FAWNING as a response to stress and trauma

with Dr Cherie Lacey

In the third workshop in our ongoing series, Yoga & the Emotions, we’ll look at fawning as a response to stress and trauma.

Fawning has recently been identified as our fourth trauma response, in addition to the fight, flight, and freeze responses. The fawn response is a conditioned response associated with a need to avoid conflict and trauma by appeasing others. People who exhibit the fawning response tend to deny their own needs, preferences, and boundaries, in an attempt to make other people happy and deflect attention away from themselves. Fawning tends to manifest in personality characteristics such as people pleasing, the suppression of anger, and simply being extremely nice.

In this workshop we’ll explore new research on fawning as a response to stress and trauma, and the role fawning plays in dis-ease and illness. We’ll discuss why (and when) fawning might show up as a coping mechanism, as well as what happens in the body when we exhibit the fawning response. In the second half of the workshop, we’ll share some tools—drawn from yoga, mindfulness and positive psychology—to help us manage the fawning response, and find new ways to cope with difficult, distressing, or stressful emotions.

Booking Details

Investment: $35. Limited spaces available, so advanced booking highly recommended! Payment confirms your space in the workshop.

Book online or via kiaora@awhiyoga.co.nz

Dr Cherie Lacey is a wellbeing researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, a yoga and meditation instructor at AWHI Yoga & Wellbeing, and is trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Her research into the body-mind connection has been published by Johns Hopkins University Press and Harvard University Press, and has received international awards for its innovative combination of creative, scholarly, and physical practices. She is also the Managing Director of UPLIFT at AWHI.