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The Survival Paradox: How Sexual Violence Hijacks Our Most Ancient Protection System and Why Victims Comfort Their Abusers.

Last week, New York Magazine published a deeply reported, exceptionally well-written, and profoundly unsettling article by Lila Shapiro detailing credible allegations of sexual assault and rape against Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed author of science fiction and fantasy books and other properties.

I am choosing not to link to the piece or the author here, but you can easily find it. This newsletter aims to offer glimmers, not triggers.

I met Neil ten years ago at his house in Bearsville, where I'd come with a new friend for a weekend writing retreat. I wasn't familiar with his work—science fiction and fantasy aren't my genres—but I found him genial, if prone to mansplaining, like many white, cis-het men of his generation.

That weekend became an open invitation for others, and I spent months there over the years, writing in the quiet of his property. I became friendly with Caroline Wallner, one of his accusers, who lived there with her daughters.

The allegations in the New York Magazine piece painted a picture I never witnessed firsthand, yet one that made terrible sense of the unease I'd occasionally felt—those moments when I chose not to be alone with him, sensing something in the power dynamic that made me uncomfortable.

I share this not to obscure or equivocate but to be transparent: despite never witnessing overtly abusive behavior, I believe the women who have come forward. I believe them not merely because they are women but because their stories illuminate patterns I recognized but couldn't quite name during my time there.

The story left many readers grappling with what seemed like an impossible contradiction: multiple women accused a beloved author of rape and sexual assault, yet in the aftermath of these alleged, terrifying, assaults, they had sent him warm messages. They had expressed hunger at seeing him again. Some offered comfort when he was distressed by their allegations.

They agreed to his terms, that in retrospect, didn’t match their experience—specifically that the relationship and the cruelty was consensual.

I believe them because I understand trauma responses, and can recognize, in all the material provided in the article, the hallmarks and symptoms of the specific trauma response I want to address today—fawning, a survival mechanism similar to appeasement, which employs abandoning the self, personal boundaries, and a reliance on people-pleasing to remain safe.

Fawning is a common trauma response often seen in people with Complex PTSD, and it’s one that’s most often missed.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

Fifty years ago, someone might have conveniently dismissed this behavior under the label of Stockholm Syndrome. The term, coined by Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist Dr. Niels Bejerot, originated after a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm where hostages appeared to bond with their captors, even defending them after their release.

The term quickly became a catch-all explanation for any situation where victims appeared to show positive feelings toward their abusers. It offered a comforting simplification: these victims weren't displaying complex survival behaviors; they were simply confused, possibly complicit in their abuse.

This framework proves particularly insidious in cases of sexual violence and domestic abuse. Defense attorneys often weaponize victims' friendly messages or continued contact as evidence of consent. Police question why women didn't immediately report their assaults.

Prosecutors hesitate to take cases where victims have maintained cordial relationships with their abusers. The term "Stockholm Syndrome" became a way to discredit victims while avoiding the more complex reality of how humans navigate situations of profound power imbalance. The lack of basic psychological knowledge makes so many professionals, deeply unqualified for their jobs.

TRAUMA AT HOME

Through the 1980s and 1990s, researchers studying hostage situations, domestic violence, and child abuse began noticing patterns that the simple Stockholm Syndrome framework couldn't explain.

Judith Herman's 1992 work Trauma and Recovery revolutionized our understanding of how power operates in sexual abuse. She was among the first to explicitly connect the psychological impact of domestic violence and sexual assault to the experiences of political prisoners and torture survivors.

Herman showed that what had been dismissed as women's personal, private tragedies were actually part of a broader pattern of how power and violence function in society.

Herman documented how abusers systematically work to destroy their victims' sense of autonomy and connection to others. The same methods of control used by kidnappers and totalitarian regimes - isolation, monopolization of perception, induced debility, threats, occasional indulgences, enforcement of trivial demands - appear in intimate partner violence and sexual abuse.

