Embark on a transformative journey to unearth personal narratives and connect to the emotional and somatic experiences that shape how we both wield and shrink from power. Through intimate reflections and focused discussion, we will unpack historical power dynamics and our embodied realities of power and powerlessness, exploring the tensions between the destructive and generative capacities of power.

The four F’s—fight, flight, freeze, fawn—are commonly shared as the range of human stress and trauma responses, but fawn is actually a subcategory of appeasement. This interactive session will explore appeasement as a biological and cultural response to threat in response to power imbalances and social hierarchies. We will tease apart the differences between fawn and appeasement, unpack internalized and relational appeasement dynamics, and examine potential approaches to mitigate harm and create alternate ways of relating across power imbalances.