(5 minutes read time)
“I nearly jumped out of my skin.” When analysed, this idiom or saying, is what I describe as taking yourself out of your body because it seems like an unsafe place to be.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is widely regarded as a gold standard for treating anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Structured, short-term, and goal-oriented, CBT appeals to many mental health services and clinicians for its clarity and evidence base. However, when it comes to trauma—especially developmental, relational, or complex trauma—many people find themselves stuck, invalidated, or even retraumatised by CBT. Why?
Because trauma doesn’t live in the thinking mind. It lives in the body.
The fawn response
Informed by the work of Pete Walker, this article explores the often-overlooked fawn response as a core survival strategy in trauma. Walker identifies fawning as a response that “bypasses the fight, flight and freeze responses” and instead relies on people-pleasing and appeasement to gain safety—particularly in emotionally neglectful or unsafe early environments. As he explains, “fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others,” often at the cost of their own needs, identity, and boundaries. Understanding this pattern is essential in trauma work, as it reveals how many clients’ over-accommodation is not a personality trait, but a deeply wired response to relational threat. Read more about the fawn response and people-pleasing here.
Trauma is a Nervous System Experience
Trauma is not simply a bad memory or a set of distorted thoughts. It is a profound disruption to the nervous system’s sense of safety. When something traumatic happens, especially in early life or repeatedly over time, the brain’s fear centre—the amygdala—goes into overdrive. The body prepares to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn. This response is deeply physiological, not logical. It’s survival, not story.
For many people living with trauma, their nervous system is still there—trapped in the time and place where safety was lost. The body remembers, even when the mind tries to move on. Tight muscles, shallow breath, racing heart, digestive issues, hypervigilance—these aren’t cognitive distortions; they’re survival mechanisms still switched on.
Why CBT Falls Short
CBT tries to help by examining and reframing thoughts. It works beautifully for many people, particularly those dealing with patterns of negative thinking. But for someone whose trauma is held in the body, CBT’s focus on rationality can feel not just ineffective—it can feel invalidating.
Imagine telling someone whose whole body is in a panic that their thoughts are “unhelpful” or “irrational.” The experience of trauma is not irrational. It’s the nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do—protect the person in the face of threat. The problem is that the threat is long gone, but the body doesn’t know that yet.
By staying “above the neck,” CBT can unintentionally bypass the most essential part of trauma recovery: the body’s felt sense of safety. Without addressing the stuck trauma response in the body, healing remains elusive.
The Danger of Skipping the Body
When CBT doesn’t work, people often blame themselves. “I must not be trying hard enough.” “Maybe I just don’t want to get better.” But the truth is simpler and more compassionate: your body is still carrying something that needs to be seen, heard, and processed in a different way.
Healing trauma often requires a person-centred approach but with a counsellor who is trained in what trauma is and what it does to the mind and body, but more importantly, crucially, the way I work, is to find the trapped event when you made a decision for your safety, the earliest point in your life when you decided for your whole life, how you would be from now on. This work will blow your mind.
Validation is Vital
For trauma survivors, healing often begins not with changing thoughts, but with being believed—by themselves and their therapist—that their experience is real. That their body is not broken. That their survival response makes sense. That healing is possible, but not through force or logic alone.
CBT isn’t bad therapy. It’s just not the right fit for every story—especially not the ones written in the language of the body.
What is the Fawn Response?
The fawn response is a survival strategy where a person responds to threat or danger by trying to please, appease, or placate others in order to stay safe. It often develops in people who grew up in environments where their needs were ignored, punished, or importance was placed on being “good,” quiet, or helpful, how you looked to others or how your parents looked to others, as you are their child.
Whereas:
- Fight is about confronting the threat,
- Flight is about escaping it,
- Freeze is about shutting down and disconnecting,
- Fawn is about blending in and making yourself useful or non-threatening to avoid harm.
Why It’s Important in Trauma Work
People who fawn often don’t realise it’s a trauma response—it can look like being “nice,” “easy-going,” or “selfless.” But in reality, it’s a deeply ingrained nervous system adaptation, often formed in childhood when appeasing a parent or caregiver was the only way to stay emotionally or physically safe.
In trauma work, recognising the fawn response is crucial, because traditional therapies (like CBT) can sometimes reinforce it—encouraging clients to be compliant, agreeable, or “rational,” even when those behaviours are rooted in fear or self-abandonment.
How trauma counselling can help
Together we can look at your people-pleasing behaviour today and we can find out what that is about. We can look at early years relationships when you decided you had to be the sweetest, kindest child and the importance of upholding that reputation all the way through childhood and how it is causing you problems today in daily life. You can decide if it is all you or a trapped part of you that is still making decisions.
You can begin to comfort the child part of you, provide the nurturing he/she needed as an infant and be the adult in your life today. You can then be free to implement the boundaries needed for healthy relationships and to feel safe in the world. You will not need to use food, alcohol, drugs or put pressure on body image, overspending on clothes and items to create a you, you believe will please the external world.
Are you ready to talk?
I offer a low-cost confidential service. I offer space to speak, find your voice, be really heard and validated. I am a trained professional counsellor who specialises in anxiety and trauma. Make an appointment to meet me and tell me what you want from counselling. See if you feel comfortable. The first session is over Zoom for both of our safety and then you can do sessions over Zoom from your own home or in person in mine, in my safe, comfortable therapy room.
Book your appointment today
Click here and book a free initial consultation with me today. Read what people are saying about working with me in counselling here. I hold a private, confidential space for you. I’m looking forward to meeting you and hearing you very soon. Best wishes, Karen.
Disclaimer: I am a UK qualified person centred counsellor specialising in anxiety and trauma within the context of counselling. I write from my experiences and from my client work in counselling. My work is dependent on the therapeutic relationship and the meeting of two minds. It is a humbling experience and that is all part of the healing process that I witness every day. It is the best job in the world. This is not an emergency service. If you need to speak to someone urgently outside of my sessions, please call the Samaritans on 116 123 (24/7 confidential helpline in the UK).