Episode 04.2: Fight, Flight…Hustle
Christa and Sarah continue the conversation around the C-PTSD response of “fawning”. They discuss the shame cycle built into the theology of being born a depraved sinner; how difficult it is to question ideas when the standard you’re handed as a child is divine and infallible; the resultant need to continually hustle to perfect your faith and learning to regain a sense of self.
They cover an article found in Medium written by an ex-pastor named Emily Hedrick called “Fawning of the Flock: Trauma Response in Ministry”. Hedrick covers how, in Christian spaces, fawning often looks like good Christian devotion, where the individual self is subsumed by the demands of God or the larger community, and failure to meet these standards results in self-loathing, doubt, and fawning in attempts to be better to meet this divine standard.
“As a toddler, [a child] learns quickly that protesting abuse leads to even more frightening parental retaliation, and so she relinquishes the fight response, deleting ‘no' from her vocabulary and never developing the language skills of healthy assertiveness…Servitude, ingratiation, and forfeiture of any needs that might inconvenience and ire the parent become the most important survival strategies available. Boundaries of every kind are surrendered to mollify the parent…'
When God is the abusive parent, fawning looks like good Christian devotion: constantly praising and adoring God, feeling guilty for getting angry or doubtful toward God, surrendering critical thinking skills in pursuit of believing correct doctrine, trading individual sense of purpose for ‘being used by God,’ and submitting to the belief that anything about you that doesn’t fit the prescribed script demanded by your religious group (sexuality, thoughts, lifestyle choices, experiences, etc.) is your fault and requires self-loathing as penance.”
https://medium.com/interfaith-now/fawning-the-flock-trauma-response-in-ministry-4bcef6c3edbc
