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- Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.
- Maté, G. (2019). When the Body Says No. Knopf Canada.
Codependency is not about healthy care or support—it’s about losing yourself in the process, blurring where you end and the other begins.
The Fawn Response: A Trauma Response of People-Pleasing
The fawn response is not simply being kind or agreeable by choice — it is an unconscious, automatic way your nervous system learned to protect you from threat.
Codependency is a pattern of relating where you consistently sacrifice your own needs, feelings, and boundaries to prioritize someone else’s well-being, often because you believe your worth depends on keeping others happy or avoiding conflict. It is not about healthy care, mutual support, or setting reasonable compromises—it’s about losing yourself in the process and blurring where you end and the other begins. This matters to you because the fawn response often shows up as the behavioral core of codependency—over-functioning for others at your own expense. Understanding codependency helps you see that your struggle isn’t about weakness or selfishness; it’s about the complex ways you learned to survive trauma—and that healing requires untangling these patterns with both courage and kindness.
