On Fawning (trauma and nervous system responses)

I don’t know how many other people exist in the realm of TikTok but there’s this video going around my FYP currently about this woman, and she made a video issuing an apology because of a medical situation she was in where she hit a nurse. It’s a loaded video, lots of people stitching it and making replies and offering thoughts, and as is with any kind of social media you only get a very limited view of an entire story.

This post is not going to be about this woman, and her experience, but about what this invited me into. So from her video and what I could gather, she had a history of medical trauma, she expressed boundaries which were not respected by her nurse, and she reacted and hit this nurse. Violence is never the answer, let me say that first and foremost. This is not me condoning hitting people, or undermining the lived experience of many healthcare professionals where they are on the receiving end of a lot of unfair treatment.

This is to say I watched these videos, getting pulled down different rabbit holes and thoughts relating to this story, and I found myself nodding. Because, yep, me too. I’ve never hit anyone, but I was listening and then discussing later with my husband my thoughts, and my first thought is that the people making these videos saying this woman should be sued, that she should have been denied care, that she knew when she was walking into the hospital people were going to touch her and she should have just been fine with it have never experienced significant medical trauma. Because I’m telling you, and speaking from personal experience, when trauma comes online, rational thought goes out the window.

Absolutely in a hospital you’re allowed to have boundaries, and requests, and those should be respected. When I walk into a hospital, I’m already in a heightened stress response. I don’t want to be there. I don’t think anyone wants to be in a situation where they need medical intervention. There are bright lights, it’s loud, it’s overwhelming. In and of itself, it has the potential to be traumatizing. Then you layer in the kind of general assumption that you’re ok with these boundary violations, things are happening you don’t understand, some of these interventions are painful. And if you have any kind of past history on top of that, all I can say is you’re not responding in any kind of coherent manner. I’m reacting like my life is on the line, because that’s what it feels like in my body. And when you’re in a marginalized body, for whatever reason, your reactions are more highly scrutinized, and your care is dependent on this. Hear me when I say your care and the level of care you receive is dependent on your trauma responses. Your unconscious, biological reactions. (It’s not fair, but it happens all the time. I can do another post on this if anyone is interested)

which brings me to what this story led me into. I recently did a somatic class on fawning. Fawning is a hybrid response of the nervous system, where we have this threat response to fight or flee, we override the response because it’s not safe and we appease whoever we’re in relationship with in an effort to stay safe, to stay alive or to maintain relationship and belonging. I wrote a while ago that fawn is also the only trauma response that’s praised (along with flight, because we can praise that hustle, constant doing things out of anxiety response as a society too). It’s also one that’s all too common in people who are dealing with any kind of medical trauma. I’ve only recently been able to access my other threat responses in any kind of medical setting (and let me say when I accessed fight instead of fawn, we threw a damn party).

But I lived in a fawn response for 20+ years. I was raised to have that fawn response, and that response was celebrated in me. If I didn’t fawn, I got in trouble for it. Fawn is be liked, be accommodating, be submissive, make this other person comfortable even when my body is saying no. I’m going to loop back to something: If I’m in a doctor’s office, my whole body is saying no to something, and this doctor has the ability to deny me care, which they do because of how the medical system is structured and this person is in a position of power over me, you bet your ass I’m fawning. I’m fawning my butt off to get what I need, to keep myself safe, to maintain that relationship because my life depends on this person’s approval. If I don’t fawn, if I express my honest opinion on something, there’s a very real chance I’ll be denied care, that I’ll be labeled non-compliant, that it will go into my chart and affect me for the rest of my life. I’m navigating this in real time, with the knowing that if I express my honest opinion and my boundaries around a certain situation, it could have negative consequences for me, and how can I hold myself through other people’s disapproval? (Also let this be known this particular situation is with a medical team I trust and have developed relationship with. I would not do this if it were my first time meeting a provider, or in an emergent situation where I need to make sure I’m safe and taken care of. Then I would fawn to save my life.)

I could say so much more in this subject, but from my own lived experiences and working in this field, both with chronic illness patients and in somatic embodiment, I’m realizing how much our nervous system is affecting our experiences in our bodies, and how little care providers (or just people in general) understand about the trauma response. How that adds more trauma because now I’m not only navigating a traumatic situation, I’m also navigating your perspective on my trauma. I’m shifting into that performative role which is that fawn response, and what happens when we exist in a fawn response, or any kind of heightened nervous system state, for too long? We get dis-ease in the body. It’s like keeping that beach ball under the water, and the pressure is mounting.

The more I learn about nervous system responses and somatics and embodiment, the more I’m realizing that A. everyone is walking around just reacting to things instead of consciously responding, and B. we need to cultivate a more trauma informed society. We need to access that internal safety, and to be able to hold space for others. Chaos doesn’t stop, trauma doesn’t stop, stress doesn’t stop. But I can learn to work with my own nervous system, to embody these states, and hold myself through.