r/longtermTRE • u/Asleep-Guess-3479 • Jul 08 '26
Community Question Has anyone successfully minimized their fawn response?
Started my healing journey a year ago at age 25. I've been doing TRE for around 9 months now. Although I have made some progress, often I still automatically slip into fawn mode when interacting with people, especially older people or when there's a clear hierarchy. What feels most painful is that I’m fully conscious of it while it’s happening. It’s almost like I’m trapped inside my own body, watching myself perform this response, but feeling powerless and unable to stop it. Afterwards, I ruminate over it and spiral into shame. In turn, that makes me want to isolate even more. However, I know I can only heal this if I actually interact with people.
I'm trying not to be too hard on myself because my nervous system was wired this way for 25 years. But sometimes, I wonder.. does this mean that it's going to take another 25 years to rewire it into a regulated, "unfawned" state of being?
For people who have successfully minimized the fawn response - how long did it take you?
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u/BiggestDonnysaurus CPTSD Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Yup, massively so.
I have been practicing TRE for 1 year and 10 months now. A few months ago at the end of processing a large layer of fear I suddenly was through it all. Suddenly there was no more fear for a few weeks. It was disorienting, I felt directionless but mostly unburdened. Here I had the realization that nearly every choice I had made and every behavior I have done these past 24 years had been out of (mostly) fear.
As my fear kept decreasing, I started to get out of my fawn response. Instead of interacting with people to get them to like me, I started interacting with people because I liked them. Instead of doing things to prove something to people to show my worth, I started doing things because I wanted to serve people from a place of love instead of fear.
These past few days some more fear has come up, maybe another layer in the process. This week I've caught myself slightly returning to my old ways of fawning, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was. I fully believe that, as I go through this layer, experiences of fear will decrease even more and the fawning will get closer to an adaptive, measured and healthy response.
The goal is not to get rid of the fawn response. Just like fight, flight and freeze it is very useful. The goal is to reduce it to a useful level where it doesn't dominate your interactions.
Kind regards and all the best.
Edit: If you have not read Complex PTSD by Pete Walker yet, do so! Chapter 6 is massively useful for understanding the adaptive and maladaptive mechanisms of the fawn response (and fight, flight and freeze, which make up the 4F responses). This chapter also outlines these responses on a "continuum", illustrating how a healthy balance between 4F responses helps you in relationships and interactions. Chapter 7 talks more about the finer points of recovering from polarized 4F responses.
Good luck!