Workshop Description:
In this workshop we will connect the fawn response to insecure attachment, and process why it is a necessary and inevitable childhood response to trauma, abuse or neglect. We will identify the many manifestations of the fawn response including: hypervigilance, parentification, acquiescence, “mind reading,” and the abdication of needs and feelings. Participants will learn about the specific dysfunctional family dynamics and unhealthy parenting styles that promote and sustain the fawn response.
We will then follow the trajectory of childhood fawning into adolescent and adult co-dependency and process the behavioral and emotional manifestations that show up in subsequent personal relationships, the workplace, and within the client-therapist relationship. We will unpack the red flags that signify co-dependent responses in therapy including monitoring the disconnect between verbal and non-verbal responses. We will then explore strategies designed to avoid the inadvertent enabling of those responses, and process ways to empower clients to engage in more self-advocacy and assertiveness.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify and explain the manifestations of insecure attachments and the role that the fawn response plays as a survival strategy for traumatized children.
2. Explain the concept of “shifting the locus of control” and how it creates self blame, shame, and an inappropriate sense of responsibility in a child.
3. Assess and identify at least five behavioral manifestations of the fawn response in children.
4. Identify at least three dysfunctional family of origin dynamics and perpetrator messaging that promotes and sustains the fawn response in children.
5. Describe the trajectory from the fawn response in childhood to adolescent and adult codependency.
6. Assess and identify at least four manifestations of codependency that show up for adult clients in their personal relationships and in the workplace.
7. Assess and identify at least four ways in which codependency and the fawn response show up in the client therapist relationship.
8. Identify and implement at least four strategies designed to decrease codependent and fawn responses in the client therapist relationship.