There was a time when I thought I had only two options when it came to conflict: either I asserted myself too strongly, or I didn’t assert myself enough. If I stayed quiet, I would later feel resentful and blame myself for not protecting my boundaries. If I spoke up too forcefully, I would regret how I handled the situation.
Neither response brought me peace.
One pattern I noticed over and over again was this: someone would cross my boundaries or behave in a way that felt intrusive. I would finally gather the courage to set a boundary, but as soon as they responded in a friendly or reassuring way, I would immediately relax that boundary. I confused friendliness with respect. I assumed the problem had been solved simply because the conversation felt more comfortable.
Eventually, I realized this wasn’t really about conflict at all. It was about my nervous system.
Many people who have experienced chronic stress, emotionally unhealthy relationships, or trauma develop what psychologists refer to as the fawn response. In addition to the more familiar fight, flight, and freeze responses, fawning is a survival strategy where we prioritize keeping other people happy in order to stay emotionally or physically safe. Rather than risking rejection, criticism, or conflict, we become overly accommodating, avoid expressing our needs, and struggle to maintain healthy boundaries.
The problem is that what once helped us survive can later prevent us from living authentically.
Learning healthy conflict resolution isn’t about becoming argumentative or confrontational. It’s about learning that disagreement doesn’t have to threaten connection, and that respecting yourself is just as important as respecting someone else.
Understanding the Fawn Response
People who fawn often become experts at reading other people’s emotions while losing touch with their own.
You notice changes in someone’s tone of voice.
You monitor facial expressions.
You anticipate disappointment before it happens.
You apologize even when you’ve done nothing wrong.
You say “yes” when every part of you wants to say “no.”
Over time, this creates an exhausting cycle. Your own needs become secondary because you’re constantly managing everyone else’s emotional state.
Ironically, avoiding conflict rarely creates peace. Instead, it creates resentment.
Every boundary you ignore teaches others where your limits are. Every time you silence yourself to keep someone comfortable, you slowly become uncomfortable yourself.
Healthy relationships don’t require the disappearance of boundaries. They require respect for them.
Fawning As a Trauma Response
Fawning is a response where someone tries to maintain safety by pleasing, accommodating, or merging with another person’s needs, this can be caused by childhood trauma and abusive relationships, and it manifests in attracting and becoming intimate with manipulative and toxic individuals, difficulty maintaining boundaries, being over-accommodating and losing connection with your own needs.
The fawn response is a trauma adaptation where a person attempts to create safety by appeasing others, often at the expense of their own needs and boundaries. It is commonly associated with relational trauma, particularly experiences where expressing emotions or asserting needs felt unsafe. (Source: What is the Fawning Trauma Response? Caretaking and people pleasing through the lens of complex trauma).
Why Setting Boundaries Feel So Difficult, How to not feel guilty about setting boundaries?
Stop Explaining. Stop Justifying. Stop Talking. Boundaries are Upheld With Action
Many of us were never taught that boundaries are healthy.
Instead, we learned that saying “NO” was selfish.
Speaking up was rude.
Disagreeing meant risking abandonment.
Expressing our needs made us “too much.”
If you’ve experienced emotional manipulation, narcissistic abuse, or chronic criticism, your nervous system may still interpret disagreement as danger. That doesn’t mean conflict is dangerous today; it means your body is responding based on past experiences rather than present reality.
Research on trauma consistently shows that prolonged stress can leave the nervous system more sensitive to perceived threats, making ordinary disagreements feel far more intense than they actually are. Understanding this can help us respond with compassion toward ourselves while still taking responsibility for how we communicate.
Healing doesn’t mean never feeling activated.
Healing means noticing when you are activated and choosing your response rather than reacting automatically.
If you’ve experienced coercive control, childhood trauma, or emotionally unsafe relationships, your nervous system may still interpret disagreement as a potential threat. When someone grows up or lives in an environment where conflict, anger, rejection, or punishment feels unpredictable, the brain can adapt by becoming highly alert to signs of danger. This response may have been protective at the time, but later it can cause ordinary disagreements to feel much more threatening than they actually are. (Source: Childhood trauma: What happens when relationships go wrong?)
