Being a “Nice Girl” and the Fawn Response
One of my supervisees said something to me once that I haven’t stopped repeating since: “nice girls end up in trunks.”
She wasn’t being dramatic. She was naming something super real; something a lot of us learned the hard way. We learned the habit of being endlessly accommodating, sweet, and easy. That habit is straight up exhausting and it can actually put you in danger.
Here’s what trauma therapy has taught me: chronic niceness can be a habituated fawn response that becomes a nervous system strategy. Until we name it for what it is, we can’t change it (which is true of literally everything).
When Niceness is the Fawn Response in Disguise
Most people have heard of fight, flight, and freeze. But there’s a fourth trauma response that doesn’t get as much airtime: the fawn response. Fawning is what happens when your nervous system learns that conflict brings danger, so you default to appeasing, accommodating, and making yourself easy to be around. Essentially you learn that if you’re confronted with a bear, you make it a steak to keep it from eating you.
The fawn response can look polite on the outside while you quietly abandon yourself on the inside. It shows up as saying yes when you mean no, over-explaining your needs (oh, the things trauma teaches us), tolerating disrespect in relationships, staying silent when you should speak up, and smiling through things that are actually not okay.
This pattern shows up everywhere — in marriages, workplaces, churches, and even medical appointments. And in communities that reward being sweet, quiet, and easy (especially Christian spaces where niceness gets equated with godliness) the fawn response can go completely undetected for decades.
The cost is real: resentment, anxiety, eroded self-trust, and boundaries so weak they leave you vulnerable to coercive control.
Niceness and Kindness Are Not the Same Thing
This is one of the most important distinctions I teach, and I really want you to hear it: niceness and kindness are not the same thing.
Niceness is other-regulated, driven by the need for approval, fear of consequences, or the desperate hope that if you just keep things pleasant, nothing bad will happen. Niceness stays quiet. Niceness goes along and it smiles sweet when it should speak.
Kindness is self-sourced. It comes out of genuine care, not fear. Here’s what makes it real different: kindness is willing to tell the truth. If I am being kind to you, I might say something hard, not because I don’t love you, but precisely because I do.
Think about Jesus in John 2, flipping tables in the temple (personal fave story). In that moment, He is as much kindness and love as He is justice. He’s giving people the opportunity to see something different. That was kind. What they were doing was not. And there are a myriad of other Bible stories that model kindness that way, minus the table flipping part.
In faith-centered spaces, love without truth becomes enabling. Truth without love becomes noise (and honestly can also become spiritually abusive). Mature, healthy relationships hold both — warmth and directness, care and clarity, grace and honesty. Hmmm, sounds like dialectics (two opposite things that can be synthesized). When we stop confusing niceness with kindness, we can finally become both warm and direct at the same time. We become boundaried.
What Healthy Boundaries Actually Are (and What They’re Not)
Let’s talk about boundaries for a second, because most of us were taught them wrong.
A boundary is not an ultimatum. It is not a punishment. It is not a tool to control another person’s behavior. A boundary is simply information about what you will allow and not allow, and what you will do if a line is crossed.
Here’s the difference: “You can’t talk to me that way” is not a boundary — that’s trying to control what someone else does. “If you keep talking to me that way, I’m going to leave the room” is a boundary. You’re managing your own behavior, not theirs. That person can still talk to you however they want, you’re just not going to stick around for it.
I love to think about boundaries as fences versus walls. Sometimes you need a solid wall — a firm, non-negotiable limit with someone who has proven themselves unsafe. Oftentimes you need a fence with a gate you can open and close, depending on what’s needed in the moment. Neither is wrong, it just really depends on what’s appropriate for that relationship. Both can be wise, and sometimes in different seasons.
For survivors of domestic abuse, spiritual abuse, and coercive control, guilt around boundaries can feel overwhelming. You were trained to prioritize everyone else’s feelings above your own. But guilt is not a reliable moral compass (also, sometimes it’s false guilt, but that’s another blog). Safety matters. With safe people, healthy boundaries don’t damage relationship, they deepen it, because you are showing up more authentically.
A Practical Tool: DEAR MAN for Assertiveness
If you’re trying to find your voice and don’t know where to start, my favorite DBT interpersonal effectiveness skill, called DEAR MAN, is worth learning. It gives you a clean structure for hard conversations without overexplaining, over-apologizing, or shutting down.
Here’s how it works:
Describe the facts of the situation briefly and without judgment.
Express your emotion in a few clear words.
Assert a clear, specific ask.
Find the reward, the win-win, and explain what’s in it for both of you.
The MAN part is staying Mindful, appear Assertive, and be willing to Negotiate when that’s appropriate. And sometimes negotiation is not appropriate. We do not negotiate with terrorists (and coercive controllers or abusers are terrorists in this example).
This approach helps you regulate before you speak, keeps your ask clear and understandable (because people are not mind readers), and reduces the spiral of overexplaining that so many of us with the fawn response know all too well.
You Don’t Have to Keep Performing
Healing from the fawn response is a process, and it’s okay to need practice (as I say, “practice makes proficient”). Be kind to yourself as you learn (go back and brush up on self-compassion, if needed). The goal isn’t to become harsh or hard; it’s to trade performative niceness for honest, grounded, safe connection.
You are allowed to be both warm and direct. You are allowed to say no and still be a good person. You are allowed to set a boundary and still love someone deeply.
The trunk is not your destiny.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If this resonated with you and you recognized yourself in the fawn response and you’ve spent years being nice at the expense of being safe, you don’t have to keep figuring it out alone.
Working with a trauma-informed therapist or coach can help you identify your patterns, find your voice, and build the kind of boundaries that actually protect you, without making you someone you’re not.
If you’re ready to work with one our amazing trauma-specialized professionals and explore therapy or coaching options, reach out to us today. We’re happy to help you build skills and live a healthy, boundaried life.
