The Fawn "Please & Appease" Stress/Trauma Response

hello everyone my name is kristen snowden i'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of california and these are monthly live webinars that i do talking about all things relationships and i guess personal development as well i try to provide you all the education research tools that we just never learn in school how to do relationships how to manage high crisis conflict uncovering addictions and other mind-blowing things within our family system or our loved ones i specialize in betrayal trauma and how to navigate that so this is a webinar talking about all of those things and today we're going to focus in on the four most common stress responses that we have to trauma to threats to whatever is unpredictable so this will be a discussion on the fight flight freeze and fun stress responses but spending extra time talking about the fawn or as we also call it the please and appease trauma stress response because as many many of the people who are attending this webinar are in a heightened state of stress whether it's because in their microcosm world of um their relationships their significant other a lot of these people are betrayed partners or in recovery from addiction and other multi-leveled complexities and conflicts and struggles in a in a macro world we're dealing with long-term stress from pandemics lots of unpredictability lots of threat lots of concern so sometimes we feel like our world and our environment and our body is controlling us rather than our best thinking and our rational thought and our values and goals of knowing how we want to show up as a human how we want to show up um with our loved ones etc and as i always say education is the empowerment tool right the more i can help you understand what is happening neurobiologically within your mind body your wiring your hormones your chemistry the more you can take steps to undo what is no longer working for you or better understand why things are happening within your own life or your engagement with others so with further without further ado let's talk about the fun or he's in a please trauma response so let's first talk about what is trauma i want you to expand your understanding of the word trauma um i think we like to think about um punching kicking violence someone being held at gunpoint where the threat is extremely obvious that you know death is possible and peril is overwhelming but you have to understand your brain is lazy so your brain and an effort of keeping you alive will interpret many things as potentially life-threatening i'd rather just kind of put a general swath over everything like i use the example sometimes those newfoundland big puffy white they're like saint bernard dogs but they're gigantic and they're black and there's been some times where i'll look at one far away and it'll look like a bear um because my brain is not wired to be accurate it is wired to be efficient in keeping me alive um my prefrontal cortex which takes a lot more blood flow a lot more oxygen is wired to be more accurate but that back brain that comes on a lot faster than this part of my brain is wired to just very generally tell me this is a potential threat and we're going to talk a little bit more about that so take a minute to expand as you're exploring okay what are my potential stressors and struggles in life right now hopefully i can help you expand that so a traumatic event or a stressful experience is loosely based on one main thing your nervous system gets overwhelmed so it gets feedback from this world if you think of your your body as kind of enclosed nervous system you know it's these cells and atoms that are kind of bumping into other humans and other things in this world and it's kind of responding to what you're seeing and what you're experiencing what you're hearing and what you're feeling and and it's a feedback loop system it is basically any time trauma you experience trauma and stress or struggle and strife anytime it it is shocked that nervous system um we move along life in a predictable manner or we try to um we like comfort we like predictability that equals safety to us that allows us to kind of move along in our high executive functioning space but anything that overwhelms your nervous system is initially experienced as trauma and stress anything that catches you off guard so anything that's unpredictable you thought something was supposed to be this way you thought you knew this about this person you thought you were supposed to drive to work without any incident and suddenly it went wrong it is something you don't feel prepared for or know how to handle um and it can make you feel scared or helpless or confused confusion's a more accessible word sometimes it can lead you to feel shameful and more disconnected from the world so this is what's setting me apart from everybody this is what's making me different this is why i'm not valuable this is uh evidence of how much someone doesn't love me or how i can trust people who lie to me and harm me right that's all the shame and disconnection experience you experience moments when you're not sure that you're gonna make it through the event um there's there's this word about loss of context and time so there's this moment like such as again this pandemic it helps explain trauma so much easier now it's more accessible to everybody but this overwhelming idea of like a helplessness and a lack of control that's partly why it's traumatic but another thing is is like when will this end you know this when will i go through a 24-hour period without crying or being stressed about this particular incident in my life or going back to the pandemic when will i go 24 hours without talking about the pandemic thinking about it being impacted by it that that um lack of context of of what's happening at me to me how much longer do i have to endure that creates a long-term stress response um so and then there's this other concept so that's a singular traumatic event right that can just happen in a singular time a car accident a scary moment um but then there's this idea of complex trauma so if i grew up in a family system where there was lots of unpredictability i didn't know when there was going to be an emotional explosion or there's addiction or mental health instability or financial insecurity or i lived in a community where there was a lot of unpredictable scary things that occurred that can create complex trauma and this is important for you