As I’ve been working on codifying 25+ years experience as a therapist, coach, Human Design expert, and clairvoyant in my Relational Energenetics™ program, a new piece of the puzzle came in recently and I want to share because it’s both humbling and super clarifying.
I’ve been teaching people to trust themselves for decades. And nearly 14 years into my Human Design experiment, I realized that my own journey of healing and sovereignty has been in large part through Human Design and trusting both my Design as well as my intuition.
Many people have asked over the years how we can tell if it’s our intuition or fear, and I always respond that intuition - when it first hits - has no emotion attached to it. Whether it comes as a feeling in the body (clairsentiently), through seeing (clairvoyantly), through a message or audible download (clairaudiently), or just a knowing (claircognizance) the initial awareness is devoid of emotion It’s “clean” and clear.
In a split second, however, that ‘hit’ can trigger a thought, interpretation, or emotion - especially fear - and so the message can become ‘clouded’ and because that intuitive hit + interpretation sequence happens so close together, it can be hard to determine whether it’s fear or a true intuitive knowing (regardless of how it shows up).
Human Design helped me to understand the above sequence more subtly, and actually map it and create more space and awareness in the sequence so I (and my clients) could trust ourselves more.
I’ve always said that we communicate energetically first and foremost, and that body language and words are the grossest form of communication. As I’ve been learning to internally trust - and teach - how I see those energetic fields of communication, I just thought it was my intuition that I was relying on. What I didn’t realize was what I was seeing and describing to my clients was/is the subtle energetic patterns of attachment.
This is where those Energetic Attachment Styles™ come from. (You can take the quiz on my website at www.krisprochaska.com)
Furthermore, even though I am trauma-informed and have been working with folks who have experienced extreme trauma, especially relational trauma - I never considered that my innate intuitive super-powers were both honed in the fires of personal relational trauma, while also being co-opted by my nervous system to keep me safe and connected - especially to the people who were not energetically or emotionally safe.
The Fawn Response
I NEVER identified with the Fawn response (Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn/Appease). If my intuition said “Danger! Get out!” - I did. Sometimes that was physically leaving (flight). Sometimes that would look like Drifting and shutting down my energy field and biting my tongue to keep the peace (another form of flight). Sometimes it would look like snapping back - my double-Scorpio stinger saying “back off!” without thinking about the consequences first (fight).
My Mercury is in Libra - the scales and balance - and I have Gate 6 three times in my Design (gate of conflict resolution); I naturally can diffuse conflict and see all sides of a situation - an undefined Ajna helps with this too!
I never considered, until now, that all of these natural abilities (among others in my Design and astrological chart) had both kept me safe and connected to others, but also kept me small and fearful due to a relational trauma response deeply embedded in my nervous system.
This is where fawning comes in.
Fawning is a learned adaptive strategy that maintains connection as safety when threat, abandonment, or emotional volatility are present. It’s a nervous system-based survival response rooted in attachment injury.
Energetically, fawning is the body’s attempt to regulate dysregulation through external attunement - merging with others’ needs, moods, and expectations to avoid conflict or loss of belonging.
Where fight mobilizes, flight escapes, and freeze dissociates, fawn blends energetic submission and merging. It’s a subtle cord pattern: giving energy outward to preserve harmony* and avoid the threat of disconnection. Over time, this becomes an identity and/or deeply embedded pattern of relating - “If you’re safe, I’m safe.”
*Preserving ‘harmony’ in this way is an inversion of true harmony…
I never related to the term co-dependent, until I saw the energetics of it and described it as ‘managing the energy and emotions of others so I could feel safe’. This is the essence of fawning.
In the DragonHeart group program, we’ve been developing a sense of security in the body, and sovereign relationship with regards to others externally. And what came to me recently is how our innate intuitive knowing, and our human relational NEED to be connected to others has been co-opted, INVERTED, towards fawning.
If you think you don’t fawn, I invite you to consider that it’s like the air we breathe, it’s that deep in our personal and collective nervous systems - regardless of gender - but especially as women and those who identify as female. (That said, I have met plenty of men who fawn as well).
I’m beginning to fully understand that true sovereignty is coming back into right relationship with our intuitive knowing and our ability to ‘read the room and energy’ and sourcing safety within ourselves vs. seeking safety in connection to others based on a nervous system activation response forged in relational trauma.
Folks, this is the basis of the Inverted Matrix - where our natural gifts of empathy, intuition, need for connection and honoring the innate wisdom of our body has been co-opted and inverted in the service of fear and staying in line with the ‘powers that be’ whether that’s parents, partners, politics, religion, work, or other systems. It happens at the individual, tribal, and collective levels (for those of you who know your Human Design circuitry).
The Harmonic Matrix is our true nature, our gifts and wisdom, both innate and intuitive, as well as gained through experience, trusted and acted upon in service of true connection - first to our Self, and then with others.
Not gonna lie, I had a day or two of wondering if all my work in Relational Energenetics™ and mapping these energetic patterns through Human Design (along with astrology and our Soul Design) was all bullshit and nothing more than a relational trauma response called fawning.
But then I realized that it’s actually a reclamation of my nervous system, a deepening of my self-trust, and a super-power capacity that can’t easily be co-opted by fear and the Inverted Matrix anymore.
And I realized how much working with my Human Design all these years has been helping me heal from this relational trauma - that I never identified as such until recently! I took the side door vs coming right in with attachment and survival at the get-go.
We see it when we are ready and meant to see it.
I noticed over the past several months that my intuitive hits are not only clearer and stronger - they are way more accurate because my nervous system is clearing up and the white noise of the Inverted Matrix is not so loud or distracting as it once was. This is needed more than ever as it becomes increasingly difficult to determine what is ‘real’ and what is fabricated in our digital world online and with antagonistic, manipulative people in person.
When other teachers and writers speak of the “New Earth” and choosing love over fear as we move forward as a collective humanity, I believe this reclamation of our true power from the Inverted Matrix and re-anchoring in our own bodies the Harmonic Matrix - which is our true nature and how we are designed to exist - is exactly what they are referring to.
And we can ALL do this starting right now.
Kris
PS, I HIGHLY recommend the book Fawning by Dr. Ingrid Clayton - her story deeply resonates with my own and the subtle ways fawning shows up is mind-blowing.
PPS, If you’d like to explore how to un-fawn, trust yourself more deeply, and heal through your own Design and innate intuitive powers, start with the Energetic Attachment Style™ Quiz!