This framework helped explain why victims often appeared compliant or even grateful to their abusers: they were responding to the same sophisticated tactics of control that break political prisoners. 

Herman's work made it impossible to dismiss trauma bonds as simple Stockholm Syndrome - these were instead complex adaptations to systematic abuse of power.

This context helps bridge the historical understanding of trauma bonding with Walker's later insights about the fawn response, showing how our understanding of trauma responses has evolved from seeing them as pathological to recognizing them as sophisticated survival strategies.

APPEASEMENT

Leading neuroscientist Stephen Porges was among the first to explicitly reject the term Stockholm Syndrome, arguing that what we were witnessing wasn't a syndrome but rather an ancient biological survival response he termed "appeasement." 

This wasn't pathological bonding or identification with an abuser but rather the activation of deeply embedded survival circuits. When neither escape nor resistance is possible, Porges explained, our nervous system falls back on appeasement - a response that prioritizes survival over all else. 

This reframing helped shift understanding away from victim-blaming explanations toward recognizing the profound intelligence of survival responses.

These researchers began to understand that what looked like "bonding" with abusers was a sophisticated survival response, one that deserved to be understood rather than pathologized.

FAWNING

Psychotherapist and Trauma expert Pete Walker built on this foundation, identifying the fawn response—a fourth option beyond the well-known fight, flight, or freeze reactions to danger. 

In his groundbreaking 2013 book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Walker illuminates how this response typically develops in early childhood, particularly when someone faces danger from a person they depend on for survival. 

Consider a scene in countless homes: Instead of running away or fighting back, a child struck by a parent does something that might seem unfathomable—they try to comfort the very person who hurt them. They might say, "I'm sorry," even though they've done nothing wrong. They might try to make their parent feel better, offer a hug, or become highly well-behaved.

This pattern often develops between ages one and three, when a child's brain still forms its foundational response patterns to threat and safety. When toddlers discover that fighting back intensifies parental retaliation or that running away brings worse punishment, their nervous system adapts. 

Some children redirect their flight response into hyperactivity, while others might default to freezing and dissociation. However, as described in Alice Miller's seminal work The Drama of the Gifted Child, some predominantly rely on the fawn response, becoming overly attuned to others' emotions and needs as a survival strategy.

These children learn to secure relative safety through a kind of psychological servitude. They become emotional caretakers, confidants, or even surrogate parents, taking on roles far beyond their developmental capacity. 

This loss of self begins before they possess language or insight, leaving them unable to assert their needs and rights. As adults, these patterns often manifest as an almost dog-like loyalty to abusive or exploitative figures.

SCARLET

The main accuser in the Gaiman article was Scarlet, a 22-year-old who met Amanda Palmer, Gaiman's wife, on the street in Auckland. Scarlet was gay, estranged from her family, and had no stable home and no steady income. 

Palmer included her in their world, inviting her to parties and into the magical insular world I knew so well. When Palmer asked her to babysit their young son for a weekend, Scarlet agreed, only to find herself alone with the 61-year-old Gaiman. 

What followed was a pattern Walker would recognize immediately: a profound power imbalance, violation, and the victim's attempts to maintain safety through appeasement and pleasing.

Upgrade to read the rest of the article, learn how to recognize, challenge and change your own maladaptive trauma responses—fawning, or otherwise.

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Power operates in layers. There's the immediate physical power of a 61-year-old man over a 22-year-old woman alone in his house. There's the economic power over someone who is housing insecure and financially vulnerable. There's the social power of a globally renowned author over an unknown young person. 

There's the networked power of someone who can, with a word, make you radioactive in multiple industries. There's the public power of someone whose fans will automatically take his side, attack his accusers, and ensure that any allegation becomes a public nightmare for the accuser.

These layers of power create a cage of constraints around a victim's choices. Physical resistance becomes frightening when you're alone with someone stronger. 

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