to understand your body wires around your experiences and creates adaptive responses for how to continue on in life despite this trauma from recurring right how to survive it so remember that as i talk about the fight flight freeze and fawn response because above all else none of this is supposed to be shaming right how you show up in these moments of high conflict stress and struggle understanding your autonomic nervous survival responses your innate default settings they're just highly adaptive ways that you learned how to survive right you have 100 evidence to this day to this moment that you can make it through the day and and part part of the reason why is because you've used you know one of these four or all of these four responses in the state of unpredictability stress and struggle so this is just meant to be educational not blaming or shaming let's talk about the fight fighter freeze response um i like using this metaphor um so this is a background on peter levine as someone who's done a lot of research on animals of how they've responded to um oh my light just went out more unpredictability now i'm in the dark so um they studied animals and just understanding the way that they respond to stress right and see if they could um correlate it to humans and so let me use an example of a steel happily you know going about in seaweed and then senses danger so um let's start with so first a animal senses that there's a threat so again remember that wide swath general application of maybe they saw a shadow maybe they saw something move so the seals bobbied about in the seaweed and it hears or maybe it hears other seals running away right because don't forget we're we're we're meant to uh pick up other people's states right or other animals states of panic because that might give us a cue that something's wrong and something's bad and i need to act right so the seal picks up that something's not right and suddenly they get a flow of like pay attention move to your sympathetic nervous system start figuring out how you need to respond to this threat you know you need to assess further then when that they do some quick quick really back of your brain millisecond assessment find out yes there is a shark coming at me um it's a threat i need to respond and fight flight freeze and then we'll talk about the fawn but unless you're a social animal you usually don't respond with a fawn so if there is anger or frustration well we'll talk about that in a second let's first talk about animals that so a seal is not gonna be able to talk their way out of getting eaten they're not gonna be able to fight their way out of getting eaten um if they freeze they will absolutely be eaten so the only option in that exact millisecond moment is flight so they are flooded with a bunch of um chemicals and hormones that will help them move quickly um and run away when the body system is overloaded with that rapid heart rate heart rate lack of oxygen um the body starts releasing um natural opiates so if you guys are familiar with the opioid addiction the opioid is it is a pain blocker and we actually have natural pain blockers that are called opiates and they they exist naturally in our body and believe it or not if you watch like a national geographic when you watch the lion kind of run after the gazelle and finally catch it you notice that the gazelle will tend to go limp and that's because it is being flooded with opiates either preparing it for death or just because the oxygen and the heart rate has gone too long too far and it can't run anymore and so you'll kind of notice it almost die without it actually dying now if by some chance that animal is able to escape death um like in the national geographic i saw two um hyenas or somebody start fighting with each other and it distracted them from getting at the animal and it went from this complete dead state to just also hopping back alive and dashing out again um because it perceived that it had a chance to fly away or to flight one more time and it got away if so that happens they then it is goes once it gets into its safe state it actually starts convulsing and shaking off what just happened like literally you know like when a dog shakes off the water on their body and it helps release the chemicals and the hormones of that fight flight free state that it was flooded with and then it carries on in life kind of joins the herd again goes back to the seaweed and joined cecile friends um so meaning that there's a kind of beginning middle and end state for wild animals unfortunately um unfortunately since we are social creatures the engagement of other human beings so not just this obvious predator of this greater apex predator is the obvious um threat that we need to avoid because we're such social creatures just even loving somebody and then being in relationship with somebody can be a potential threat to us so let's talk about the four responses that we might experience depending on our experience with other people so if we perceive an experience because by the way it's all about perception it's not about what reality is it's based how i perceive the tone of voice the perceived attacker the perceived attack perceived conflict the perceived environment how they're viewing me that is all um cues that my brain takes in so if i experience it in anger and frustration i will probably fight right so if i and i perceive that i can assert any kind of power over in the situation or i have a fighting chance i'm a fight um if i'm in a state of terror alarm and a severe threat and i'm not going to be able to fight i will fly i will get out flight if i perceive it um in a state of like despair desperation um i've checked all the exits there's no way out i'm stuck here high anxiety um just sheer exhaustion of you know my my nervous system being just completely exhausted i'm gonna move into free state another word for that is we talk about dissociation so sometimes you'll hear about that where it's just a numb out state i feel nothing i think nothing i process nothing i'm dissociation um dissociated and then the last one that we've really only been talking about for recent years is what we call the um fawn state so the please and appease state where it is solely social animals that will even bother doing this um because let me tell you the thought the please appease fun responses come from highly social adaptive skills so you will only see it in maybe humans where we're highly adaptable or you can see it sometimes