Research on childhood adversity and trauma shows that repeated exposure to threat can alter how the brain detects and responds to danger. People who have experienced prolonged stress may become more sensitive to cues that resemble past experiences, such as changes in tone, facial expressions, or conflict. This does not mean the person is “overreacting”; it means their nervous system learned to protect them based on previous experiences. Healing involves learning to recognise the difference between past danger and present safety, while still taking responsibility for how we communicate. (Source: Perceived threat in childhood: a review of research and implications for children living in violent households).
Emotional Sobriety – A Better Way to Approach Conflict
Conflict Resolution Steps:
- 24 hours rule (wait before execution)
- Being assertive in a healthy way
- Speak up politely and respectfully
- Don’t be malicious
- Know conflict happens because of difference; find a commonality (after the other person speaks, make a list of all they said that you agree with), this shows you listened, then in your reply add “in addition to that.. I would like to add”, Avoid saying the words “but or however”.
- You have to remember what you stand to lose, remember what is at stake, it is probably not worth the loss. In life, what you gain is more trouble than what you lose.
- Delay conflict if you feel negative emotions.
- Ask the other person, why is there a conflict? Those steps are:
1. Define the real cause of the conflict and its root cause.
2. Brainstorm mutually beneficial solutions (it doesn’t have to be only one solution, sometimes we need multiple solutions to resolve one challenge).
3. Implement the best solutions (focus on what is right instead of who is right because sometimes we oppose ideas simply because they didn’t come from us).
4. Evaluate the chosen solutions (sometimes the solution doesn’t work, so what we agree on in step 3 doesn’t have to be set in stone…).
Some food for thought:
As Aaron Goldman wisely said: “Communicate unto the other person that which you would want them to communicate unto you if your positions were reversed.” Aaron Goldman
As journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote: “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict – alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.” Dorothy Thompson
Healthy conflict resolution is about finding those creative alternatives instead of falling into passive, aggressive or fawning behaviours.
Healing the Nervous System
For many people, fawning is not simply a communication habit – it is a nervous system response developed through stress or past experiences.
Practices that help regulate the nervous system may reduce the automatic urge to people-please.
These can include:
- Somatic therapy.
- Qigong (Chi Gong).
- Fascia release and body-based trauma work.
- Proper hydration and eating nourishing foods.
- Reducing chronic stress.
- Spending less time around toxic people and situations.
- Check out: Rebecca C. Mandeville LMFT Scapegoat Abuse Expert
“I thought there was something wrong with me that I just couldn’t get over my childhood – I never realized that what I went through was abusive. I thought abuse was mostly physical. Somehow having a name for what happened to me makes me feel better. Rebecca C. Mandeville, Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role.
“Why would a parent reject, shame, blame, and seek to dominate their own child? One primary reason is that the parent may suffer from unrecognized, untreated trauma. Another is that they may have Borderline Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder causing them to be highly aggressive, dominating, or unstable.” Rebecca C. Mandeville, Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role.
“the ‘scapegoat child’ is often the most psychologically-minded. Rebecca C. Mandeville, Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role.
The highest vibration is to simply have the courage to become your authentic self.
The Five Love Languages as Self Care
Understanding your preferred love language can also become a form of self care and emotional regulation.
Gary Chapman described five common ways people tend to express and receive love:
- Words of affirmation
- Quality time
- Acts of service
- Receiving gifts
- Physical touch
Knowing which forms of care help you feel safe, appreciated and connected can make it easier to recognise your emotional needs and communicate them clearly. If quality time helps you feel grounded, you may need regular uninterrupted time with loved ones. If acts of service make you feel supported, asking for practical help may reduce stress during difficult periods.
The same applies to how you care for yourself. If words of affirmation matter to you, practising self compassion and positive self talk can become an important part of emotional regulation. If physical touch is meaningful, massage, comforting physical contact or even a warm blanket may help calm your nervous system.
Although recent psychological research questions whether people have one fixed “love language,” many therapists still find the framework useful as a simple conversation starter about emotional needs. The value may lie less in identifying one permanent category and more in becoming aware of the many ways we experience care, connection and safety.
Ultimately, understanding yourself makes it easier to set healthy boundaries, communicate your needs and reduce the tendency to fawn in order to gain acceptance. Self love is the answer.
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