When Survival Looks Like Kindness: Lessons From the Stockholm Heist

The Kredditbanken Heist

On August 23, 1973, a man named Jan-Erik Olsson walked into a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, and took four people hostage during a robbery. What followed became one of the most talked-about crimes of the twentieth century, not because of how the robbery unfolded, but because of how the hostages behaved afterward. Despite being threatened and held for several days, the hostages appeared to cooperate with their captor. Some even defended him and criticized the police. To outside observers, their behavior seemed baffling. Why would people side with someone who had terrorized them? A psychiatrist involved in the case offered an explanation that would capture the public imagination for decades: the idea that victims can emotionally bond with their captors under extreme stress, a phenomenon that came to be known as Stockholm syndrome.

The Diagnosis That is not: Stockholm Syndrome

Over time, that explanation began to fall apart. Later accounts from historians and from the hostages themselves painted a very different picture of what actually happened inside the bank. The hostages said they were not defending their captor out of loyalty or affection, but out of fear that the heavy-handed police response would get them killed. Cooperating with Olsson and trying to slow down the rescue effort was a way to stay alive. What looked like emotional bonding from the outside was a calculated survival strategy. Still, the term Stockholm syndrome stuck, and it continues to be used today as a catch-all explanation for why victims sometimes appear to side with people who harm them.

How Humans Survive Threat

Stockholm syndrome may not hold up as a diagnosis, but it points toward something real and important about how we humans survive danger. When people are trapped in threatening situations, they may adapt by becoming agreeable, cooperative, or accommodating in order to reduce harm. Appeasing someone who has power over us can be a smart and effective way to stay alive. The problem arises when this survival strategy does not turn off once the danger has passed. When appeasement becomes the body’s default response, even in safe situations, it can begin to work against the person it once protected. Psychologists refer to this trauma response as fawning.  

Fight, Flight, and Freeze

You may already be familiar with the phrase fight or flight. This refers to the way the body automatically responds to danger. In a split second, the nervous system assesses a threat and prepares us to survive it. Sometimes that means fighting back. Other times it means running away. These responses happen without conscious thought and are driven by the body’s instinct to keep us alive. 

Fight and flight are not the only ways the body responds to danger. Sometimes the safest option is to freeze. Freezing can make a person less noticeable to a threat and can help them stay still long enough to assess what is happening. It can also conserve energy or prevent actions that might escalate the situation. Together, these responses are often described as fight, flight, or freeze.

The Fourth F

There is a fourth response that receives far less attention: fawning. While fight, flight, and freeze are often responses to physical danger, fawning is especially tied to interpersonal threat. It involves appeasing, pleasing, or accommodating another person in order to reduce the risk of harm. In situations where one person has power over another, this response can be highly effective. Like the other trauma responses, fawning is a hard-wired and effective survival strategy.

So what does fawning look like in everyday life? It often shows up as ignoring or minimizing one’s own needs in order to keep the peace. It can look like saying yes when I want to say no, taking responsibility for other people’s emotions, or going along with situations that feel uncomfortable or wrong. Some people experience it as a constant urge to be helpful, agreeable, or overly polite, even when doing so comes at their own expense.

Fawning can be exhausting. It leads people to prioritize others’ wants over their own needs. We may start feeling lost or disconnected from ourselves. Over time, a person’s sense of identity can become wrapped up in fearful caretaking rather than personal values. Acts that might look like kindness from the outside are often driven by fear rather than generosity. This can bring with it feelings of shame for not speaking up, or guilt, as if we have never done enough. 

Kindness vs Fawning

Kindness and fawning can look similar on the surface, but they come from very different places internally. Kindness is usually a choice. It is flexible, values-driven, and does not require the self to disappear in order to keep the relationship intact. Fawning, by contrast, is often driven by fear rather than generosity. It tends to feel urgent, automatic, and difficult to interrupt, and is frequently accompanied by anxiety, guilt, or a sense that saying no would be dangerous or catastrophic. A helpful way to tell the difference is for us to notice what happens in our body and mind. If we feel grounded, free to change our mind, and able to tolerate disappointment or disagreement, we are likely acting from kindness. If we feel compelled, tense, or responsible for managing someone else’s emotions at the expense of our own needs, the response may be fawning rather than care.

Fawning is most likely to develop in the context of relational trauma, particularly physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. It is especially common when harm occurs in childhood or is repeated over long periods of time, where appeasing others may have been necessary for safety or survival. In these environments, the nervous system learns that connection depends on compliance and that conflict carries risk. What begins as an intelligent adaptation can quietly become a default way of relating, even when the original danger is no longer present. 

Emotional abuse can be especially difficult to recognize, both while it is happening and after it has ended. Sometimes the patterns of criticism, neglect, manipulation, or control can slowly erode a person’s sense of reality and self-trust. Over time, the person may come to doubt their own perceptions, feelings, or needs. Because the harm is relational rather than overt, it is often minimized or misunderstood by both victims and outsiders. This kind of chronic emotional instability can strongly reinforce appeasement as a survival strategy.

For people who fawn, the goal is rarely approval or closeness. More often, it is safety. What begins as a way to survive difficult relationships can slowly shape how a person relates to others and to themselves. Naming fawning does not change it overnight, but it does clarify what is happening and why it once made sense. And this may be the start of the journey of healing.