like in dog behavior with like where you go to the dog park and a new dog a big one comes out another one and they kind of fawn and and like say hey don't worry i'm not gonna hurt you i'm not gonna bite you and they will they'll spawn because they are also social creatures or they'll fun with um humans depending on the situation so the please appease our fond response is a highly skillful neurobiological survival mechanism where we've assessed the engagement going on with the person who's considered the aggressor the perpetrator the person who's maybe the one leading the high conflict experience they're the ones who are bringing on the stressful event or someone who has the power over that person they will assess that situation and respond to it with providing cues of hey hey i'm on your team hey you know whatever you want whatever you need whatever i need to say to avoid conflict entirely shut it down pretend everybody's fine and happy um and like i'm the trustworthy one i'm your teammate but the issue is that it's done in a more manipulative way right because what you're doing is you're subverting and pushing down your own feelings and opinions and experiences um to kind of just de-escalate the situation please and appease that person um and or avoid the stress of the conflict in general i mean we're going to be talking about that because remember not all conflict is bad especially in a long-term relationship sometimes we need that space to talk about uncomfortable things and and things that that you're not okay with or resentment that builds up etc but we'll talk about that in a moment so please peace and fun responses are the act of trying to connect with that perpetrator aggressor however you want to state that person the person creating the stress in your body um you trying to connect with them and please them kind of make them happy but it's in and off in an inauthentic in genuine way so the goal remember if you've watched my videos long enough the goal is always to be fully integrated right if we fast forward to the end of the story of lots of hard work and personal growth and relational growth the goal is to be your good bad light dark and get to show up in your intimate relationships and talk about hard things celebrate great things um struggle with each other but love each other in spite of our flaws and kind of walk into the sunset together as perfectly imperfect humans so the reason why the peas and a please stress response might not work for you in most situations is because you're subverting your real experience you're pushing down cues of oh this isn't uncomfortable this is uncomfortable this isn't working for me i'm not okay with this and you you continue to push it down and there's a lot of people who um this started in their childhood and they learned often to peas and please because maybe mom would explode so much that they'd be the the funny sarcastic kid to kind of distract the family system or they were just always the one that never had needs because there was enough people in the family system who had plenty of needs so i'm going to be the one who needs nothing never shares my feelings never has anything other than good news to bring to everybody um and they pretend to be happy and okay in order to with the hope of connecting with humans but in a manipulative way of trying to not have anything bad happen try not to have conflict come upon me and have to deal with the discomfort of that so here's a few things if anyone has ever heard of stockholm syndrome when i was doing some research on this i thought it was interesting people were were saying that stockholm syndrome can sometimes be um better explained by that please appease fawn response if you remember it's if you know if you've been kidnapped or a perpetrator has kind of like taken you on as a hostage situation there'll be people who kind of start aligning themselves with the the perpetrator and they call that stockholm syndrome but they said you know really it's actually a highly adaptive skillful technique that they used to survive that experience because they learned to say hey i'm not going to run away yeah yeah like uh sure i align with you whatever you say because the calmer they can keep the perpetrator you know by saying no no you don't need to kill me you can trust me i'm your teammate you can really appreciate how highly adaptive and skillful that is the other thing i want to add in is um as i was doing more research on this it was pointing out too that there's the stigma that we have culturally about being a fake person you know i think um freud called the defense mechanism sublimation when you really don't like somebody and you're like oh my god hi how are you and then you're just like oh god i hate that person but really that is a version of that fun please appease kind of state that you don't feel safe with that person and it certainly doesn't feel safe for you to have an engagement with them and say look we had a really uncomfortable situation let's have a hard conversation about it let's even get to the other side if that's not accessible because that person does not have emotional competency they've not shown themselves to be safe and have hard conversations and survive it without using mean words or you know exploiting you or your vulnerabilities then you are safer to be using that adaptive skill skill of just pleasing and peasing moving on so i'm really trying to help you reframe some of these concepts around the skills the social skills that you use to survive um one of the common things that i see in betrayed partners is kind of post uncovering um the addiction that of course is the time where we start okay now that i've had all the information that i've been denied because my partner's been living a double life we start reflecting all right what was going on what did i miss or what should i see or you have a new lens right like i said crisis kind of is like a sift and it makes everything fall to the side and at that point you're just what's left is you're just assessing your family your relationships trying to figure out how did it all go wrong what happened how can i set my life up with boundaries and safety and a better understanding so i can survive in the future and so looking at these moments these exchanges with your partner are just an understandable step when you're when you're trying to heal and so one of my clients was talking about an example of her please and appease was that she was sitting at a dinner