Fawning is a relational survival strategy rooted in the nervous system. It emerges when safety depends on appeasing a perceived threat, often someone with more power, and coordinating ourselves around their emotional state. When we are fawning, we are quite literally strategically mobilizing our own nervous system to keep somebody else calm and happy. When we are in this state, we are socially engaged, but our intention is not relationship or expression, but rather is the regulation and management of someone else’s nervous system. In fawning, we contort ourselves to provide the least offensive and most acceptable version of Self for the easy digestion of someone who has more power than we have. It is a very vigilant and careful state, even though from the outside we might seem quite fluid or relaxed. Despite this camouflage, we are actually highly stressed and feel very alone. This state can last a lifetime.

Unlike simple “people-pleasing,” the roots of fawning come from an internalization of a survival mechanism that allows us to appease others who hold power over us. This often originates in early experiences of power imbalance: childhood environments shaped by violence, instability, neglect, or emotional unpredictability; chronic bullying; or social systems that punish refusal and reward compliance. It is a brilliant response from the nervous system, to coordinate the regulation of another person’s emotions as a way of surviving an environment in which we were powerless.

In From Fawning to Fierceness, we will work gently and compassionately with fawning as an intelligent adaptation rather than a personal failure. Using trauma-informed nervous system education and Resonant Healing practices, we will explore how to identify fawning states, release the emotional labor contracts that keep them in place, and engage time-travel processes to bring younger or vulnerable selves out of danger and into greater safety.

We will also examine the political and relational dimensions of fawning: how patriarchy, homophobia, racism, and other power hierarchies disproportionately condition women and gender-marginalized people to regulate others at the expense of themselves. As awareness deepens, participants will be supported to reclaim their nervous system circuits of SEEKING, CARE, and FEAR for self-regulation, authenticity, and choice, rather than chronic self-erasure.

Together, we will practice alchemizing two core forces: terror, and the conviction that we are responsible for others’ emotional states. As these soften, a new experience becomes possible—one in which our energy belongs to us, serves us, and supports relationships grounded in mutuality rather than servitude.

Participants may leave this workshop with:

• A clear, embodied understanding of fawning as a nervous system survival response
• Increased self-compassion and reduced shame around relational patterns
• Tools for identifying and releasing unconscious emotional labor contracts
• Practices for working with early trauma and power-based conditioning
• Greater access to authenticity, agency, and social engagement without self-abandonment

This workshop offers a pathway from vigilance toward emergence. Together, we will support the movement from contortion to presence, and work from managing connection to co-creating relationships where we get to matter.

Week 1: Why Fawning Is A Good Idea and What Makes It Painful
Week 2: The Unconscious Contracts That Make Us Fawn
Week 3: Tracing the Traumatic Roots of Fawning
Week 4: SEEKING, CARE, and FEAR: The Emotional Labor of the Circuits in Fawning
Week 5: Reclaiming Our Lost Voice from Fawning
Week 6: How EMERGENCE Comes from Healing Fawning

Anyone from total beginners to experienced resonance practitioners are welcome. This course also supports space holders and people who are interested in therapeutic and emotional session-work, including resonance partners, empathy buddies, therapists and social workers.

Assistant support is available during classes. There are three ways this happens:

• In groups of three with one assistant and two participants, so that participants can practice the breakout exercises with support.
• In small groups, with 1 assistant and 3+ participants, with work with one participant occurring by lottery, and the remaining participants observing.
• Depending on assistant availability, the third option is 1-1 support to receive resonant processes like time travel and unconscious contracts for material that comes up during class.