fawn by foxtails

fawn

“... according to Webster, it means: ‘to act servilely; to cringe and flatter.’

… As a toddler, the codependent learns quickly that protesting abuse leads to even more frightening parental retaliation. Thus she responds by relinquishing her fight response, deleting ‘no’ from her vocabulary and never developing the language skills of healthy assertiveness.
… The future codependent toddler, however, wisely gives up on the fight, flight and freeze responses. Instead she learns to fawn her way into the occasional safety of being perceived as helpful. … She is the precocious one who discovers that a modicum of safety can be purchased by becoming variously useful to her parent.
Servitude, ingratiation, and obsequiousness become important survival strategies. She cleverly forfeits all needs that might inconvenience her parents. She stops having preferences and opinions that might anger them. Boundaries of every kind are surrendered to mollify her parents, who repudiate their duty of caring for her.
… All this loss of self begins before the child has many words, and certainly no insight. For the budding codependent, all hints of danger soon immediately trigger servile behaviors and abdication of rights and needs.
These response patterns are so deeply set in the psyche, that as adults, many codependents automatically respond to threats like dogs, symbolically rolling over on their backs, wagging their tails, hoping for a little mercy and an occasional scrap. Webster’s second entry for fawn is: ‘to show friendliness by licking hands, wagging its tail, etc.: said of a dog.’
… They invite the other to talk rather than risk exposing their thoughts, views, and feelings. They ask questions to keep the attention off themselves, because their parents taught them that talking was dangerous and that their words were indictments that would inevitably prove them guilty of being unworthy.
The implicit code of the fawn type is that it is safer [1] to listen than to talk, [2] to agree than to dissent, [3] to offer care than to ask for help, [4] to elicit the other than to express yourself and [5] to leave choices to the other rather than to express preferences.
… Fawns need to understand that fear of being attacked for lapses in ingratiation causes them to forfeit their boundaries, rights and needs. Understanding this dynamic is a necessary but not sufficient step in recovery. There are many codependents who realize their penchant for forfeiting themselves, but who instantly forget everything they know when self-assertion is appropriate in their relationships.”
-- Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

thank you endlessly to our queer siblings, our Black & Brown siblings, and all of our immensely talented friends in the scene, who have fueled us with the inspiration, love, understanding, and drive needed to persevere despite the bullshit life in america throws at us all.

thank you endlessly to Skeletal Lightning for their amazing support throughout the process of being able to bring this album to fruition and onwards.

thank you endlessly to Steve Roche at Permanent Hearing Damage studios for recording & mixing our most important release to date, while also holding space for tenderness and compassion during one of the most intense recording sessions of our lives (so far!)

thank you endlessly to Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios for mastering this project and being such a wonderful presence over all of these years.

thank you endlessly to Rob Mattsson for designing all of the artwork for this album, an absolute treasure.

thank you endlessly to all of you, who have connected with us with so much kindness since the inception of this group, and allowed us to blossom into our truest selves through the universal language of music & catharsis. we wouldn’t be here without you. we are eternally grateful.

love and solidarity to all.

genre alchemy for queer outcasts

instagram: @foxtailsct
inquiries: fffoxtails@gmail.com

foxtails.co