table and though she didn't know her husband was acting out sexually that was a whole hidden double life it would manifest in their family system as just um not rage but he would just sit down on the dinner table and just start nitpicking at the kids um and just start going at them right so kind of that addictive behavior where i'm not talking about the fact that oh i feel shameful and regretful of all the nefarious behaviors that i've been doing behind your back and i feel yucky inside and i'm going to be honest and transparent and process it in a healthy way all those yucky feelings come out and why'd you get enough on the test or why are you chewing with your mouth open or why are you always late or things like that because it's just that's the way he's showing up in the relationships so she became very hyper vigilant of reading his body language and knowing right because in her socially adaptive skill set to maintain peace and keep our kids safe she learned to pick up those cues and just either start doing alignment or kind of throwing in funny jokes to to minimize the conflict and adversity that could have erupted at the dinner table um so it's really important for you to explore that because let me say and i'll close this up right now is that therapists might do more harm when they're doing couples therapy and they don't really appreciate these fight flight freeze bond responses as highly adaptive skills you know you adopted them for for a reason they worked at some point for you and so it can do more damage if you go into couples therapy and they just said oh well you just need to assert yourself you just need to say hey i'm not okay with you talking to the kids like that you need to do x y and z right we need to first better understand the relationship dynamic um how how do you talk about hard things how do you disagree or most importantly how do you repair is there any repair within that relationship dynamic where you can assert can assert yourself right you can um say your opinion or feelings or how something can be handled better or things that you resent there's a long long build up to the place where you can actually assert yourself so just be careful of that right the the opposite response to fun and peasing and pleasing is not also like this is how i feel and i won't accept anything less than this and these are my boundaries because obviously it worked at some point you really need to actually un unwind and and better you know do like a relationship dialysis of of how that served your relationship dynamic and how you can slowly pull it apart and come up with better ways so let's talk about some things to start asking yourself as a as a closing as you think about this fun please appease response and how it shows up maybe in your life is do you tend to smile or kind of act like nothing's wrong or find yourself be very hyper vigilant when there's any kind of conflict or inappropriate comments that occur within any relationship um how long back can you remember responding this way kind of with this like i need to pretend everything's okay okay how can i make this comment to pull us out of this or how can i um recover for this whole family system or this relationship system and make everyone happy again or get out of this conflict and specifically who do you do this with right again usually it's someone with an uneven power dynamic where there's a power over um so was it with like just your father or was it with someone that you like a very sensitive friend that you had to kind of help her or him feel more safe or comfortable or one of your children right like start thinking about that is there a particular person that you do approach with this hyper vigilant of uh oh they're angry or upset or not doing well how you know what kind of clown suit do i need to put on to to do the the fun jig and get them in a happier state um like it feels like a hyper vigilance when you think about this like you're really picking up on cues and tone of voice and you're thinking about instead of being like what's going on with them why are they right instead of looking at them like a feedback loop why are they so unsafe why are they so angry what's going on here and kind of check in there um you're thinking of okay what kind of strategies can i use to bring joy and happiness and pleasure and peace appeasing like that's what your thought process is instead um can you think back to the last time you felt this way so um when you take the if you take this back to your therapist office think if you can think back to a scenario where you felt this way you know like you knew you're going to an event where you're going to run into someone where you didn't feel safe with them or you know you've had conflict and you imagine yourself just moving to that pleasing and appeasing state or maybe someone in your professional or personal life or hierarchy where they made an inappropriate comment or they're clearly disgruntled and how you try to move in to do that pleasing and appeasing so really just taking that scenario and seeing if you can kind of start pulling apart your feelings and your stories that you're telling yourself and how you can better show up more authentically so to speak the goal is to identify if and when this happens this fond response explore the story that you're telling yourself around it and how would you prefer to show up is this working for you sometimes the answer is yes it works um but sometimes it's not right and your primary relationship usually doesn't work with the random woman that you run across at school that you just don't like you might need to keep that fond response that's fine um and is it safe to to move into a more authentic way you know more vulnerable way of sharing your thoughts and feelings rather than just pleasing and appeasing um so that is it for now and let's open it up for questions this makes so much sense um you know as another coping mechanism and un well no fortunately i can i can see how i've used that you know in many different scenarios some like you say you know the random person that is just uncomfortable and you know not worth engaging with but even in my family system i was like oh yeah like i was the person that deflected like i will deflect the energy and i'm like it's just fascinating to even consider and you're talking about animals and i was like oh my god my dog is a you know i mean you know we're walking down the running down the street and there's a noisy truck and he's you