the safest way to survive is to become endlessly pleasing, accommodating, and useful. To anticipate others' needs while suppressing your own. To make yourself so agreeable that you avoid rejection at all costs.

And it's slowly destroying you.

The Fawn Response takes you beyond surface-level advice about "just saying no" to address the nervous system patterns underneath chronic people-pleasing. You'll learn:

• Why your body reacts to boundary-setting as if it's life-threatening
• How childhood conditioning taught you that your needs don't matter
• The connection between fawning and alexithymia (difficulty identifying your own emotions)
• How to recognize your authentic preferences when you've spent years mirroring others
• Practical strategies for setting boundaries without drowning in guilt
• The difference between being needed and being truly known
• How to build relationships based on authenticity instead of accommodation

This isn't another book telling you to be more assertive. This is a roadmap for rewiring the deeply ingrained patterns that keep you trapped in self-abandonment.

You've spent your life making others comfortable. It's time to make yourself whole.

Recovery from fawning is possible. This book will show you how.