know trying to yeah he's moving away or you know the other dog starts barking and then they join in together because now we've all been alerted that you know it's danger you know the amazon truck might be coming you know i mean whatever it is but you know all of these you know responses you know my dog has great emotional um intelligence he is he's able to cue in and he reacts to dogs you know he's very much the chameleon you want to play like this okay i'll play like this you know so like i had this great visual of like oh like you know like that chameleon of like i'm gonna navigate this so my world is safe you know um you know maybe not being well he's a dog but you know he's his authentic self all the time probably but but still you know to show up in those different ways um uh you know is it is a coping mechanism you know but yeah losing our authentic self i thought it was really useful too when you're talking about like just going to the absolute opposite right off the bat without exploring you know how does this fabric all put together in what's going to be safe to move into a different way of communicating is really meaningful because you know the an abrupt jarring you know can be unsafe you know you know for the entire system so so and you're not going to be very good at it right if that's been your default setting um i always joke that when i was learning to assert myself right um i i swung over to the other end and i just became an extremely unpleasant person like whatever you want to eat wherever you want to go to be like no one tells me where i eat dinner i'm the one right and it's like a very slow response to like get to that middle spot yeah yeah how do we navigate this being curious the story i'm talking about i love when you share the story i'm telling myself because you know and you share too it's like it's not about reality it's about perception so it really is what we perceive the world to be in the moment which can be completely opposite of what the reality is but taking those few you know taking the time to process and letting blood get to the front part of our brain um you know is you know is difficult to do in the moment you know especially if we're in you know if we've gone to one of these spots so um so so questions um my husband the addict is extremely conflict avoidant which results in fawning very non-relational any recommendations for how to deal with this as a partner well for better or worse the non-addict in the relationship usually has to be the more emotional intelligent um so sometimes it's more helpful now that you're you have this education is to kind of bring this up like it's um and i try to do this with like my teenage kids too that just also don't have the emotional intelligence yet to talk about like they'll just be mean and not know that they're like stressed about something so it's just a quiet suggestion like hey i'm noticing i'm asking this question um and you don't seem to have an opinion you don't seem to have any response but i could imagine it's kind of a big deal like i would think you would have a response to this it's like i'm ready for it you know but again these are things especially for an addict in recovery like i said there's so much to unravel about how this served your husband this this fawn response there might be a lot especially immediately after uh uh uncovering addiction they're in a lot of state states of shame and sometimes and they won't feel like they have the right to like an opinion they won't feel like they have the right to share something or they're just completely conflict avoidant because emotions are so high but ironically you kind of have to get through that and deal with the emotions and share what was going on so usually it's suggested that in the novice stages of recovery you have hard conversations with a therapist present so they can help um guide along someone who's more conflict avoidant and kind of help them make kind of grow a better understanding of how they feel that they're even having feelings that they even have opinions that's hard it is hard and you know and i think um and i i'm not giving the betrayers a past but but you all you know they have no they're at zero with emotions and emotional intelligence and all of those type of things but you know i think even having the conversation of i have a vision for us being able to you know to relate on a different level i know you're not there yet but here's what i'd like to work towards and how how can we you know navigate this how can we negotiate it as you know as a couple you know you know are can you show up you know in in some small way like you know and maybe be very specific i'm hopeful that you could do this because that's something you could do now you know and we can work towards some of these bigger things but but just you know giving the vision that um that there is um a possibility of you know of a future but i don't expect you to be there now you know can can also help but i and i really agree with kristen like you work with a professional for these you know when it's too hard for the two of you to do it on your own you know um and it isn't like you it isn't it isn't admitting defeat it's going like hey we need a little help and we want you know we want the best thing for our relationship so how do we do this you know that is supportive of each of us and the relationship right um next question i have some new contacts so you see me squinting sorry can you give me a short script of what i can say when my 30 year old daughter is giving off huge nonverbal cues of rage i'm sorry i'm laughing because i'm like okay you've been there done that uh saying you know you got teenagers so uh saying something like what i could do to help you write or what what i could do to help you right now seems to make it worse daughter is delightful but a victim of an entire childhood of dealing with her essay father i'm i'm sorry i'm so glad you're asking that question too yeah i know and this is where my therapist counter transference comes in because i can jump into like a high conflict couple ship and i'm like oh i know how to do this we talk about daughter relating as i have two teenage daughters that are in that emotional state and i'm just like i don't know anything but let me try um so since this isn't related to me again i try to be their inner monologue that they might not even be aware of because they're in so much emotional turmoil so um my daughter stressed about finals so she's being very curt and saying things in ways that are not usually the way she says things and so i will say like hey do you think you're talking like this because you're really stressed about finals or what's going on here um i kind of try to when because i'm in touch with the story i'm telling myself when i see it happen right so i see someone who normally isn't stressed or cur or unkind um then i so i'm like this isn't like her these are the things that are going on i wonder if x y and z is what's leading to this behavior so i will kind of be the person that speaks up and says hey do you what's going on here you know either i'll say like um this reaction seems really strong do you think it's about more than just this you know or i'll see stiff body language and i'll say oh you're like your body looks like it's really stressed right now um i don't yeah i don't know you're picking up huge nonverbal cues of rage so you see them so note them what do they look like do you hear it in a tone of voice do you see it in like a tight body and you can just say oh like your body's so tense like are you angry about something and because she could just be like no i'm just really cold in this room it's freezing in here i don't right like you can you can invite conversation about it as much as you want it might not always work um but as long as you're the one who tries to stay calm non-judgmental remember this is their neurofeedback loop system not yours you're just noting that they look unsafe they look unhappy they look angry and you're more just kind of inquiring i see this am i accurate am i not what's going on like help me understand you better remember the the same that i love for communication um listen to understand not to respond right you can even also ask questions to understand not to be responsive or to change their opinion or to influence them not say why are you so angry everything's fine right you don't say that you you say you look upset help me understand why what's going on so hopefully i'm curious a lot okay and then tell me understand yeah i say i'm confused yes help me understand yes like aunt six times a day yeah yeah yeah yeah as you're saying that ever mom you're spinning the cue i've used with my kids and they've used it on me and it's been quite effective can you say that in a nicer way oh yeah like can i i know what you're trying to say but can you say it in a nicer way and most of the time like yeah i absolutely could say that and i said yeah yeah you are so right yeah but but that's just you know it's an invitation to do things a little differently oh yeah you know and just and i think it helps it get it up here to go oh you know because i'm sure when i was spinning everything was back here right and it went up there and i went oh yeah i am and this is not productive so right and what she's trying to say is that when you're in that reactionary state you're in this back survival brain that i've talked about that fight flight freeze you know stress state usually it's in your executive functioning brain that by the way you have to be curious you have to breathe you have to allow time and blood flow to occur to be up here to be like oh yeah these are my children i love them they are my treasures i want to treat them with respect because i want them to be to expect other people to be you know treat them with respect oh let me adjust my my mentality and the way i'm speaking so that just takes time and you can if you can add curiosity to it and time and breathing and oxygen and blood flow that helps so the next one i'm the betraying partner and i think i'm in fawn quite a bit with my wife and with a lot of my a mom growing up my wife holds the upper hand in my perception because she is threatening to leave all the time due to my betrayal that is my biggest fear any advice for me um exercises i can practice so remember the goal is not to subvert your feelings and experiences it's hard because again you you've not assessed if it's safe to do so but you know it you know the the story you're telling yourself so you need to start sharing that with her so when you feel that moment so get familiar um with what it feels like in your neurobiology when it feels like something's happening and you kind of freeze and you start wondering how to avoid the conflict or please her or de-escalate the anger pay attention to it so the cue can let you know oh i'm in that state you might want to even when you're not in that state with her share what you're going to be doing which is like hey i've noticed i go into this please appease state i'd i'd like to not because i'd like to be real have real conversations with you um you know have talk about hard things but this is the fear that goes through my mind which you're not alone this is an extremely common thing that happens is you know kind of once you've been discovered also that's when you guys started doing relationship dialysis seeing what worked what didn't work how could be better how can i support you how can i help you heal um but the betraying partner will often be in that fond state of like can i have opinions can i have feelings what are my feelings what are my opinions and it kind of comes out like either like explosions or not at all so you can say it and like bring that inner monologue out and say i'm going to try to share my feelings i'm going to try to stay present with you um but i'm in so much fear about you leaving that i just ha it takes me a little bit extra time to like breathe and calm down and then show up so i have another video that's called um how trauma impacts your nervous system and i talk about the polyvagal theory um and that might be really good to help you down down escalate or kind of down regulate your really upregulated system because fawning pleasing and peasing is still a sign that you are very overwhelmed that your nervous system is overwhelmed so you do need to engage down regulation skills of you know deep breathing um counting back from 100 by seven um try doing that uh stand on one foot sigh these are ways to calm down the system and say you're safe right now she's not packing her bags and leaving you she's trying to understand why you missed that 12-step meeting last night that you were supposed to go to so just breathe and have a difficult conversation around it and tammy beautifully explained all that stuff that needs to be unraveled like i said the opposite of fond response isn't just also asserting yourself it's definitely unraveling you know the trauma history the complex trauma the shame voices of fears of abandonment and all that kind of stuff so it's not just as simple as just asserting yourself i wish it were that easy but it's not so it's clear that it is important to develop boundaries to help offset the desire to fawn and thus be more authentic in the relationship do you have any recommendations for a resource to help identify and name my boundaries this seems critical so i can communicate them and be a more be more real in our relationship and express my needs versus spawning yeah um well i have several the youtube so on my channel kristen snowden um i have several previous webinars posted specifically on boundaries i have like a i feel a really helpful impactful boundaries chart i think it's like the number one most downloaded thing on my website so um i think it's really helpful to just review it every day and say am i selling stain and behaving and making choices that keep me on the healthy boundaries side or am i kind of fawning or people pleasing and responding on the unhealthy boundaries side um i also do do live small group workshops which actually are starting uh i think next week and we cover boundaries a lot because it's really important to identify them identify values goals um who you want to show up as how you want to show up along with exploring shame um trauma boner you know the fears of vulnerability etc so those are helpful resources but you guys probably have some too tammy yeah on our our websites but you know i i would invite you and and kristen just mentioned it shame is not like if you fawn you know identify it and go i can do this differently but it doesn't have to go oh i'm you know i'm so shame-filled you know because that's counterproductive so so it's always looking at things and how can we step into it differently how can we engage differently but going to the shame spiral you know doesn't help doesn't help anyone so next question fawn is my go-to response and i believe its origin being my mother was so anxious that she could shut down at any point and not be able to function now as a betrayer i find it hard to be vulnerable and completely open with my wife on uh on feelings and go to into fun mode how can i tell when i am in fun mode versus sincere desire to show up for my wife and her trauma that's a great question how do i know you're out like those obviously resonated with a lot of people i can understand that so you've probably seen my responses to previous questions because it's they're similar um i i do again there's a lot of videos that i have on like shame and fears of vulnerability so i'd encourage you to kind of look at those that helps you really understand the multi-level levels of trauma and shame stories that you tell yourself that lead to that fond response the more you know um believe it or not intimacy and having connections with your partner um showing up for your wife is to even say like you're in a state of trauma and i don't know how to show up for you like help me understand i'm frozen afraid that i'm gonna say the wrong thing do the wrong thing do you need a hug no no no get away from me okay can we can i come back when do you want me to come back uh come back in three hours okay and then in those three hours can we sit down for a cup of coffee can i take you out you get to just let that inner monologue inside you out um and just say like help me understand what i do with my hands you know like because fawn mode is i didn't do anything with my hands i did whatever you told me what to do i i don't even know but it's like i feel fear i'm afraid i'm gonna make the wrong response so you understand now that that's that's the state that i'm in um i want to say this i want to you know share this with you how can i do that and help you feel safe also um so yeah and then obviously you're talking about what what um tammy had mentioned about the story around mom and family history um that needs to be explored right um your fun response worked for a while until it didn't and you need to explore the story you were telling yourself um how you thought you were serving yourself and others by fawning people pleasing etc how do you really want to show up what is that answer do you want to show up as being understanding validating being a good listener um helping someone else feel safe feel heard you're gonna have to explore that and find out what the answers to that are those aren't natural states so um especially if you have addiction issues you know they're multi-multi-layered sometimes you guys can do it in therapy with role playing um or just you alone with your therapist and role playing you can process it with maybe sponsor in your community it's going to take practice and it's going to be an imperfect execution and you'll do it better with people that aren't like you know it's why and treatment like the guys can work on these skills with other addicts because there's less risk you know your your most vulnerable relationship are the you know the people that are closest to you were you know we have the most fear we're you know we you know we don't want to do it wrong we don't know how to change those patterns it's really easy to get into the same little loops yeah repeated that don't serve either of us but that we don't know any better so so sometimes it's practicing with you know your peer group with your recovery group you know that may be how you start to develop better skills for it yeah okay let me jump down really fast too someone's asking me is the boundaries group just for women no i the when i do the renee brown like daring greatly workshop that's co-ed um when i do betrayed partner workshops it's just female it's just for women um so my brene brown you know though i call it courageous connection daring greatly rising strong shame resiliency boundary setting understanding fear and vulnerability workshops that that is co-ed and small it's not usually more than seven people i like to keep it really small and then the last question i am the addict of three decades plus discovery a year ago i am in 12-step have a sponsor attend a weekly group session i assume that means with a therapist i just finished sex porn addiction 101 reading out of the dog house i think you get my drift my wife and i still together living together taking talking etc however she's very often brings up past horrible decisions would you agree or disagree with the following statement we need to stop focusing on the past and focus on today and our future so i'm glad you're reading out of the doghouse because that's going to talk about the fact that there's a need oftentimes what's happening to help you understand the trade partner is now that she's kind of realized that you had all this double life um nefarious behavior going on in the backdrop for her own safety she's trying to reconcile that in her brain how did she see this person her partner as this and then he or she was off doing all this stuff in the background so a lot of these questions are just her trying to make sense trying to to seek safety and better understand how could you make all these bad choices and why would i trust you to not do that stuff anymore i mean i know one of the steps you mentioned you're doing all this stuff discovery so i don't know if there's been like a full therapeutic disclosure um but the quick answer is there's going to be quite a bit of focus on the past for quite some time until there are signs that you know the ins and outs of how it happened how to avoid it what it was all about um all the feelings and the experiences and the trauma that you were kind of just piling on top of to avoid it and that she feels like you have appropriately assessed everything and changed and have a great understanding of it and she understands it because a big safety thing for her is that she's going to know the cues she's got wants to know everything the ins and outs so much that she's going to know the cues if and when you start engaging in these behaviors again um and i'm sure tammy you have a lot to add about that well three decades and and you know what i mean that's the behavior the the wanting to dissociate the the maladaptive coping mechanisms probably started even younger than that you've been doing this for a year great and that sounds i mean like seriously as a fellow recovering person yay but but you know if you're doing the math that's one year to 30 years you know one thirtieth that's a very short amount of time it takes partners you know when you actually stop the behavior and are starting to do the right things you know they're looking at you know it's typically you know 12 to 24 months before they start going okay now i see that this person is changing you know it's what your actions are doing and you're doing a lot of you're doing a lot of right things so stay the course keep doing it but it would be really lovely if as addicts we could go well we're all done talking about the past and all of that rotten stuff and now we're just going to focus on the future and disney world that isn't that isn't the reality so part of doing the 12 steps which you know because you're doing it is we don't you know part of the promise is we don't want to we don't regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it so if you are doing the 12 steps and you've done your fourth and fifth step and you're working on things you know you're gonna part of the promises you're gonna know a new happiness and a new freedom and and you you won't you know it it won't always be all consuming near the past um and and you can understand hopefully in your brain they're bad decisions they were fueled by addiction they were fueled by lots of pain or need to escape you're looking to do it better you're showing up in a very different way reread out of the doghouse i also put we started out of the doghouse work group it's full right um we're going to start another one uh first and that will help you and support you um and hopefully as kristen said you know if you haven't done a formal therapeutic disclosure hopefully both of you are working with you know professionals to be able to you know have that on the plan as well that'll help set the foundation you know for your spouse to be able to you know to believe that there's you know truth and and uh and and trustworthiness so yeah and let me give a skill for the addicts really fast that might be helpful remember i talked about we need a view it's really helpful when you cannot personalize something coming at you from your betrayed partner because they're dealing with so many different things right now and just view them as a nervous system feedback loop system so if she's coming at you with something in the past something about poor decisions you made how could you just take it at the feedback loop system and say it looks like you're feeling really unsafe it looks like you're really struggling to see whether i'm changing or i'm making the progress how can i help you feel safe again so right like it's not oh my god how long are we gonna have to relive the past how many times am i gonna have my bad choices rubbed in my face just view her as a nervous system feedback loop and she is her body language and her stories are showing you that she is not feeling safe and you step back and you help her get curious and you engage her and say you sound really upset you sound like understandably angry and scared what can i do right now to help you well i just want to make sure you're going to your meetings oh well i just want to make sure that and you that's the way you engage them right so she's talking about the past but you can engage her in the present in this moment to help her feel more safe that's huge for the healing process yes and it takes it away from oh she's attacking me and throwing this up again you are you are engaging her in a very different way i that was great thank you for sharing that kristen so thank you all for joining us join us so next week is eddie caparucci um but kristen will be back in february uh so the second week of the month uh kristen will be back so thanks everybody yeah thank you and make sure to just check out my website join my mailing list if you want and i do have some spaces open for those live workshops that are starting next week if you're interested great i share them with so many people so yeah i'm definitely pointing people towards your your work great thank you all right thank you everyone happy new year

Channel: Kristin Snowden

Views: 1,800

Keywords: flight flight freeze, healing trauma, fawn please and appease, codependent versus healthy relationships, divorce, infidelity, betrayal trauma, attachment theory, anxious attachment, narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, avoidant attachment, addiction recovery, what is trauma, shame resiliency, couples counseling, marital counseling, cheating, lying

Id: 62lBM_9qZbo

Length: 58min 48sec (3528 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022